Manhattan School of Music is a venerable New York City institution, situated in the Morningside Heights/West Harlem neighborhood. Founded in 1918, MSM is one of the world’s premier conservatories of classical music and jazz. Recently, musical theatre has become an added focus. President James Gandre, formerly a dean and later provost at Roosevelt University in Chicago, earlier served as a student affairs administrator at MSM. Jim returned to MSM as president in May, 2013.
Terry: Jim, first, how in the world is MSM operating in the age of the pandemic? How are you teaching music in this new era?
Jim: Well, to say that we’ve changed our methods and way of operating would be an understatement. We are all dealing with moving to a virtual environment, but a virtual environment in the performing arts has additional hurdles. How does one perform when there are limits on numbers of people in a room and when you can’t be close to another? Of course, I’m biased, but I have to say our staff and faculty accomplished Herculean things on behalf of our students. First, we allowed our students to choose whether they wanted to learn on campus or be 100 percent remote. And, for those on campus, most of the classes they have in person are performance courses while the vast majority of their classes—about 80 percent—are online. For most of our classes, our faculty didn’t try to replicate what we did pre-pandemic, knowing that we couldn’t get close to that experience online. Instead, they decided to create new and different experiences. These included more focus on chamber music repertoire and in the case of opera and musical theatre, creating filmed versions of opera and musical theatre, recording indoors, and filming outside while physically distanced. These strategies have greatly expanded the learning of our students and it is likely that we will use much of what learned and continued to do some of this work once we are out of the pandemic. If anyone would like to view some of our students work, you can visit this site to see all of our livestreamed or prerecorded performances: https://www.msmnyc.edu/livestream/.
Terry: So, you have been able to maintain nearly all your desired enrollment. That’s quite an accomplishment! Tell us a bit more about your student body and where they go after graduation.
Jim: Our students come from more than 50 countries and nearly every US state. Indeed, 50 percent of our students are from outside the United States. So, as you might imagine, the pandemic had the potential to hit us particularly hard. We budgeted for a 10 percent decrease hoping that it wouldn’t be worse. The good news is that our enrollment was only eight percent down this fall and looks like we might get to only seven percent down for the spring. After graduation, our students, like students at all colleges and universities across the country, go on to a variety of careers. Of course, many of our students become professional musicians. We have Emmy, Tony, and dozens and dozens of Grammy Award winners. We have multiple members of every major symphony orchestra in America. Every major opera company has our graduates on their stages every year! Each year at the Metropolitan Opera alone, we have four to five dozen graduates performing either on stage, as music coaches, or as musicians in the orchestra. For me as president, it’s such a joy to go to Lincoln Center or Broadway or almost any jazz club here and see our graduates at work in nearly every performance. I take enormous pride in their accomplishments.
Terry: And who teaches at MSM?
Jim: Our faculty are amazing! The folks who teach privately—one-on-one weekly lessons—are national and international artists such as world-renowned violinist Pinchas Zukerman, the great jazz bassist Ron Carter (also an alumnus!), or the Tony Award winner Randy Graff. Approximately 50 of our faculty are members of the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, as well as members or former members of chamber ensembles such as the Tokyo and Juilliard String Quartets. Collectively, our voice faculty have performed on all of the greatest opera stages of the world and have performed thousands of times at the Met Opera alone. This kind of conservatory training is very much patterned after an “old-world” artist/mentor-student model.
Terry: You’ve had some great success at building financial support for MSM. Tell us about that.
Jim: MSM has not had a great record of fundraising throughout its more than 100-year history. When I arrived back at MSM in 2013 (I was here before from 1985–2000), we were still doing great things training our students, but fundraising, which my former boss Chuck Middleton used to say provided the “margins of excellence,” was lackluster. We first stabilized our enrollment which had been seesawing for years. We began to show our board and our loyal, but small group of donors that we could be fiscally responsible and move towards greater heights. At that point, we took on what was for us a big project, a $16.5M renovation of our main performance space. We accomplished this on time and on budget, not an easy feat anywhere, especially in NYC where things normally cost more than almost anywhere else in the States. Once that was accomplished, we turned to the endowment. Just in the past half year, we have grown the endowment through cash and irrevocable pledges by more than $4M and we’re in a quiet campaign to raise $7M more during the next year. If we do this, our endowment will grow to $42M which is the size of our annual budget. This is not where we want to be, of course, but when I arrived the endowment was in the low $20Ms, so this will be a big achievement and milestone.
Terry: Schools in the arts have a long history as LGBTQ-friendly environments. What would you like to highlight about MSM’s support of students, faculty, and staff?
Jim: It’s true that arts schools have historically been more friendly to the LGBTQ community than others, but I wouldn’t say this was completely true or universal. Although I was out during my entire time at MSM—1985–2000 and when I returned in 2013—I had many colleagues here during my first tenure who were afraid to come out. I was a finalist for the presidency of a sister institution a decade-and-a-half ago and later found out from two different members of the search committee that the board chair said to them he wouldn’t allow a gay president and stopped the search. The good news is that today much of that has changed and nearly disappeared at these institutions (heterosexism, like racism, sexism, and other -isms, still exists on some level even in the best environment). I remember that when I was offered the presidency here, the board chair and I were talking and at one point he stopped and said, “How does Boris feel about this?” I answered that he would be thrilled, and the chair said, “Good,” and moved on with the rest of the conversation. You know, each year my husband Boris (Thomas, JD, PhD) and I host all of our identity student groups in our campus home and we always ask the questions “When did you first know I (Jim) was gay and how did that make you feel?” The two most common responses are “proud” and “safe.” For them, to see oneself in the leadership of the college is so critical. This is especially true for students from non-Western countries for whom my presence as an out gay man is nearly unbelievable as it simply would not happen in their countries.
Terry: I should mention that president Gandre’s husband, Boris Thomas, has attended several of the meetings and institutes of our organization.
Jim: Being the “first spouse” of any institution is a tough job. You’re nearly as visible as the president, you most often have some obligations to be “on” at various events (and for MSM at lots of performances), but you most often don’t get paid and most often the spouse has his/her/their own profession that has nothing to do with the institution with which he/she/they is intrinsically linked. Boris is amazing as the first spouse. He really enjoys the people here and the campus loves him and is always asking about him when he’s not at events (I sometimes think they like him far more than me!) My presidency would not be as successful without him, that’s for sure.
Terry: Congratulations to you both! I look forward to listening to more of your streaming content (https://www.msmnyc.edu/livestream/).
Jim: Thank you!