In mid-August, musicians from the New York Philharmonic Orchestra gathered in what was still mostly a construction site for the first time to hear what it would sound like after a $550 million renovation. When David Geffen Hall and Deborah Borda, the orchestra’s president and chief executive officer, handed out roses to arriving players.
“This is a historic moment,” Borda, who had barely slept the night before, told them from the conductor’s podium. “Welcome to your new home.”
It was a homecoming that 73-year-old Borda has been working on for decades.
She led the Philharmonic Orchestra for the first time in the 1990s and left out of dissatisfaction with its unwillingness to rebuild its long-troubled home, then known as Avery Fisher Hall. For her 17 years, she conducted her Philharmonic Orchestra in Los Angeles, frankly orchestrating her concerts with Walt Disney, designed by Gehry. did. Then, just as she was beginning to consider a new chapter, perhaps teaching, she was pulled back to New York five years earlier: her $100 million gift from entertainment mogul David Geffen was a gift from Hall It revived plans to remake the , but momentum appeared to have stalled.
“It was an unfinished business,” she said. “I’ve dreamed of this since the 1990s, and I finally see the way forward.”
So, on that August afternoon, she listened intently to the tuning of the orchestra, then performed an excerpt from Bruckner’s Lamentatory Symphony No. 7 under the direction of Music Director Jaap van Zweden. . she was relieved.
“It’s amazing,” she told the small audience in attendance, including Lincoln Center leaders, board members, sound professionals and construction workers.
When Borda returned to New York in 2017, art leaders were deeply concerned about the health of America’s oldest orchestra, the Philharmonic Orchestra. It has a storied tradition of top-notch musicians, led over the years by giants such as Mahler, Toscanini and Bernstein, but each year it loses money, its audience is aging, and the many internationals touring the New faced competition from traditional ensembles. yoke. When she arrived, her foundation’s funds were less than they were in her 1990s, when she was in charge.
It was Geffen’s gift that was secured in 2015 by Catherine G. Farley, chairman of Lincoln Center, who owns the hall and is the landlord of the Philharmonic Orchestra. But there were still serious obstacles. Lincoln Center was going through a period of management churn as top executives moved in and out. In addition to being impractical for the orchestra (a glass wall?), the renovation plans under consideration were too expensive and difficult to construct. Shortly after Borda’s arrival, she and Lincoln Center officials announced they were back on track.
Borda unexpectedly continued his efforts towards the ultimate goal. “She’s a force of nature,” Van Zweden said. “Whatever she wants, she gets”
In 2019, Lincoln Center appointed former 92nd Street Y leader Henry Timms as president and chief executive officer. He restored stability to the organization and worked as the landlord of independent constituent groups such as the Philharmonic Orchestra, the Metropolitan Opera, and the New York City Ballet. moved the Forward.
Reopening of David Geffen Hall
The infamous New York Philharmonic Orchestra auditorium at Lincoln Center has undergone a $550 million renovation.
He and Borda collaborated on the historically acrimonious relationship between Lincoln Center and the Philharmonic Orchestra, which reached its lowest point in 2003 when the Philharmonic Orchestra left its old home, Carnegie Hall. I worked to change the relationship. That message probably came home with stickers and tote bags about the project, which it ambitiously declared “Working in Concert.”
Tims recalled meeting Borda for coffee at her home shortly before he took office.
“I think it was a priority that we both signed up,” he said. “But what we needed to do was prioritize our relationship.”
“She could have made history by quitting before this job, but she chose not to,” he said. “She took a different path and pursued this final victory for her.”
Voda said the great efforts and support of Tims and Farley of Lincoln Center, as well as Philharmonic co-chairs Peter W. May and Oscar L. Tan, were critical. “They had the heart and the hunger and the vision to do this,” she said.
Born to a lobbyist mother and a Colombian immigrant father who worked as a salesman, Borda grew up in Jackson Heights, Queens. She attended her Philharmonic Orchestra concert in New York for the first time when she was four years old, and she watched Leonard conduct her Bernstein from her balcony. Her parents divorced when she was six years old, and when she was twelve, her family moved to Boston to live with her stepfather, a psychiatrist, in Borda. , she played with her Youth Orchestra. She initially envisioned a career as a performer, studying the violin, attending the Royal College of Music in London, doing postgraduate studies, and working as a freelance musician in New York. However, she was drawn to management positions early on.
In 1979, at the age of 30, she got her first major job as General Manager and Artistic Director of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. Her appointment drew attention. She was one of the first women to conduct a major orchestra in the United States. However, because of her gender and sexual orientation (she is gay), she sometimes faced obstacles in the male-dominated classical music arena. She took the job managing the Pittsburgh Symphony in the 1980s after Pittsburgh Symphony Maestro Lorin Maazel was told she was reluctant to work with her because she was a woman. I remembered the surprise I felt when I lost.
“I never thought my gender or sexual orientation would be an obstacle,” she said. “I never even thought about it.”
After stints with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, he first came to New York City in 1991 as Principal of the Philharmonic Orchestra. She spearheaded efforts to balance the orchestra’s budget and attract more young people to its innovative concerts, such as the short evening “Rush Hour” concerts. However, her tenure was also marked by her feuds, including intense negotiations with the orchestra’s musicians over her employment contract and persistent tensions with then-music director Kurt Masur.
She joined the Lincoln Center in 1992 The Philharmonic Orchestra placed curved wooden reflectors around the stage. Because of their shape, she came to call them “bongos”. This is to make the sound easier to spread. But it didn’t solve the problem.
She said one of the reasons she moved to the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1999 was because she didn’t believe New York’s cultural leaders were committing to overhauling the hall. rice field.
“At the time, I didn’t think I had the heart or the vision to do it,” she said. “It’s frustrating and that’s why I quit.”
She worked in Los Angeles and took the orchestra to new heights. She increased her endowments more than five times hers, earned a reputation for her orchestral creative programming, helped make Dudamel a superstar, and helped the city’s underserved communities. Ambitious youth started her program with her orchestra. Then, just as she was contemplating retiring from orchestral management to teach or start a think tank, New York beckoned her.
She returned in 2017, finally energized by the opportunity to remake Geffen Hall. “It was kind of like a wheel of karma,” she said. (She also wanted to get closer to her long-time partner, Coralie Toevs, who oversees the development of the Metropolitan Opera. The two maintained a long-distance relationship when Borda was in Los Angeles. I did.)
Back in New York, she worked to balance the budget, raising $50 million to keep the orchestra solvent. She has built up her endowment, which at the time of her arrival was valued at $195 million and is now valued at about $220 million, lower than it was when she led the orchestra in the 1990s. I’m here. She also championed innovative programming. She commissioned works from 19 female composers to commemorate her 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which prohibited states from denying women the right to vote, and Tania Her Leon’s “Stride” One of her works won a Pulitzer Prize. .
Then came the pandemic. The orchestra canceled over 100 of his concerts, cost him over $27 million in expected ticket revenue, and laid off his 40% of staff.
“I really thought I might go out of business,” she said.
But Tims and Borda have moved on, using the lengthy pandemic shutdown period to accelerate the project, which was originally slated to run for several seasons.
Bolda has fulfilled his promise to lead another Philharmonic Orchestra to another modern home, and announced plans to resign at the end of June from Washington’s orchestra. (She will remain as a special advisor to help with fundraising and other matters.)
But she still has work to do. It’s about planning an engaging season to lure concert-goers to new halls.
“A hall cannot be a monument to itself,” she said.
And an important decision looms. Before she leaves, Borda hopes to name a successor to music director Van Zweden, who will leave his post in 2024. Among the likely candidates is Dudamel. Mirga Grazinit Thila, former music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Susanna Marki, music director of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra. Santu-Mathias Rouvari, Principal Conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra. Bolda said he was looking for a leader who was “in harmony with the orchestra” and “in harmony with New York.”
Recently, when she was leading the hall for a Philharmonic Orchestra board meeting, her mobile phone rang so frequently that the hall was filled with her ringtones. Arrival of the Queen of Sheba from Handel’s Solomon.
Standing in front of the lobby’s new digital wall, she smiled and said she was thrilled that the Philharmonic Orchestra finally had a home to match its artistic prowess.
“It totally lifts me up,” she said. “It’s like a dream.”