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      Bruce Springsteen Is Back on Broadway. The Workers Are Coming Back, Too.

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      Broadway took its first steps back with the return of Bruce Springsteen’s show, and no one is happier than Jim Barry, an usher at the St. James Theater for 20 years.Jim Barry, masked and ready, perched at the top of the theater stairs, cupping his hands around the outstretched smartphones so he could more easily make out the seat numbers.“How you doing? Nice jacket.”“Go this way — it’s an easier walk.”“Do you need help sir? The bathroom’s right there.”It was Saturday night at the St. James Theater.Bruce Springsteen was back on the stage.Fans were back in the seats.And, 15 months after the pandemic had shut down Broadway, Barry, who has worked as an usher at the St. James for 20 years, was back at work, doling out compliments and reassurance as he steered people toward the mezzanine, the restroom, the bar.“Springsteen on Broadway” is essentially a one-man show, but its return has already brought back work for about 75 people at the St. James — not only Barry, but also another 30 ushers and ticket-takers, as well as merch sellers, bar staff, porters, cleaners, stagehands, box office workers, a pair of managers and an engineer.The return of “Springsteen on Broadway” has already brought back work for about 75 people at the St. James Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMore shows, and jobs, will return in August and September as Broadway’s 41 theaters slowly come back to life. Ultimately, a Broadway rebound promises to benefit not just theater workers but hotel clerks and bartenders and taxi drivers and workers in the many industries that rely on theater traffic, which can be considerable: in the last full season before the pandemic, 14.8 million people saw a Broadway show.Barry, a gregarious 65-year-old Staten Island grandfather, loves theater, for sure, but also depends on the job for income and basic health insurance.“This job is not for everybody, but I made it my own,” he said. Barry, a solidly built man with white hair who is often mistaken for a security officer, takes pride at being punctual, and jovial, and polite. “I can tell somebody tapping me on the back where the bathroom is, while telling somebody in front of me where their seats are, and also waving to somebody in the corner. It’s controlled insanity.”As he returned to work following the shutdown, there were a few changes to master. He had to wear a mask — they are required for employees, but not patrons — and struggled to feel comfortable making small talk through the fabric. And tickets were now all digital, which meant his signature move, which involved passing tickets behind his back as he accepted, scrutinized, and handed back the proffered stubs, was no longer useful; instead he needed to figure out how to quickly decipher all those different screen fonts.Still, he was thrilled to be back.“No matter what happens, nothing can make me feel bad, because I’m back at my house, and the Boss is at my house,” he said. “It’s where I want to be.”“No matter what happens, nothing can make me feel bad, because I’m back at my house, and the Boss is at my house,” Barry said.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBarry, originally from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, took an unusual path to the theater industry. For 27 years, he had worked in banking, first as a teller, and then as a bank officer in Times Square.He saw theater, occasionally, and loved it. As a teenager he saw Danny Kaye in “Two by Two,” and later he saw “Jesus Christ Superstar.” (“I couldn’t believe it was so fantastic.”) But the production he most excitedly remembers seeing is “Grease,” at the Royale Theater; a friend got him access to walk onto the stage before the show. “It gave me the bug,” he said.So when he decided he needed to earn more money, and began looking for a second job, he reached out to one of his customers at the bank, a woman who worked in payroll at Jujamcyn Theaters, which operates five Broadway theaters, including the St. James. She asked if he’d be open to ushering.That was in 2001. The first shift he worked was at a dress rehearsal for “The Producers,” which was about to open. “You know you belong when your body just gets enveloped in euphoria,” he said.He was hooked. For years, he continued working full-time at the bank, while also working nights and weekends at the theater; in 2016 he left the bank for good, and now he works six days a week at the theater (the shifts are short — a full usher shift is 4.5 hours, but at each show half the staff gets to leave 30 minutes after curtain, which is two hours after their start time).It’s a union job, for which standard pay is $83.78 per show; Barry has the higher rank of director, so he makes about $710 a week, and supplements his income with Social Security and a small bank pension. He was kept afloat during the pandemic by unemployment; although he missed the theater, he also was glad to have more time to spend with his girlfriend.He has a bear of a commute — it can take up to two hours to get to work, depending on whether he drives or takes a bus, and how bad the traffic is. He arrives early, changes into his Jujamcyn uniform (black suit, black shirt, black tie, with a red J on the chest), and sits in a theater doorway on West 44th Street that he calls “my stoop,” enjoying coffee and a roll and greeting passers-by, sometimes posing for a picture with a passing actor.Barry has a long commute — it can take up to two hours to get to work.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAlthough he loves the theater, seeing shows other than the ones he’s working is hard — he’s generally on duty when other shows are running. But he usually gets to the big ones.At his own theater, he’s seen a mix of hits and flops. With the latter, he said, “you just feel bad for everybody.” And what if he doesn’t like a show he’s working? “We have the luxury of lobbies.”There are, of course, headaches to manage — intoxicated patrons, and insistent videographers — but he prides himself on doing so with civility. For the cellphone scofflaws, whose ranks have swelled since he began, he will sometimes simply hover, which usually shames people into compliance; other times he will use a flashlight or a headshake to get someone’s attention, and once in a while he’ll say something like, “Please don’t do that. If they see you, I’m going to get in trouble.” (At “Springsteen on Broadway,” no photos or videos are allowed until the bows.)How much does Barry love being part of the business? In March, sad not to be at work for his 20th anniversary at the theater, he and his girlfriend drove into Times Square, and he posed for a photograph in front of each of the 41 Broadway theaters.“There’s that old adage — when you love what you do, you never work a day in your life,” he said. “I am so lucky — I love to make people feel good about coming to our house.” More

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      Review: At Caramoor, a Concert Signals Return and Remembrance

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      The performance, by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, felt like normal again, while the music looked back on a year of upheaval.KATONAH, N.Y. — Before a concert by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s on a steamy Sunday afternoon here at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, a jubilant James Roe, the ensemble’s executive director, told the audience that these musicians had not presented a live, in-person performance in 472 days.This return meant more than a mere visit from a Caramoor fixture. In recent months I’ve attended orchestral concerts around New York City. But these events played to very limited, mask-wearing audiences. At Caramoor the capacity wasn’t restricted to a mere 150 or so people. Hardly any of the 400 people in attendance wore masks (only the unvaccinated were asked to do so).It felt like a real return to normal for classical music.With its bucolic grounds and open-air Venetian Theater, where most programs are being presented, Caramoor is an ideal venue for summer concerts, especially during this still-challenging time. And it has planned an adventurous summer season, running through Aug. 8. This Orchestra of St. Luke’s program was conducted by Tito Muñoz, the Queens-born music director of the Phoenix Symphony, and offered works that spoke to the larger social issues of the past year.The afternoon began with the premiere of Valerie Coleman’s “Fanfare for Uncommon Times.” The idea for the piece, as Coleman explained recently in a video interview on the Caramoor site, came from Roe, who invited her to write a piece that grappled not just with the pandemic, but the tumultuous “political landscape,” as she put it.Yet, hanging over every American composer who writes a fanfare, Coleman said, is Aaron Copland’s iconic 1942 “Fanfare for the Common Man.” In an inspired idea, this 75-minute program, after opening with Coleman’s fanfare, ended with Copland’s, and included, in the middle, Joan Tower’s plucky “Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman” (1987). In a nod to Copland and Tower, Coleman also scored her piece for brass and percussion.Yet, while writing something that offered affirmation to people emerging from unimaginably “uncommon times,” Coleman said, as a Black woman she wanted to “bring the Black experience in,” the “turmoil, the upheaval,” the complexity of recent conversations about race in America.These threads — and the emotions entwined with them — come through vividly in Coleman’s six-minute piece. It begins not with a typical fanfare salute, but a quizzical, searching line for solo trombone that soon is cushioned by pungent, soft-spoken brass chords. Unrest amid determination stirs as the music shifts into agitated episodes for percussion. The mood seems at once reflective and restless, uplifting and ominous. The elements of the Black experience during a challenging time that Coleman described come through during a passage alive with riffs for mallet percussion instruments, hints of dance and bursts of anxious frenzy. By the end, with spurts of four-note brass motifs, echoes of Coplandesque affirmation arise, but also a breathless flurry that feels bracing yet challenging.The program included a premiere by Valerie Coleman that was put in conversation with Joan Tower’s “Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman” and Aaron Copland’s famous “Fanfare for the Common Man.”James Estrin/The New York TimesIt made for a surprisingly good contrast to follow the Coleman with Ralph Vaughan Williams’s “The Lark Ascending,” a “romance,” as the composer described it, for violin and orchestra, with the superb Tai Murray as soloist. This glowing, pastoral, somewhat bittersweet piece is enormously popular, but it doesn’t turn up as often as it should in concerts. Murray’s playing abounded in radiant sound, arching lyricism and delicacy. During moments when the violin writing turns intricate with evocations of fluttering birds, she dispatched the passagework with effortless grace.Tower’s short, feisty “Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman,” dedicated to the pioneering female conductor Marin Alsop, the outgoing director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, is the first in a series of six such fanfares she has written. This short but packed, muscular piece is like a respectful retort to Copland.Muñoz then led an elegant account of Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” Suite, capturing the melancholy of the music while letting the players cut loose in dancing, near-frantic episodes. And Copland’s fanfare on this day proved the fitting conclusion: a way to usher in a moment that signals a return in more ways than one.CaramoorThe festival continues through Aug. 8 in Katonah, N.Y.; caramoor.org. More

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      With New Show, a Broadway Rarity: Season Has 7 Plays by Black Writers

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      “Chicken & Biscuits,” a new comedy by Douglas Lyons, will star Norm Lewis and Michael Urie. Performances will begin on Sept. 23.Plays by Black writers have been few and far between on Broadway over the years. The coming season will feature at least seven.The latest entrant is “Chicken & Biscuits,” a new comedy that last year ran for two weeks at Queens Theater before the pandemic forced it to close.Much of the creative and producing team will be in leadership roles for the first time on Broadway — the playwright, Douglas Lyons, was previously in the ensemble of “Beautiful” and “The Book of Mormon,” while the director, Zhailon Levingston, is an assistant director of “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical.”Onstage, there will be some familiar faces: Norm Lewis and Michael Urie, both well-known and well-liked by theater audiences. Lewis, a Tony nominee for “Porgy and Bess,” is best known as a singer, and this will be his first Broadway play; Urie is on more familiar ground as a comedic actor, and he was featured in a virtual reading of the play during the pandemic.Three of the show’s lead producers, Pamela Ross, E. Clayton Cornelious and Leah Michalos, are in that role for the first time. A fourth, Hunter Arnold, has producing credits on 29 shows, and is one of the lead producers of “Hadestown.”These plays arrive at a time of intensified attention on racial inequity in many corners of society, including the theater industry. Lyons founded the Next Wave Initiative, a scholarship program for Black theater artists; Lewis is a founding member of Black Theater United; and Levingston is the director of industry initiatives for the Broadway Advocacy Coalition. The coalition will be recognized with a special Tony Award this fall.“Chicken & Biscuits,” which is about a family that gathers for a funeral and is forced to reckon with a secret, is scheduled to start performances Sept. 23 and to open Oct. 10 at the Circle in the Square Theater. The play will be the first to move to Broadway from Queens Theater, a nonprofit performing arts center in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.“This show was the one that Covid-19 interrupted for us,” said the theater’s executive director, Taryn Sacramone. “To go from that moment — abrupt shutdown — to now seeing ‘Chicken & Biscuits’ move to Broadway in this moment of reopening for the city — this feels incredibly meaningful.”The other plays by Black writers scheduled to run next season are “Pass Over,” by Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu; “Lackawanna Blues,” by Ruben Santiago-Hudson; “Thoughts of a Colored Man,” by Keenan Scott II; “Trouble in Mind,” by Alice Childress; “Clyde’s,” by Lynn Nottage; and “Skeleton Crew,” by Dominique Morisseau. More

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      Musical Chairs? Why Swapping Seats Could Reduce Orchestra Aerosols.

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      Moving super-spreading instruments, like the trumpet, closer to air vents could limit the aerosol buildup on stage, according to a new study.If musical instruments were people, trumpets would be super spreaders. When a trumpeter blows into the mouthpiece, tiny respiratory droplets, known as aerosols, travel out of the musician’s mouth, whiz through the brass tubing and spray into the air.During a deadly pandemic, when a musician might unwittingly be exhaling an infectious virus, that poses a potential problem for orchestras. And the trumpet is not the only musical health hazard.“Wind instruments are like machines to aerosolize respiratory droplets,” said Tony Saad, a chemical engineer and expert in computational fluid dynamics at the University of Utah.A simple but radical change — rearranging the musicians — could significantly reduce the aerosol buildup on stage, Dr. Saad and his colleagues reported in a new study, which was published in Science Advances on Wednesday.The work began last summer, when the Utah Symphony began to wonder whether, and how, they could return to performing safely.“They were looking for people that could provide insight into mitigation strategies that people would have some faith in,” said James Sutherland, a chemical engineer at the University of Utah and a co-author of the study.Comparison of aerosol concentrations, both instantaneous and averaged, for the baseline scenario and for the proposed mitigation strategy.Hedworth et alThe researchers created a detailed computer model of the symphony’s concert hall, noting the location of every air vent and the rate of air flow through the HVAC system.Then they mapped the typical position of each musician. The Utah Symphony, like most modern orchestras, positioned its musicians in a standard pattern, with the string instruments at the front of the stage, followed by several rows of woodwinds and brass instruments — the flutes and oboes, then the bassoons and clarinets, and then the trumpets and French horns. The trombones and the percussion section were positioned at the very back of the stage.To model the spread of aerosols during a concert, they incorporated recent research led by Jiarong Hong, a mechanical engineer at the University of Minnesota. Working with the Minnesota Orchestra, Dr. Hong and his colleagues had measured the concentration and size of aerosol particles emitted by a variety of different wind instruments. (Among their findings: The trumpet, bass trombone and oboe posed the highest risk.)With these parameters in place, Dr. Saad and Dr. Sutherland used what are known as computational fluid dynamics simulations to model how the air, and aerosols, would flow through the Utah concert hall when all the musicians were playing.The simulation revealed complex patterns of airflow. In general, the air flowed down from the air supply vents in the ceiling to the air return vents in the floor at the back of the stage. But two distinct vortices, at the front and the back of the stage, also formed, they found. “You see these large regions that are recirculating like a big tornado,” Dr. Saad said.Aerosols can get caught in these vortices, swirling around and around the stage and building up over time.The trumpets, which emitted large, concentrated aerosol clouds, posed a particular problem. As the instruments’ aerosol plumes traveled toward the air vents at the back of the stage, they passed directly through the percussionists’ breathing zone.“We saw this and said, ‘OK, this is a big problem, we’ve got to solve this,’” Dr. Sutherland said. “And given the insight we had into how the flow was moving, we said, ‘Well, let’s move some of these instruments around.’”They knew the idea might be controversial; orchestras have generally been arranged the same way for decades, for reasons that include both acoustics and tradition. “We asked them when we started the project, ‘What constraints do we have to work with? Can we move people?’” Dr. Sutherland said. “And they said, ‘You do whatever you think you can to mitigate risk.’”A visualization of the proposed seating arrangement for the orchestra. Colors indicate the speed at which the respiratory aerosols are being emitted at (red is high, blue is low) and size indicates the amount of aerosols emitted per second.Hedworth et alThey moved the trumpets to the very back of the stage, right next to the air-return vents. Then they shifted the other wind instruments from the middle of the stage, moving them either closer to the back air vents or to the stage doors, which they suggested opening.These moves, the team hoped, would allow the aerosols to flow directly out of the concert hall, without passing through the breathing zones of other musicians or getting caught in an onstage vortex. “You want the smoker to sit close to the window,” Dr. Saad said. “That’s exactly what we did here.”Finally, they moved the instruments that do not generate aerosols at all — the piano and the percussion section — to the center of the stage. Together, these tweaks reduced the average aerosol concentration in the musicians’ breathing zones a hundredfold, the researchers calculated.Although the precise air flow patterns will be different in every venue, the general principles should hold everywhere, the team said. Orchestras can reduce the risk of aerosol spread by positioning the highest risk instruments near open doors and air return vents. (Orchestras that cannot do their own computer modeling could put a fog machine onstage and track how the fog flows, the researchers suggested.)Dr. Hong, who was not involved in the Utah study, praised the modeling work. “Simulating the flow inside an orchestra hall is not easy,” he said. “They did beautiful work in terms of characterizing flow.”But he questioned whether moving musicians was really a practical solution. “We work with musicians closely, and they don’t like to be rearranged,” he said. (He did note, however, that “for a student band, I think it’s perfectly fine.”)Instead, he proposed a different, albeit equally unconventional, solution: Masks, for the instruments. In a recent study, he found that covering the bell of a trumpet with a single layer of acoustic fabric could reduce particle emissions by about 60 percent without compromising sound quality.The Utah Symphony, for its part, proved open to rethinking the seating. And when it took the stage last fall, it did so with the stage doors open and the wind instruments at the rear.“That was a huge challenge for the musicians,” said Steven Brosvik, the president and chief executive of the Utah Symphony and Utah Opera. “But they all dove into it, and said, ‘Let’s go, let’s give it a try.’”It took a few weeks for the musicians to get comfortable with the new arrangement, and they plan to return to their traditional seating configuration this fall, Mr. Brosvik said. But the simulations gave the musicians peace of mind and allowed them to get back onstage, he said: “For us, it was life changing.”The researchers were pleased with how willing the musicians were to embrace an unusual solution, although their findings may have hit some instrumentalists harder than others. As Dr. Sutherland said, “We had to apologize to the trumpets in advance.” More

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      Broadway’s ‘Music Man’ Names British Producer, Kate Horton, to Replace Rudin

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      Kate Horton will become executive producer of the show, which stars Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster. It is scheduled to begin performances on Dec. 20.A veteran British theater administrator will take over the day-to-day management of a starry Broadway revival of “The Music Man,” assuming many of the duties previously performed by Scott Rudin.The administrator, Kate Horton, who previously held high-level management positions at the National Theater, Royal Court Theater and Royal Shakespeare Company in England, will become executive producer of “The Music Man,” which stars Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster, and which is scheduled to begin performances on Dec. 20 and to open Feb. 10.Rudin, who was the revival’s lead producer, departed that role earlier this year, saying he was stepping back from all of his theater and film productions amid renewed scrutiny of his bullying behavior toward subordinates and collaborators.Horton was hired by the business titans Barry Diller and David Geffen, who had been producing the revival alongside Rudin, and who are now the sole lead producers. The production, at the Winter Garden Theater, reunites much of the creative team behind the Tony-winning 2017 revival of “Hello, Dolly!,” led by the director Jerry Zaks.Horton currently runs, with her longtime collaborator Dominic Cooke, a British producing company called Fictionhouse. She was previously deputy executive director of the National Theater, executive director of the Royal Court Theater and commercial director of the Royal Shakespeare Company. She and Rudin both were previously involved with the team behind Little Island, a new park and performance space in New York, but no longer have any role there, a spokeswoman said.Horton declined a request for an interview.“The Music Man,” like many Broadway shows, has been delayed by the pandemic. It was originally scheduled to open last fall. The show sold a large number of tickets before the pandemic; rather than refunding those tickets, as many shows did, the production exchanged them for future seats. During the pandemic, the producers stopped selling new tickets; tickets to the show are going back on sale starting Tuesday.Several other Rudin-related Broadway productions have found new leadership teams. A stage adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird” named Orin Wolf as executive producer; the musical “The Book of Mormon” and the play “The Lehman Trilogy” said their existing leadership teams would simply proceed without Rudin. (“The Book of Mormon” is overseen by members of the “South Park” team, while “The Lehman Trilogy” is overseen by Britain’s National Theater.) More

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      ‘I Needed It’: A Well-Timed Outdoor Theater Opens on Little Island

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      The island’s first performances, by Broadway Inspirational Voices choir, were post-pandemic catharsis for both the singers and the audience.The timing could not have been better.After the pandemic drove New Yorkers outdoors for everything from dining to haircuts, a 687-seat al fresco amphitheater opened for its first ticketed shows over the weekend on Little Island, the new oasis on the Hudson River, offering a new place for those tentatively re-emerging into crowds again to gather for open-air performances.The amphitheater opened with an emotionally rousing performance by Broadway Inspirational Voices, a professional choir run by Michael McElroy that is made up of chorus members who sang in Broadway musicals like “Ain’t Too Proud” and “The Lion King” before their theaters were shut down and they were thrust into unemployment.Some cheered, and some wept at the return of sights and sounds that had been in short supply during the many months of strict limitations: of hundreds of people piled into the curved wooden benches of the sleek new amphitheater, few of them masked, watching the sun set over the Hudson as a choir belted out “A Whole New World” from “Aladdin.”Michael McElroy, leader of Broadway Inspirational Voices choir and an artist in residence at Little Island, who started working on the show in January.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesThe choir, made up of Broadway musical actors, performing at dusk. The audience cheered and wept at the return of live entertainment.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesAt the show, McElroy urged the audience to reconnect with one another, opening with the line, “After the darkness, there is always the light.”Vincent Tullo for The New York Times“This is the first time that I’ve been here, and I’m overwhelmed,” said Barry Diller, the mega-mogul who paid for Little Island, before entering the amphitheater for Sunday’s performance.Although an outdoor theater was always part of the plan for Little Island, Diller had no idea how useful it would be as the city emerges from a pandemic — offering culture-starved New Yorkers a place for performances as indoor venues slowly begin to come back to life. “It’s the exact right moment,” he said.His family foundation will bankroll the first two decades of the park’s operations, which includes six days a week of arts programming. Without tickets to the amphitheater, visitors can perch themselves atop one of the island’s overlooks to peer down at the performances. Or, if they’re lucky, they can stumble upon one of the artists hired to perform at various spots on the island, like intentionally placed, well-paid buskers.The audience on Sunday. The sun sun set over the Hudson as a choir belted out “A Whole New World” from “Aladdin.”Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesThis weekend’s program was designed as a sort of post-pandemic catharsis for both the singers and the audience, some of whom rose from their seats to sway and clap along with the choir. It was shepherded by McElroy, whose homiletic interludes urged the audience to reconnect with one another, opening with the line, “After the darkness, there is always the light.”The evening of musical theater and gospel music was punctuated with drama and dance — which revolved around the themes of reawakening and reconnection. The actress Phylicia Rashad delivered a monologue about rediscovering the inner child; Daniel J. Watts and Ayodele Casel imitated sounds like thunder and a babbling brook with their tap shoes; Norm Lewis sang a commanding rendition of “Go the Distance” from “Hercules.”“Out of this space of necessary, required isolation, we come into a place that was created for community,” McElroy said in an interview.The evening featured musical theater, as well as gospel music, drama and dance — with themes of reawakening and reconnection. Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesThe show was McElroy’s last major performance with Broadway Inspirational Voices, a group that he founded in 1994, at a time when his friends were dying of AIDS and he saw a need for spiritual healing. Twenty-seven years later, McElroy has decided to leave the group to focus his time on other creative pursuits, as well as to serve as the musical theater chair at the University of Michigan.But first, McElroy wanted to put together a show that filled a new spiritual void created by the current pandemic.So in January, McElroy, an artist in residence at Little Island, started planning for a live concert scheduled for June, not knowing how quickly the city would be able to get vaccinated and return to see live theater. For the initial rehearsals, which happened on Zoom, members of the choir would gather virtually to go over the music and ask questions, then mute themselves when it was time to sing.In May, the choir moved to a spacious recording studio, where they sang socially distanced and masked. And at the end of the month, they started rehearsing in a park, and then eventually, on the island itself, which floats over the Hudson River near West 13th Street.“It’s the exact right moment” for outdoor theater, Barry Diller, the mega-mogul who paid for Little Island, said.Vincent Tullo for The New York Times“We were rehearsing on the faith that we would be able to come together and do this concert,” he said. “It all depended on where the world would be at this time.”While Broadway itself still has a few months to go before it returns in full force, about 60 of the industry’s chorus members were able to get onstage to sing songs from some of the most popular musicals of all time, including “Wicked” and “West Side Story,” as well as some of the newer musicals that were shuttered by the pandemic, including “Hadestown” and “Mrs. Doubtfire.”Watching from the audience, David Plunkett, 52, started out with his mask hanging from his wrist, then alternated between waving it in the air like it was a handkerchief at a church service, and using it to dab at his teary eyes.“I knew I needed it,” he said, “but I didn’t know how much I needed it.” More

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      Hit Hard by Pandemic, Philadelphia Orchestra and Kimmel Center to Merge

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      By joining forces, the two institutions hope to bounce back from the severe losses brought by the coronavirus.The pandemic forced many American arts organizations to resort to mass layoffs and deep pay cuts as ticket sales vanished for more than a year.Now one of the nation’s most prominent ensembles, the Philadelphia Orchestra, is trying another tack as it seeks to recover from the crisis: It announced plans Thursday to merge with its landlord, the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts.“We knew we needed a big move,” said Matías Tarnopolsky, the president and chief executive of the orchestra, who is set to lead the new organization, which will be called the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Kimmel Center, Inc. “The only way forward is collaboration.”Facing severe shortfalls, cultural groups across the country are looking for ways to streamline operations and establish new sources of revenue. American orchestras, including Philadelphia’s, are particularly vulnerable after years of rising costs.The Philadelphia Orchestra, one of the nation’s best ensembles, has struggled financially. Its music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, led them in 2017 at Carnegie Hall.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesThe orchestra and the Kimmel Center are betting that by pooling resources, they can better navigate the financial and artistic challenges of the post-pandemic era.The orchestra has won accolades for its artistry under the music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who also serves in that role at the Metropolitan Opera, but it has long struggled financially. After a year of mostly streaming concerts, the orchestra will begin a new season in October with a performance by the cellist Yo-Yo Ma.The merger will give the orchestra, which has tried for years to rebuild after declaring bankruptcy a decade ago, a leading spot at one of the country’s largest performing arts centers, and allow it to save on rent. (When the orchestra filed for bankruptcy in 2011, it cited the high cost of rent at the Kimmel Center, which then totaled $2.5 million a year, as contributing to its woes; it subsequently got a rent reduction.)The arrangement will allow the Kimmel Center, which is almost entirely dependent on ticket sales, the added support of the orchestra’s $266 million endowment. That endowment, which was bolstered by a $50 million gift in 2019, is now among the largest for an American orchestra.Both institutions have made painful cuts as they seek to recover from the pandemic. The orchestra lost about $26 million in ticket sales and performance fees after canceling more than 200 concerts. The orchestra’s leaders took pay cuts and its musicians agreed to reduce compensation temporarily by 25 percent.The Kimmel Center, which depends heavily on touring artists, Broadway shows and appearances by authors and public intellectuals, canceled more than 1,100 events and lost more than $42 million in ticket revenue. The center furloughed many of its 126 employees and led an emergency campaign to raise $10 million.The pandemic accelerated conversations about a possible merger, said Anne Ewers, the president and chief executive of the Kimmel Center, who initiated talks with Tarnopolsky last fall.“When the pandemic hit, every single earned revenue line was gone,” Ewers said. “I realized that our philanthropic base was not as deep and as broad as it needed to be.”The orchestra has called Verizon Hall, one of three venues at the Kimmel Center, its home since the center’s opening in 2001, playing more than 100 concerts a year there.But behind the scenes, the orchestra and the Kimmel Center sometimes clashed over schedules and programming choices, Tarnopolsky said.By merging with the Kimmel Center, he said, the orchestra would be able to expand its offerings, hosting classical music festivals, collaborating with Broadway performers and jazz artists, and taking part in outreach events and other live offerings.“It’s about seizing those opportunities rather than watching them go by,” Tarnopolsky said.The orchestra has balanced its budget in recent years as it has worked to recover from a financial crisis that drove it into bankruptcy in 2011. Despite cutting its expenses in bankruptcy, rebuilding has not been easy: In 2016, its musicians held a brief strike that began on the night of the orchestra’s season-opening gala.The pandemic has led many arts organizations to reconsider questions of structure and management, and some have come to see benefits in joining together during a time of uncertainty. The San Francisco Conservatory of Music last fall acquired Opus 3 Artists, a leading agency that was struggling with steep losses as venues around the world shut down.Ewers said she hoped the merger in Philadelphia would serve as a model for other institutions facing economic pressures.“Many people tell us there needs to be more of this kind of collaborative effort,” she said. “I’m hoping that we inspire that.” More

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      A Night at a Jazz Speakeasy

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      A Night at the Jazz SpeakeasySinna Nasseri📍Reporting from Midtown ManhattanLast Friday, I received a coveted invitation to the Daddy Rabbit, a clandestine pop-up jazz speakeasy that hops around locations in Manhattan.I watched as a handful of musicians gathered to play in a dark, unmarked room. Here’s what I saw, and heard → More