Avery Fisher Oral History Project

The Reminiscences of

Joseph Polisi

Columbia Center for Oral History

Columbia University

2019

PREFACE

The following oral history is the result of a recorded interview with Joseph Polisi conducted by Gerry Albarelli on December 5, 2019. This interview is part of the Avery Fisher

Oral History Project.

The reader is asked to bear in mind that s/he is reading a verbatim transcript of the spoken word, rather than written prose.

ATC Session #1

Interviewee: Joseph Polisi Location: New York, NY

Interviewer: Gerry Albarelli Date: December 5, 2019

Albarelli: This is Gerry Albarelli interviewing Joseph Polisi. Today’s date is December 5, 2019.

Polisi: [00:00:07] As it turns out, I’m writing a book on the history of Lincoln Center. The Yale

Press is going to publish, and I was able actually to do research that fell in line with Avery’s ’76 renovation and then something about the Strad violin in 1991 and that sort of thing.

Albarelli: Perfect. So the timing was right. You were in Beijing recently, I think. Were you?

Polisi: Oh yeah.

Albarelli: So was I.

Polisi: Oh, you were?

Albarelli: Yeah. I was there for an oral history conference at Communication University.

Polisi: Are they doing oral histories in China?

Albarelli: Yeah, yeah. There’s a lot of that. Polisi – 1 – 4

Polisi: [00:00:48] Yeah. You know, a lot of my research—not all of it, but a very helpful part are oral history. A woman named Sharon Zane, do you know?

Albarelli: Yes.

Polisi: [00:00:58] Do you know Sharon?

Albarelli: I know who she is.

Polisi: [00:00:59] Is she still alive, do you know?

Albarelli: I don’t know. I know that she was doing interviews.

Polisi: [00:01:04] Oh, a lot for Lincoln Center. And they can be dangerous because your memory isn’t exact, and all of a sudden, the person is talking about somebody else, and you have to catch it and say what’s going on. Date.

Albarelli: Right. We can always check dates.

Polisi: Yeah, right.

Polisi – 1 – 5

Albarelli: So I’ll ask you just to start by saying where and when you were born and a little bit about your early life.

Polisi: [00:01:37] All right. I was born on December 30, 1947 in Queens, New York, Flushing, and my father was principal bassoonist of the . My mother was a dancer, who danced at the Radio City Music Hall in the Corps de Ballet, but then she had her own private dance studio in Flushing that made her very active for many years. I went to public schools in New York and started playing bassoon when I was in seventh grade—I played piano earlier—and became a good bassoonist, and in my senior year in high school, at Flushing High

School, I asked my father if I should go to Curtis [Institute of Music], where he went to school, or Juilliard, where he was teaching, and he said, is being a bassoonist all you want to do? And I said, I don’t know. Then he said, well, then it’s not time for you to go to either of those places.

So, I went to the University of Connecticut as a political science major and continued at the

Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts, and I got a master’s in international relations in

1970, bachelor’s in ’69.

And during that time, the Vietnam War was raging, and I was drafted and thought I was going in, but I had had a serious ACL serious in the end of my sophomore year of college in ’67, and so eventually, I was not taken in to the Army. That whole experience, though, as they said in those days, focusing on relevancy, what do you really want to do in your life? And so I decided I wanted to be a bassoonist or a musician and got married in 1970 to my wife of fifty years now and eventually, I was a newspaper reporter for a year in the city of Meriden, [Connecticut], the

Meriden Journal, the afternoon paper. I then went to Yale in the School of Music 1971, got a Polisi – 1 – 6 master’s in ’73, took a year off, went with my wife to be graduate assistants at the University of

Connecticut program in France, where we had met when I was a junior. Went back to Yale, got my completion of my doctoral studies, which is called Master of Musical Arts. Then got a job at the University of Nevada Las Vegas teaching. I didn’t particularly care for that in terms of its location, not the gambling, mostly the desert I didn’t like.

Came back to New Haven, [Connecticut] as—eventually, I was called executive officer, but I was like the registrar and director of alumni affairs and then did a lot of other things in the school, and I became an administrator. Completed my doctorate at that time, and in 1980, became Dean of Manhattan School of Music. In 1983, I was Dean of Cincinnati Conservatory

University of Cincinnati. And then in ’84, I was appointed President of Juilliard and started on

September 4, 1984 and served in that capacity for thirty-four years, stepped down on June 30,

2018, and right now, I’m Chief China Officer and President Emeritus, so I’m overseeing the creation of a Juilliard branch campus in Tianjin, China. That’s it.

Albarelli: Okay, but let’s go back to when you were appointed president or when you came to

Juilliard and maybe slow down a little and tell me how that came about. Tell me anecdotally.

Polisi: [00:06:00] Yeah. Well, I mean Juilliard was always the top of the mountain for me and I suppose a lot of other people, and my father had taught there for years, and I had many, many friends who went to Juilliard. And I had been Dean of Manhattan School, so I could feel the difference between the two institutions. And I became Dean at Cincinnati, and there were two very prominent Juilliard faculty members, Dorothy DeLay in violin and Julius Baker, who taught Polisi – 1 – 7 at Cincinnati, Juli mostly just as a guest, but Dorothy actually taught there. And both of them said, why don’t you apply? Because Peter Mennin had died unexpectedly in I think around June of ’83. And really, I was young. I think I was thirty-five, so I didn’t think I had any chance whatsoever, but you know, so I did. And was given an interview actually a week after my father died. The reason I did the interview was because he had suffered a stroke in 1970, and I was in mourning for him most of the time anyway. Not 1970. He was seventy years old when he suffered the stroke, so that must have been around 1983, right. That’s right, ’83, February of ’83.

So I applied and I was interviewed for one half hour, and I knew it was a half hour because when

I went to the desk at Juilliard, the guard at the moment couldn’t understand what I was saying.

There were certain language issues, and I kept saying, I’m Polisi, I’m Polisi, and he didn’t understand, he didn’t understand. So he finally turned around a sheet, and he had a name who I recognized and then my name and then another name I recognized. Those were the three morning interviews, so I knew I had a half an hour, so I had nothing to lose, because I truly didn’t think I’d get the job, and I pretty much said what I thought Juilliard needed, and that was in February, and I didn’t hear a word until early May.

By that time, I had completely put Juilliard out of my head, honestly, and I was going to take roots, we had a house in Cincinnati, etc., two kids by that time. And then the Chairman of the

Board of Juilliard called, Peter Paine, P-A-I-N-E, or his assistant, I should say, and I told the assistant thank you, but it’s okay. I don’t want to be one of six anymore. I’ve really gotten this out of my head. And then Peter Paine called himself and said, no, you’re not one of six. Come to Polisi – 1 – 8

New York, please. So I went and went through a series of interviews, and then they eventually interviewed my wife Elizabeth, and I got the job, so I must have been thirty-six.

Albarelli: What did you say you thought Juilliard needed?

Polisi: [00:09:35] I think I said something like it needed greater outreach to the community. It needed more serious studies in liberal arts, more rigorous studies on the doctoral level as well, and probably a residence hall, a dormitory, a few other things, but I learned later I outraged some of the trustees, but I was being honest, and they seemed to find some resonance in it.

Albarelli: Would you mind telling me a little bit about your father, just some stories maybe about your father?

Polisi: [00:10:15] All right, sure. He was born in 1908. He came from Italian parentage. He grew up in Philadelphia. He went to Curtis in the very first years of Curtis. He was a very, very talented bassoonist, and for a little while, he played with his teacher, Jay Walter Guetter, G-U-E-

T-T-E-R, in the Philadelphia Orchestra as a sort of extra, but then he was hired by [Artur]

Rodziński to perform in the , and he was a young kid. I mean, he must have been twenty-five or twenty-six, and his story is that he asked for a raise, and when he didn’t get it, he quit. I also think it could have been he asked for a raise and Rodziński fired him because those were those days. And so he came to New York, played in the orchestra at the Radio City

Music Hall for one year, met my mother, who was dancing on stage, and then Rodziński called him back to Cleveland Orchestra as principal, and he was there, but the irony is that Rodziński Polisi – 1 – 9 was then asked by [Arturo] Toscanini to put the NBC Symphony Together, and once again in those days, there really weren’t union auditions and all this stuff. So Rodziński said to him, do you want to play in the NBC Symphony with Toscanini, and my father said, yes, of course.

Toscanini was God and always was to my father.

So Toscanini heard him, and he got the job, and he played there from I think it was ’37 to ’43.

And then Toscanini was still—I think he was in his mid-seventies at that stage. There was an opening at the New York Philharmonic as principal, and my father thought, Toscanini would die soon, and he’d have no job or anything, so he asked Toscanini if he could go, and—I think this is true—Toscanini said, yes, I’m old, and it’ll be a good, solid position for you, so he went, and he was principal bassoon in the New York Philharmonic from ’43 to 1958, the end of the first year with Bernstein, and then he was fifty years old, so he was quite young, but he just didn’t like conductors. He wanted to be his own person, and he got tired of the symphonic life. Ironically, he took co-principal bassoon at the Metropolitan Orchestra for one year, thinking he’d have an easier job, which I don’t know what he was thinking, but after that, he quit, and at fifty, he started a bassoon business, the Polisi Bassoon, and he designed and manufactured a bassoon that was called the Polisi Bassoon, and he did that until the end of his life. He kept teaching at

Juilliard and Mannes.

Albarelli: So what are some your early memories of him and of the Bassoon business and so on?

Polisi: [00:13:33] Well, in New York in those days, in sixth grade every child in the New York

City public school system was auditioned in one way or another while they were just going into Polisi – 1 – 10 junior high school for music. So I had already been playing piano and my father and all that stuff, so I was admitted to the seventh grade string class, because I wanted to play cello, and I started playing the cello, and then my music teacher, Mr. Wolf, said to me early on, Polisi, Polisi, is that any relation to the man who’s in the New York Philharmonic? And I was very proud, and

I said, yes, he’s my father. Oh, so he calls my father up. I didn’t know this, and he said to my father, you know, we don’t have anybody playing bassoon. Would you teach your son? And so all of a sudden, I was told I was transferred from the string class to the wind class, which bothered me not because of transferring to bassoon but rather that the kids in the string class were clearly smarter than the kids in the winds class, so I felt I was no in the great academic environment I had before. But I loved my father, I was very close to my father. It was very easy to study with my father. I had no problems whatsoever. Studied with him for most of my early years, and then went to other teachers.

In my junior year, when I was in France, I went to the Paris Conservatory as a top type of auditor because I played a German system bassoon, not a French system bassoon, which was verboten, but I met this extraordinary teacher, Maurice Allard, A-L-L-A-R-D, who was a professor at the

Conservatory. He was the most brilliant bassoon or any teacher I ever encountered. I went back a second time and was also an auditor in that class, so he was a major influence on me because

French bassoonists would practice six hours a day, which was absolutely unheard of for most

American bassoonists. Most you’d play would be about three, just because of the physicality of the instrument. It’s not like a piano or a fiddle. You’re really blowing, and so my technique sky- rocketed. That was great. I also studied with Arthur Weisberg at Yale. My father was a great Polisi – 1 – 11 teacher and very good to me. Maybe he should have been harder on me at times, but he never was.

Albarelli: What about your mother, some memories of your mother?

Polisi: [00:16:26] Well, as I said—well, I didn’t say this, but she grew up in the Bronx. My grandparents were refugee Jews from Lithuania. We were saying Russia, but I think it was

Lithuania. Was part of Russia at the time. They grew up in the Bronx, and my uncles were very, very brilliant people and went through the city school system. One became a professor at

Columbia, another in English, another a principal in the school system, and my mother always loved dance, so at a very young age, like all ballet dancers, she got a job at I think sixteen. She was in some professional companies, but then she got this really good job at the

Radio City Music Hall. They had their own Corps de Ballet in those days, and it was six shows a day. They would do a little show—not little. It was forty-five minutes of something before each movie, and so she did six of these a day, and that’s where she met my father.

And then in Flushing at the time, it was quite woodsy. I wouldn’t call it rural, but it was woodsy.

I remember growing up and running through woods all the time, big lots with nothing happening.

Then apartment buildings were built, but not when I was a young kid. And they had a garage in the back that they renovated into a dance studio, a two- or three-car garage, and she taught what looked like hundreds of little girls every year, and she enjoyed that very much, and she always stayed friends with her Radio City ballet friends, a little sorority of sorts.

Polisi – 1 – 12

Albarelli: Tell me about Lincoln Center and Avery Fisher.

Polisi: [00:18:40] Well, growing up in Queens, at that time, I was in All-City Orchestra. It must have been 1962. Well, I started in 1962, and Philharmonic Hall, soon to become Fisher, was opened in September of 1962. And the All-City Orchestra actually performed at Philharmonic

Hall in May of ’63. It was in fact televised on WPIX Channel 11, so it was a giant deal for us, and I was in the bassoon section of the All-City Orchestra, three seniors and then me. I was the fourth bassoonist. It was all a very big deal. Lincoln Center was just magical for me. I mean, it was this bigger-than-life situation. Of course, the only building was Philharmonic hall at that time. The next to be opened was State Theater in ’64. So I always saw Philharmonic Hall as this monument to great things, and of course, that’s where the Philharmonic played, and my father, he had never played there. He only played in Carnegie.

So, when I got the job at Juilliard, I mean, there was Juilliard, but then there was—I was part of a

Lincoln Center council, and at the time, the council included Beverly Sills and Lincoln

Kirstein—from the Carnegie Foundation now, who was the head of the library, I’ll remember his name in a second, a Lebanese man. I guess I was thirty-six, maybe thirty-six, so I was a little bit walking around these giants. You know, I tried to stay quiet when I could, but they were all very welcoming. It was always something that I respected and honored, and of course, by that time, it was now Fisher Hall. That had taken place in ’73, and the renovation took place in ’76. I can’t tell you for sure, but I’m pretty sure that I had met Avery and Janet soon thereafter in some sort of social occurrence. It could have been at Bill Schuman’s home, Bill and his wife, Frankie, who Polisi – 1 – 13

I was very close to. He was my mentor, and they would introduce us to all sorts of people and certainly Avery was there, or we’d see each other at Lincoln Center events.

I got to know them both well, and you know, they were just wonderful, wonderful people. You know, the big event in terms of a donation, Avery and Janet were donors to Juilliard but not significant donors. They would go to a benefit or something, although Avery hated benefits. He hated cocktail hours. Whenever I’d invite him for a dinner before a concert, in those days, it was at eight o’clock—the concert—so we’d have cocktails at six. Usually, it was supposed to go on for half an hour. I knew if Avery was coming, we would finish cocktails at 6:10, and if it was

6:15, he always had this thing. He’d go, Joseph, my watch must have stopped. He’d always do that. He’d always do that. He’d put that up to his ear. My watch must have stopped. So I always respected that, and it was his eighty-fifth birthday on the stage of Avery Fisher Hall in the spring of ’91 probably, and there was a lectern, and there was a very short cocktail period, and I remember rushing down the aisle, and Janet was there, and I looked at her, and I said, well, this is going to be a really special event. This is so wonderful. Thank you for having us. And she looked at me, and she said, you don’t know how special this is going to be. And I said, I’m sure it will be just great. I didn’t know what she was talking about.

So I sit down and Avery [snaps] right at the crack of whatever it was supposed to be is up there, he does the watch thing once again, because he said, I don’t want to speak too long, and I don’t remember everything he said, but it wasn’t long. He hated long speeches, too, detested them. But he said, you know, at my age, it’s much better to give than to receive, so I just want to tell you that I’m giving my 1691 Stradivarius violin to the . And he steps off. [laughs] Polisi – 1 – 14

That was it. And there’s applause, and I’m sitting there stunned, stunned. So I got up, of course, and I went over to both of them, and I thanked them, and he said, oh, this is wonderful because he had asked me some questions. We have this tradition with Juilliard that goes on to this day where we have a really wonderful collection of very, very fine stringed instruments, Cremona instruments, not only Strads but del Gesùs, etc., and other fine instruments. And we loan them to students or to some alums, and always constantly revolve, so you can’t have the instrument for more than maybe three to six months. We never de-access them. We never sell them.

So donors like that, because if they know what they’re talking about, string instruments need to played, and we’ve never really had a theft or a—there have been a few broken things here or there, but the kids have been the greatest protectors of the instruments, so Avery knew this, and he loved the idea. So at the end of dinner, though, which I’m sure ended at 9:45, because anything beyond 10:00, it was completely unconscionable for it to happen, he told me to come over. He said, come to my apartment on Park Avenue tomorrow at 11:00, and we’ll sign some papers. I’ll show you some papers. Yes, okay. I said, should I bring an attorney or anything? No, no. Just come. I figured he’s going to hand me some papers and I’ll bring it—

So I arrive, and he says, hello, and then he goes back into his bedroom or something and comes out with his beautiful case, his gorgeous wood case, and he says, here, here’s the violin. And I said, Avery, what? The papers. He said, oh, well, I’ll send you the papers later. I said, you want me to take this back to Juilliard now? He said, yeah, yeah, it’s yours. And you know, it was very touching and very simple in a most majestic way, but it was also scary because I’ve never carried such a valuable instrument in my life, and so you know, I got in the cab. If I had known this, I Polisi – 1 – 15 don’t know what I would have done, hired a car or something, but anyway, I got it back, and it’s called the Fisher Strad, and we use it all the time. It’s an early—1691. It’s a wonderful instrument. And over the years, during his lifetime and Janet’s as well, but I don’t now know the president, but we would always invite Chip or Nancy to come to concerts with a soloist was using it. That’s a nice legacy.

Albarelli: And that’s a great anecdote, and I can tell that you have more about Avery. It would be great if you could continue to tell stories.

Polisi: [00:27:22] Right. I mean, I was thinking about what else I could say anecdotally, and I don’t have a lot in the sense that—some is related to my research. For example, the gift that was given by Avery in 1973, according to Amyas Ames, who was Chairman of Lincoln Center at the time, he was also at the same time Chairman of New York Philharmonic. We’re very strange to have a chair of both, but he was. He didn’t solicit—I don’t know if you know this story.

Albarelli: But we don’t have it recorded.

Polisi: [00:28:06] Okay, so John Mazzola was the Chief Operating Officer, and Amyas Ames was actually the CEO of Lincoln Center at the time, ’73. He started in ’70. Mazzola got a call from an unidentified man, a name I don’t have even right now, who was the accountant for

Avery, who said that he represented an anonymous donor who was thinking of giving a gift to

Lincoln Center, but the donor needed to see the financials for the past three years of Lincoln

Center. Although they were public documents, there was a certain level of hesitation, because the Polisi – 1 – 16 financials were disasters in those day. Sixty-eight, ’69, ’70, ’71, they were hemorrhaging money.

It was partially because they were just getting out of the construction phase. They had drawn down a reserve fund of twenty million dollars to pay off the construction and to get some things started, like the Chamber Music Society and the Film Society. They were out of cash, but they had no choice, and they showed it to the accountant, who turns out to be representing Avery

Fisher.

As the story goes, Ames then receives a call from a man who says his name is Avery Fisher, and the secretary says, Avery Fisher is on the line, and Ames says, who’s that? And she said, he said it has something to do with a gift. So he picks up of course, and the rest is history. According to

Avery, he did not make a naming stipulation. According to Ames, it was put forward right away, and I find consistent conflicts on both sides in the oral histories and everything else. So knowing

Avery, I don’t see him pushing super hard for his name on it. On the other hand, the ten-million- dollar gift was the largest single gift at the time. JDR [John D. Rockefeller] III, who was the founder of Lincoln Center, essentially, over the course of his philanthropy to Lincoln Center and his family probably had given in excess of forty million, but this was the single largest gift. The second was Vivian Beaumont, who had given three million. And Alice Tully had given 1.5, so there wasn’t anything close. To boot, of course, it was a gift to essentially make the deficit of the running of Fisher Hall lower, so wow, spectacular.

Now as things worked out, Fisher and Ames had very candid conversations in ’73 during the course of the gift that there were faulty acoustics in the hall, and Avery knew that there had to be significant stuff done. And so, what eventually happened was that five million of the ten was put Polisi – 1 – 17 towards the capital renovation of the hall, and the total cost of that renovation—depends on who you’re talking to—was between seven and eight million dollars at the time, so that was also a significant—in fact, I just found out reading yesterday, this was endowed money. This went into an endowment fund, so the Attorney General of the State of New York had to be approached for the release of the five million. I don’t know if that’s what you’ve learned—and that was authorized. So it was a great gift.

However, it was misunderstood, because just at the same time, literally three—I could look it up, but the announcement of his gift was something like September 18, 1973, and the announcement of a strike by the New York Philharmonic was four or five days later. In the meantime—what was his name, the president of—Carlos Moseley, the president of the Philharmonic who was respected by all parties, suffered a heart attack on the day of the announcement or the day before, so it’s a very strange confluence. So the Philharmonic goes on strike almost a few days after the announcement, and it impacts Avery very negatively, because the orchestra starts complaining: here’s ten million bucks and they can’t settle a strike? Because at the time, the Chicago

Symphony had just settled their strike, and whatever amount they had agreed to made them the highest paid orchestra in the , and in those days, that means the world, and the

Philharmonic said, what’s going on here? We’re New York, so we want not only parity but more. The famous quote from Samuel Gompers, leader of labor: “What does American labor want? More.” So they started attacking Fisher for misuse of this great grant, saying, why is this money going to the landlord, Lincoln Center, when it should be going to the orchestra?

Polisi – 1 – 18

And this completely blindsided Avery because he didn’t see the separation between the

Philharmonic and Fisher Hall, really. He understood that one oversaw the other, but that was very bothersome for him. The strike ends in late November, first concert is in early December of

’73, and things calm down, but I think he was bruised pretty badly by that. Also, I should say that earlier on, the ten-million-dollar gift was very, very carefully worked out by Fisher, and he had an attorney out of Washington that was overseeing all of the tax implications of this—his estate issues. He claimed that when he had sold Fisher Electronics, he had made something in the range of thirty to forty million dollars, and he had ample money to give to his children, and he felt that the reason he wanted to give it away and that live music had been reason that he had made all this money, since all of his work was about replicating the sound of live music. Of course, when he was producing Fisher products, they were considered really the top of the line.

So then the next story is of course the renovation of the hall from ’73, and it’s concluded in ’76, in October of ’76, and he worked very closely with Philip Johnson and with Cyril Harris in deciding on the acoustics of the hall and how that would work. And Harris, I just finished reading his oral history, talks a lot about how he and Avery had many, many detailed conversations—that Avery was very knowledgeable about the physics of acoustics, because

Avery was a scientist in his own way. Well, not in his own way. I mean, he was an engineer really, he was an engineer. And Harris was extremely reluctant to do this remake, since there had five previous failures involving other acousticians who were pretty well-known. In fact, this current renovation is the seventh. The report said, she hopes it’s the last, but it’s been a really difficult trek. In ’76, he received wonderful, handwritten letters from Pierre [L.J.] Boulez, who was not a guy to throw around compliments, believe me. I knew him a little. Polisi – 1 – 19

The Chairman of the Musicians’ Committee, a horn player named Ranier DeIntinis, handwritten note, and even a note from Philip Johnson, who was a tough guy, saying “Avery, you are the best advisor in the world. If you ever want a job in my firm, I’m ready to hire you.” So it was all flowers and roses and happiness for about six months, and then the old story came back. The orchestra couldn’t hear itself again on stage. The bass was still not present in the hall. There was an echo when the brass played too loudly. Sight lines were poor. This issue of psychoacoustics I think really did come to play in there, because they changed the colors of everything as well.

I mean, they did a lot of physical things to it. The reason that ultimately Cyril Harris agreed to the acoustical change was he did ask to see the basic plans for the hall and in the hall that he was looking at, the walls were, as he called it, in the shape of a Coke bottle, so they had a type of indentation that went out, and he believed that the only way that could work would be a shoe box or a rectangle, and he went back to the original plans. You could see that the actual steel work was a rectangle, so he said, if he could knock out all the walls and go back to the original rectangle, he might have a shot at it.

There was another thing that Avery was involved in in ’73 that lasted until ’77, and that was the

Rug Concerts. That was suggested actually by Carlos Moseley but Boulez gets credit for them, but these were these concerts where the orchestra was offstage on the floor, the seats were removed and they were off the stage on the floor, and people sat on rugs or cushions and you could sit in regular seats in the balconies and on stage. The irony was that even to this moment, the acoustics in everybody’s opinion were better. Now of course, the orchestra was right in your Polisi – 1 – 20 face now, so you could see them, and there were probably psychoacoustical issues, but there was just more presence. Sure, it’s not rocket science. And they kept saying, gee if you could move the orchestra about twenty feet forward, maybe the acoustics would be better. That’s exactly what’s happening today. They’re moving the stage twenty feet forward, twenty-five feet, so it’s funny how history repeats itself.

And Avery was very enthusiastic about that. That first rug concert Boulez conducted, which was standard fare, nothing contemporary, Dmitri [D.] Shostakovich was actually present just by chance. So we sat in the same seat at Fisher. I think it was house left, about I don’t know, around

L or H or something like that. If you were in an upper box, you could see Avery, so that meant he wasn’t too far back there. Lovely man, quiet man, modest man. Janet was more forthcoming.

And then of course, I forgot, I chaired the Avery Fisher Prize program for I don’t know how many years—a few, several, I don’t know.

Albarelli: Talk about how that came about and some of your experiences doing that.

Polisi: [00:41:51] By the time I began chairing it, Avery had passed away. I don’t know what date that was.

Albarelli: Ninety-four?

Polisi: [00:42:01] Ninety-four? Yeah, yeah. So the previous chair had been Nat Leventhal. Mark

Schubart, who was the educational head of Lincoln Center and the head of Lincoln Center Polisi – 1 – 21

Institute as the chair, he worked very closely with Avery on developing the prize, and then Nat was the chair, and I was on that board for many years with Nat as chair, and Nat did a great job.

And of course, Mary Lou Falcone was the executive director. And then Nat left the presidency of

Lincoln Center, and Ren Levy didn’t show enormous interest in the program to be quite honest, so I was asked to be chair, and I was honored to do so, and I took it over. And by that time, it wasn’t just the prize, but it was the career grants, and Janet was on the board. I remember her being present or at least conferring with her. I don’t think she had a vote as such, but she was always there. Then eventually after Janet passed away, Chip was there, and then Chip’s nephew or something like that took on something. Oh, Nancy’s son, nephew, I guess.

We chose very, very high-level artists both for the prize and for the career grants, and we had to change a few things that Avery had initially said. The big controversy was awarding a—it was carefully done. I don’t think I was on the board yet. Avery was still alive—the gift to Wynton

Marsalis. The artist award to Wynton Marsalis was controversial because he was not a classical artist as such, although he was a classical artist because he had had a fantastic career as a trumpeter, classical trumpeter of course. There was some controversy that he would exactly call it the artist—I don’t know what they did, and then after that, after his passing, it got a little more fluid, and we awarded it to chamber ensembles. I think the Emersons got it, career grants, the same story. Never singers, I understood that, and never non-US citizens, but we did change it to,

I think you could be a permanent resident as well. So it was that sort of thing.

And the board was composed of mostly heads of orchestras, actually, who were booking these young people or who knew the senior artists, and I chaired it and tried to keep some order to the Polisi – 1 – 22 process. We also tried to understand the qualities of the recipients a little bit better, because in the early years, if Mr. X on the committee said, this is a fantastic artist, this is the best we’ve ever had da da da da da, we’d go along with this, although maybe three-quarters [of the board] had never heard of the person. So that changed, and of course with electronics, you could also

YouTube it or get some downloads. So I mean, it made it quite diverse, not only racially but ethnically and probably most important, instrumentally. We got a trumpet player or a trombonist or a double bassist. I think that would have been a little bit out of the question during Avery’s day, so it evolved into a little bit more of a modern situation. The last recipient was Claire Chase, and she’s made her name entirely as a contemporary flutist.

I don’t think Avery was a great devotée of new music. I think he also gave us—or at least Chip gave us—Juilliard—his papers, so we have a lot of the archives up in our library, some of which are used, and then I believe he had a great deal of bound chamber music, which we may have taken as well, string quartets.

Albarelli: Talk about some of the other personalities, about Mary Lou or Mark Schubert or any anecdotes about them, because they’re all important characters in this story.

Polisi: [00:47:03] Well, Nat was the consummate professional. There’s no question in my mind that he was the finest Lincoln Center president by far. I don’t know the gentleman who’s in charge now, but so far, he’s been the best, and the handled the committee well. He handled

Lincoln Center well. I think things got a little bumpy with the Fisher chance of name, because

Mary Lou, I remember her calling me up and saying, this was going to happen, and you know, Polisi – 1 – 23 she wanted me to know about it and how it would be presented to the public, and she told me, and I think it was an amount given to the Fishers of fifteen million dollars. Something to the effect, should we mention it or not, and we were both in agreement, of course, it had to be mentioned. And then I remember Nancy saying to me, “People think that I did this for the money”, and I didn’t want to butt in, but that’s the way it was perceived, or otherwise, change it,

I suppose.

I was not personally comfortable—I was very attached to the idea of Avery Fisher Hall. I’m a bit of a historian, and certainly I guess in many ways a traditionalist, and it felt a little bit icky to all of a sudden just drop the name. Plus, I was told that the Geffen name was in perpetuity, so you know, I knew why Avery had given the money and how important it was, and I wasn’t quite sure what Geffen was doing and why, and he’s based mostly in Los Angeles. You know, a hundred million is a very generous gift. I’m not knocking that. It just concerned me, but I certainly didn’t have any say in it or anything.

Mark Schubart was a fantastic guy. He was Dean of Juilliard during the Bill Schuman presidency and then became really the first shaper of education at Lincoln Center. Before the Lincoln Center

Institute, he had created other programs, and the Lincoln Center Institute in its heyday had an influence all over the world as far away as Australia, and he was a gentleman and a very knowledgeable man, very witty, down to earth, good guy to be with, and he died suddenly. He was walking close to his home and had a heart attack and died, boom. I suppose that’s the way to go if you’re going to go.

Polisi – 1 – 24

Mary Lou, extraordinary leader and really savvy about public relations in New York and very discerning about how to handle things, understood Avery and his taste and his style completely, so that everything was low-key and dignified. There was nothing that was untoward. Of course, here wasn’t anything untoward anyway, but she was very careful to protect his image and when he came to the prizes and that sort of thing. She was very careful about that.

There was one—Peter [A.] Serkin, before my time, I think he was offered the prize, and he turned it down. He was still a bit of a hippie and that sort of thing and Tashi [Quartet]. I think he was polite in saying that he didn’t deserve it, but he shouldn’t have turned it down. It was a dumb thing to do, ungracious, and I know Avery was not pleased with that, but you know, that’s life.

Albarelli: Talk more about Nancy and Chip and their involvement.

Polisi: [00:51:40] As I said, Nancy was very much the upfront person in the relationship. She was the one that was far more social than Avery. I think Avery liked to be there, but it was Janet who set up everything and who made sure it would all work. And she loved life, and she loved her experiences. And I got to know both Nancy and Chip well through the prize. Nancy was very much her mother, I think, about being outgoing and social, and Chip, in his own level of reticence, was similar to his father, but different.

Albarelli: Did you visit Avery and Janet at their home?

Polisi – 1 – 25

Polisi: Yeah.

Albarelli: Could you talk about that a little bit?

Polisi: [00:52:53] Well, I remember times there would be dinner parties at their home, and I think we would provide chamber musicians from Juilliard, and they would play beforehand, usually string quartets. He loved string quartets, but he also had a very fine—I don’t think it was a Steinway. He had a very fine piano. I think it was either a Bechstein or a Bösendorfer. I can’t remember which. It might have been Steinway, but I remember him being very proud of the piano, and my recollection is that it wasn’t a Steinway. And so you could do piano quartets and things like that. He loved music. It was his level of great solace. When you see a music lover who’s not a musician, I see them once in a while, the deep experiences that they get from music.

That was Avery. That’s why the gift was given, you know? It really wasn’t—I’ve seen plenty— you know, Koch or Geffen, I don’t know. I don’t know them, so I’m not going to opine, but

Avery, that gift was given because he loved music, and he said so. He loved music.

Also, that generation was very social. I keep saying back in the day, but that’s what it was, because when I was doing research on the book I did on Bill Schuman, I found in his correspondence but also with Avery and Janet, there would be letters. It would be mailed on a

Sunday, and on Monday, they’d receive it. Could you join us for dinner on Friday at seven o’clock? Cocktails and then eight o’clock dinner, and people would come. That’s the way they got it. I don’t know if it was hand-delivered, but I think it was the US mail, and there were all these very social experiences where movers and shakers rubbed elbows a lot. And it still happens Polisi – 1 – 26 of course today. Of course, it does. But it was a little bit more rarified and subtle back then, I think.

Albarelli: Any memorable evenings at their place, anything that comes to mind?

Polisi: [00:55:11] Well, I can only remember sitting and listening to something like a string quartet or a piano quartet. That I remember, and I remember seeing his collection—when I got the Strad, I remember seeing his collection of music and his books. He was a great reader, too, music books and things.

Albarelli: You know, I interviewed Pamela Frank and Yo-Yo Ma and Manny X. Maybe you could talk a little bit about them. Pamela Frank was the first year that women were given the prize, right?

Polisi: [00:55:55] Yeah, that was the year, that Mary Lou’s—there were there women, right?

Nadia [Salerno-Sonnenberg], Pam [Pamela Frank], and Sarah Chang. That was Mary Lou’s thing. And it went great. You know, they were younger violinists, and it was wonderful. They’re fantastic artists. Well, you know, Manny and Yo-Yo were always on the board of the prize. They never showed up, and Manny in particular is so giving and so open and so loving, so as far as he was concerned, everybody should win, and that’s usually what happened. When I chaired it, I’d have to say—he only came once or twice when I chaired it. Manny, you know, we love you, but we’ve got to choose. He said, well, I can’t make a decision. But they loved Avery, respected him. Everybody did, because he loved music. Polisi – 1 – 27

Albarelli: Could you talk a little bit about the death of Avery, what you remember?

Polisi: [00:57:12] Yeah. I don’t remember much. His memorial was at the hall, right? Did I speak?

Albarelli: I think you did.

Polisi: [00:57:29] Yeah. Yeah, I did speak. I remember a lot of people in the orchestra section.

That’s all I remember. The reason I remember speaking is because I either remember walking up on stage after Nat or speaking before Nat and walking down off stage. Strange how memories work, but I don’t—I’m sure I could find what I said, but I apologize.

Albarelli: No, that’s fine. Anything else you’d like to add?

Polisi: [00:58:03] Well actually, this is way more than I ever thought I’d even say, because fortunately, I did the research beforehand, because if you had spoken to me six weeks ago, I wouldn’t have really known anything about the renovation or about his involvement with Cyril

Harris.

Albarelli: Well, it’s great. I’m glad that happened.

Polisi: Yeah, me, too. Polisi – 1 – 28

Albarelli: Yeah, okay. Well thank you. Thanks so much.

Polisi: Sure. My pleasure.

Albarelli: So why were you asking about—

[END OF INTERVIEW]