A New York Minute

This week I'm in New York and Washington D.C. attending a series of meetings with various performing arts service organizations.  I'm here to catch up with colleagues, old and new, and let people in the "the business" know about SFGC and what we've been up to lately.  I spent Monday at the annual meeting of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (thanks to our agents Don and Sue at California Artists), and am attending the annual congress of the International Society of Performing Arts on Tues. - Thurs.  On Thurs. evening I'll take the train to D.C. for a meeting with the other 10 or so administrative directors of the largest independent choral organizations in the U.S. (Yes, SFGC is one of them!)

 

It's a busy and intense week, and in addition to seeing many friends and associates, I get a dose of real winter.  (My Minnesota Norwegian grandmother used to say "I need my winter.")  The theme of the ISPA meeting is Fast Forward, and the meeting is taking place in Times Square.  Almost nothing in New York says "fast forward" like Broadway and 42nd Street.  When I moved to NYC in 1985 this neighborhood was largely a no man's land -- boarded up, derelict and downright scary, not unlike the Market Street corridor from the Westfield Mall to the Civic Center in SF.  Fast forward to Times Square 2010 and it's downtown Tokyo on steroids.  It's clean, largely a pedestrian zone, and well lit to the point of blindness.  Crawling with tourists at all hours, it's popular and much safer, if a bit like Disneyland.

 

While a lot has changed since I left NYC 12 years ago, much remains timeless.  After dinner with an old friend on the Upper West Side last night, I walked back to the hotel.  I love this walk down the West Side -- along Central Park, and then past Lincoln Center, and then past Carnegie Hall, into the the neon of Times Square.  Only in New York could a 30 block hike in subfreezing temps be considered a pleasant evening stroll, but it was.  Even with many changes, the essential energy and thrill of New York remain the same.

 

Yesterday I also had the pleasure of meeting with an SFGC alumna at the New York Public Library.  Her office is in the main library -- the big one on Fifth Avenue with the lions!  In addition to showing me the library's collection of the original stuffed animals on which A.A. Milne based the Winnie the Pooh stories, we talked about her early experiences as a chorister with SFGC.  Despite 30 years and many changes, so much that is essential about our organization remains the same.

 

More to come on this subject next week, but now I'm off to a conference session that is near and dear to my heart.  It's called "The Arts and the Slow Food Movement."  As noted before in this blog, I believe they are closely related.  Guess others do too!