Zarin Mehta

Published Aug 27, 2012, 4:00 AM

This week, Alec talks with Zarin Mehta who retired as president and executive director of the New York Philharmonic at the end of this past season. Mehta, an accountant by trade, grew up in 1940’s Bombay before it became the booming city of Mumbai. In Mehta’s memory, Bombay was more like a colonial fishing village.

Mehta talks with Alec about his father, who founded the Bombay Symphony Orchestra, his brother Zubin, and the realities of running a major arts organization in New York.  As Mehta states, “Look, in the United States one does not look to the state for support of the arts.”  Alec also talks with Carmen Mehta, Zarin Mehta's wife, and she offers her own insights into Mehta’s success.

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This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. For the past twelve years, Zarin Made has run what is arguably the finest orchestra in the country, the New York Philharmonic. Zarin retired as the president and executive director of the Philharmonic at the end of this past season. He leaves behind Alan Gilbert the orchestra's musical director, a position that Zarin's older brother, Zubin held for thirteen years. Zarin Made is famous for his intellect, his passion for the music, and his insights and ideas about how to sustain a world class orchestra. It's hard to imagine someone better suited for that job. How would you describe your job? Getting paid for something I love to do? How's that? I get that impression? You know? Somebody said to me, you'll retire, Aren't you glad you won't have to do union negotiations anyways? It I love doing them. Yeah, it's a game. It's fun. Zaron's love for New York City is contagious. He experiences more of his adopted city in a weekend than most natives do in a lifetime. Saturday, I went to the opera Saturday night. We had a concert. Sunday afternoon. I went to another concert because one of the people who comes to conduct us was conducting his orchestra, and it was just very relaxing to go and do all those things. You know, I don't understand colleagues of mine who go maybe once a week to the concert, and I don't understand. I assume you go to the movies a lot. I watched movies a lot of don't necessary that the same thing. Yeah, I went to the movies yesterday morning, which is suddenly I've never done. I think I go to the symphony more than you go to the movies. No, I used to go to the movies two or three times a week. You know. Sometimes my wife and I go on a Saturday afternoon and go to the concert afterwards. We love going to the movies and to the theater. We're out all the time. He's talking about his wife of forty six years, Carmen Made, a former opera singer who is as invested in classical music and the arts as is Zaren. I've been teaching singing for fifty four years. For any singing teacher that's out there, it does take about fifty four years to figure out how exactly to do it, how to turn each new voice into its best, how to attack that instrument or encourage that instrument, because everyone is so different. But the main thing is to attack it from music instead of only from the voice. So to an extent, when you are instructing and when you are coaching, or whatever word you want to use, I would say, I teach you teach singing, and I'm obsessed with singing, And I joke about it because if I could sing, I'd have a completely different life. In my heart, I think I have the heart of a singer, but I have the vocal cords of a crossing guard or something. I mean, excuse me, interrupt you. You have the vocal chords of an actor. Carmen Madea is precise and doesn't hold back on her opinions, and over the last few years, she and Zarin have welcomed me to their classical music world. I've been listening to classical music since my twenties, when I discovered it while driving around Los Angeles looking for work. Through meeting Zaren, I've been able to live out my dream of being part of an orchestra, not as a musician, but by hosting the Philharmonic's radio broadcast on DEBT q x R and by serving on the Philharmonic's board of directors. Zarin, an accountant by trade, grew up in nineteen forties Bombay before it became the booming city of Mumbai. Back then, or at least in Zarin made his memory, it was more like a colonial fish village. For me. It was a lovely upbringing. We bicycle to school for forty five minutes to get to our school. We played cricket every weekend, and many fields that actually still exist. When your father was a musician, My father was a musician. Should we grew up in a completely absorbing musical and was a professional magician. Oh yeah, yeah. He was a violinist and a conductor, and he had started the Bombay Symphony, he started the Bombay String Quartet. Was his father classically. But this is one of the craziest things, Alec. I mean, you think back to when he started studying the violin. He was born in nine eight in the twenties, there were no recordings, there was no radio. How did this man get this bug to study Western classical music in India? And we still don't know, and he doesn't know when we asked him. He actually went to school, did a commis agree and statured working for the Income Tax Department trained him on the violin Uh an Italian musician who had ended up in Bombay by ship from Genoa and the you know, he gave private lessons and my father studied with him. What year did he found the Symphony in Bombay? In thirty nine? And there have been none prior of him and my brother and I grew up listening to sectional rehearsals of the Bombay Symphony in our living room, chamber music concerts. I mean, I know chamber music intimately only because we listened to it over and over and over again. Your brother has said, I want to bead this quote. There was little room for you to practice as a kid between him and your father. Did you had you wanted to play? No? I really never. I thought I was enough to listen to it, and I didn't feel any urge to want to learn anything. He didn't know, and I was perfectly happy doing that and going to school and listening to music, putting on records all the time. There's all seventy eight yet to get up every four minutes to flip the record and change it, and that was wonderful. Your your brother. When did he know that he wanted to go on that? He probably knew all the time, because I think the calling was there and he really wanted to be a conductor. Then he left India to study composition in Vienna with an eye to go into the conducting school. In a year after he was in Vienna, he got into conducting school and started having He was eighteen at the time. And my father continued working that way, and then he left India, came to England, worked in an orchestra, the Hally Orchestra, a great orchestra with Sir John Barbarolli, who was a music director of New York in the fourties. Then he came to Philadelphia and slowly both super and I gravitated to the United States. And when I've finished my accounting qualification in London, that came to New York to get a job. I was told that I would be drafted and sent back to England as a g I. So that's when I gravitated up to Canada in nineteen sixty two. I was a bachelor. I thought this is a nice place. And that's how my life started in North America. Your father lived until one he died in two thousand and two. No, he was ninety four. He was ninety four, so obviously he had lived to see both of you. Was mesmerized. Yeah, I mean he was, especially with my brother, because you know, he lived through vicariously having grown up around musicians and your father. But I guess more notably your brother, who being a conductor in the modern age, those guys certainly have a presence. Shell say, did that help you? But the work you were doing and dealing with the orchestras and solo wests, and I suppose the way it helped ah when I was working as an accountant in Montreal and I was on the board of the Montreal Symphony, the way you are on the board of the New York Philharmonic. Of course, when musicians came to perform to conduct, I got to know them in the New Zubin so we kind of became friends and we'd see each other and we could communicate. And it's a small world. Yeah, it's a small world. So I got to know a lot of people that way. So of course that helped me in when I did decide to go into this professional running an orchestra full time. In I knew a lot of people. You went to Canada in sixty two sixty two, so I went as an account I was on the board of the symphony, and so from that it became my job at the symphony was like all other board members, you know, governance and raising money. Right. And then when we needed an executive director and couldn't find anybody, a few colleagues of mine and I decided that maybe I should do it, take a leave of absence and train somebody to run the orchestra. And in the end I got the bug and I said, I like this. Zarin remained at the helm of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra for nine years. Charles Detis was music director. Carmen made it remembers their collaboration. They made an exceptional team. What do you attribute that to that period there in Montreal. Well, first of all, everything was working in the right way. The mayor that was then in Montreal was very supportive. Charlie was at the height of his career and he brought to Montreal a very strong discipline to that orchestra. Charlie, as we call him, has a great ear and a great refined ear, that sort of balance of color and in tune playing, and he created for that orchestra a way of making sure that everything was harmonious and at the same time, the money the business was in a good place, so they could do many things, and recording was a great part of that. And they worked together to bring music to the parks, music to the school. And what about the orchestra itself. These people who are in these administrative positions of the music director themselves, they're handling this body of all these individuals. Not all orchestras are bodies of people who are easy to handle. I guess it's safe to say that Underta and Zaren you had a happy group of people. They were happy. We had a happy group of people because I think it's always been Zaren's feeling and his devotion to the fact that the musicians have all studied for many years and then they joined a group of people and they have to become underneath the battle of whoever the conductor is. That means that you have to make sure that your musicians are happy, make sure that everything that goes on in their lives, from money to traveling experiences, et cetera. From their unions. All of that is working well, and your respect for them, your respect for the musicians, and and Charlie's expertise, and he was so adamant that they make a great sound. M M. What was the musical world, the classical musical world like back then as compared to now. I think it wasn't that different. You know, people always think back and say the good old days. I think more people go to consists today than they did in those days. As the result of what I think in the last ten years, I would say the Internet is enormous. Technology has helped absolutely instead of saying it's the reverse. I think it's always helped expanded the audience. You know. It's like in sports, when they started televising all these baseball games and hockey games, the basketball games, it brought more people to the stadiums because they got used to see what was going on. It's so competitive here in New York for that ticket holders dollar. How do you think the city has behaved and the state has behaved in terms of supporting the arts. Have They've been a good partner for you. Look in the United States, one does not look to the date for support of the arts as compared to well as compared to Europe, and we're in Europe are the most generous. Every opera house and orchestra in Europe, I'm not talking England proper. Europe is supported entirely, entirely by the state. So Las Cala or Munich or Berlin. What do you think the budget of the Berlin for harmonicas similar to yours? Probably not as high. The payods are different and they don't have to pay anything separate for health care and pension, which is such a huge cost to all of us in every business. So yeah, the budgets will be different, but it's all covered by the Senate in Berlin. New concert hall complex as being built in Paris. It's being paid for by the by the city of Paris and the federal government, and it's going to be huge. I went to see it when I was a couple of months ago. I think it's going to be three or four hundred million euros, which for European terms is a huge amount of money, and it's going to be very beautiful. Genuel is designing it and it will open in two thousand and fourteen. They've invited us to go and play. Then fifteen, what's something you think the city could do. Let's confine ourselves to this institution. What could they have done that you had expected that they would do, or something you'd like to see them do. Let's go back to the basic thing, not just here, but everywhere that I would have liked more support for the arts generally from the leaders of our community, and that starts with the presidents, to the senators, to the governors. They do not go to the opera, they do not go to concerts. When we played in Berlin last year, Angel America bought her own tickets in came to hear our concert, and she came in the intermission to see Allan and Tomahimson was the And I think that shows the people of that city in the country, the importance of the arts. We don't have that anywhere. I think it would be a great boom for the city of New York if there was a summer home, not just for the orchestra, but you know, the orchestra might do in a three or four month period, twenty five concerts. You got all those other days that you could have jazz and pop, and you know, so why isn't the city behind the whole idea of doing something, of leading the charge to have a performance space in the city of New York. That's what I mean is lacking from the elected officials. So there's summer Home is something that we need to do. We need to redo this avery Offisher Hall. People keep saying this for acoustical reasons, and I keep saying, no, it's fifty years old. At me is redoing. You don't believe that every Fisher is as compromised acoustically, and some people mentioned at all. So listen, we play concerts on tour all over the world. I'm not going to give you numbers because I haven't worked it out, but I can tell you that there's maybe half a dozen holes that I think are better the Nabory Fisher. Most of the holes that we playing are really not that great. What is it in your mind? Because people struggle with this question. Acoustics for symphonic music is something that you assume it's important because people never shut up about it. Is it a science? Is that a team of technicians coming in? Look? Is it luck? I think the problem with every Fisher Hall is Carnegie Hall is eight blocks south of US. Okay, the press keep referring to it as acoustically challenged. If I can show you the reviews of this hole in nineteen seventy six when it reopened, from the New York Times and all the newspaper because there were more than one newspaper close period of time, it closer about a year and a half for what for renovations that that was a real acoustical redo. From the time it opened, people largely believe that it didn't address some of the problems. They thought, this is the greatest hall in the world. What do you think, for example, about what is considered a more modern hall in your new construction in l A. How do you think the Disney Hall sounds. I think it looks beautiful. I don't think it sounds as good as it looks, but it's a perfectly acceptable hall. What's one that's been built recently that you think that they got to write acoustically? If you can name one in the I would say in the last twenty twenty five years. I like the hall in Frankfurt. There's a couple of halls in Japan that are wonderful, the Chimo in Philadelphia. The Climb is not that great, It's okay, we just played there. It's improved also because they have all kinds of adjustable things. That's about it that I could think. I'm told the new hall in St. Petersburg is wonderful, and in London and in London when was the last time they run of that hall? But they did the Festival Hall about five hours six years ago. Major improvement. They spent I'm told a hundred and fifty million pounds something like that. Yeah, none of these things are cheap. And then you have to be out of the hall for a long time, you know. That's sort of the problems we have. And my success lab is where will they go? And now we have certain ideas of how to split the orchestra play in different halls. There's there's ways to travel around the Burrows and play. We'll be back in a minute with more of my conversation with Zaron maid to whose wife Carmen, has some thoughts on why his tenure at the New York Philharmonic was so successful. I think his idea for the orchestra has never really been a vehicle for himself, and I think people see that if you work with him closely, you'll see that. Also, he's an Indian, so he's good at business. He's good at numbers. He has an accountant after all. He has a great memory. So he's a type that gets respect for not having to check all the time what last year's season was. He hasn't in his brain when he makes a season up and you ask him, he doesn't have to check anywhere. It's in his head. He has a good background, not as a musician himself, but with his family, and he's always been interested in music, and as a young student in England went all the time to place and so on. So he has integrity. He has integrity. He's trustworthy. Absolutely, he's trustworthy when you just just when you meet him, when you spend five minutes with him. By the time you're done, you say, this guy's a gentleman and his trustworthy. But he also has some kind of presence if you use that correctly. I think you have to command respect and try to get things done, and get things done. More about zaren Nada's work with the New York Philharmonic. In a minute, this is like Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing. Now, what's changed here in the time of your benner when you came here was in what was the philharmonic um because the Philharmonic has unique concerns compared to other Yeah, I think salaries are higher, correct, No, the salaries are competitive with the major orchestras Chicago, Boston, even though the cost of living is higher. Yeah, that's unfortunately one of the things that the musicians you have to cope with. I think the changes that have taken place have been more in the way we've taken the orchestra out of every Fisher Hall, much bigger, better programmed parks concerts, so we're getting a lot of good people. The attendance in the parks has gone up enormously. Our use of the Internet and the media has changed enormously. We're not making recordings anymore, but we are, you know, taking out our broadcasts and downloading live and so on. Why aren't you making recordings anymore? Nobody's making recordings. No one's buying You can get it free on the internet. You can, you know, go on the iTunes and get any piece you want from eighteen different sources. Are you selling your material on the internet giving it for free? Give me for free? Um? The the fact that our radio broadcast and now international is a huge change that you know, you can hear a New York followed by concert in Moscow or in Adelaide. I think that never happened before. So technologies, technology is you know, we've taken hold of it, and I think that's important. We just did our first television show that we did in house. We brought the people and we directed it, and we did a concert from here for Chinese New Year's I'm told it was watched by a hundred million people. That's extraordinary that a classical music show was watched by a hundred million people. How have you changed during the time you've been here? How have I changed? Have you enjoyed being in New York? Yeah? I loved it, loved it. You're going back to Chicago, going back to Chicago Cheople to live there, and my family is there, my daughter, But otherwise we would stay here. My wife is not very happy about leaving New York. She's happy to go for the reasons I just said, but we're both unhappy to leave here. If you had enough money, i'd keep appeared that they're here. Sure are you gonna basically retire when you're there? Are you gonna still look I'm I'm not my father, as I said, work till he was ninety two. My grandfather worked till he was ninety two. I don't know if I worked till I'm ninety two. And it's not because of that, But I just don't feel like I can sit at home and do nothing or go and play golf. I'm not that type when you're home now. First of all, I wanted to mention you enjoy going to the concert hall. Uh. In the time I've known, you're never more happy and never more relaxed than when the music is playing. And you still have a high degree of appreciation and real love of concert music, which I find is not mutual exclusive from but interesting considering your wife, who's very, very critical. I always know what's what in the concert world, dilettante that I am, this pianist, this conductor. By looking at Carmen Menta's response, you don't want to go to the opera with her, they don't. She's even more vocal, she's even more harsh in her judgments because she's an opera file. But she's a singer, so you know that comes naturally to her. But when the two of your home. Do you listen to music? Sometimes? You know, we basically we don't put our background music. First of all, I listened to music that I really want to hear, and often on a Saturday afternoon or something out here, I'm reading the paper and the dead and Carmen's got we have a little player in the bedroom and she's off listening to Bach that's her go to. Yeah, she just you know, and I agree with her. Listening to music has been so much a part of my life and absorbing it. And I must say, when anything goes wrong with my life, or with my thoughts or with my family, I think it is the constant help to have a musical phrase, the line of a poem. In my mind. That means music has fed the internal life. So it's fine and you're never lonely. Sometimes I just put the paper down here the well temple coming through, and you're like, you like, oh yeah, well, there's a kind of order to it. There's a kind of clarity, there's a rhythm. It just is uplifting. There's a joyousness to his music, which I find extraordinary. Same thing with Mozart. All those adjectives apply to Mozart. And I guess Beetho, and I mean it sounds pretty tried. With no Shubert. I want to hear the Shubert. I love Shugart shoe with song. Oh who's somewhere You're indifferent too, you haven't got enough. Give me one example of someone, and without being from the nineteenth century, that you think has been given a very very generous airing someone but you consider lucky. Well, I can't think of anybody. I think the people who want to survive are the ones that absolutely, absolutely and the same thing will happened in this century. You know, Shostakovich is going to survive, Benjamin Britten is going to survive. So there's not a time you're sitting there with Alan or with Mozelle before that and they say I want to play the blah blah blah, and you will say, oh god, whatever you do, don't play there anyway, of course, But because it's composer specific, and don't forget that in today's world, if you look at the composers of today, each conductor or pianist or alienist will have his or her not necessarily favorite with people they feel that they want to perform, and there's others they don't feel like performing. I think I think there's a difference. Of course, Look you with me. When many Acts did his hundredth concerts with the New Yorker The Money, and he played this piece of Messieur, he'd never played it before. We talked him into it. Is he going to play it again? I don't know. Did he like it? He said, I got to play it a few more terms before I could say I like it. But there are other pianists who endore the piece and plate all the time. So I think that's perfectly natural. I mean, these are people who are recreating something. They have to feel something, they have to be on the same plate. You have seen the greatest people. What's something you watch one of the greats that you watch soloist, vocalist conduct. You sat there and you just gasp and said, my god, I'm so happy I was here to see this. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that stands out in my mind was the concert we did right after nine eleven, and we were supposed to do a concert with Anna Sophi Muta playing Beethoven and so, and of course she didn't come, and we decided we couldn't do that kind of an opening night. And Kurt Massour was in Europe and I called him and I said, I think we should do a concert. We shouldn't cancel it, and how about if you consider doing the Browns Requiem And he said absolutely, And I said, I have Tom Hamson who's ready to do it. The chorus are ready to do it. The orchestras on its way back from Stuttgart where they are stuck during nine eleven. And so he came and did it. And I made a little speech to welcome everybody, and I said, and please no plow said the end, just hold hands, look at each other. Court was a great conductor, really did something spiritually extraordinary that evening, and everybody was there felt that, and I don't think there was a dry eye in the house. The other one that comes to mind was when we played in Dresden. We did three concerts in Dresden in two thousand and five for the reopening of the Church of Our Lady, which was bombed in the waning days of the Second World War during the fire bombing, and it stayed as a rubble until the mid nineties when they put money together to rebuild it and a remarkable. Man came to see me and said, you know, we don't know who bombed Dresden, but it would be good if an American orchesta was to go and play there. I went dressed, and I met of people and we agreed to play there with Lauren conducting, and Folks Fable, which had built a factory there, sponsored the concerts. We've got a German cellist to play a work written specifically for that event by an Englishman. So we had three culpable parties if you want who participated. And we finished the concert with Death and Transfiguration Rick hard Strauss. And that was a magical, magical, unbelievable moment in this church sharing this music. It seemed like it was written for that occasion. And people were standing outside as the orchestra because there were no dressing us, of course in a church, and they walked out. It was a remarkable magic moment. My good friends, Zaron Maideer and his wife Carmen, have packed up and moved to Chicago. Carmen told me they were apartments sold in record time. Our apartment went up and there was only a couple of weeks, and we were told that it had been made it offer on. It turns out to be as therein successor, Matthew van Beeson. Now, Matthew was running around with his agent and unaware that it was your apartment until they came into our apartment. It was just an open house. So he came into the department thought he liked it. Obviously it's in a very good place for working at the Philharmonic. And as he's walking through the rooms, we have our pictures and pictures of all kinds of musicians all over the place. So he finally realized that he was in our apartment. And when he told me that I really liked was what gave it away was the collection of the CDs he said. He said he saw the music on the wall and he went, who the hell are these people? Look at this stuff? They and I'm happy to say we can leave all our LPs because we don't have the equipment to play them anymore. And Matthew does so that's great, so we don't have to think about packing them up and sending what's the proposed of the LPs stay with the apartment whoever buys the apartment. I'm not suggesting that the apartment become the official residences that were of the executive director of the Philharmonic. But it's just the right place to be. Even though I will see you again, it truly, truly, truly, it will not be the same, not, I want to say, not the same without you plural meaning you and your husband. It won't be the same without you sitting next to you and sitting in that box with you with some of the most fun I've ever had in my life. For this is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Thanks this week to Mark Travis and the New York Philharmonic.

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Award-winning actor Alec Baldwin takes listeners into the lives of artists, policy makers and perfor 
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