Robert Cole, the master of Cal Performances, steps down this year after transforming the Berkeley institution into a destination for national artists.
Robert Cole is moving on. After 23 years as director of Cal Performances, the 77-year-old wonder worker is preparing to step down at season’s end in June and devote himself to other projects.
During his unprecedented tenure, Cole has systematically transformed what was once a run-of-the-mill performance series into the foremost single-location presenter of major cutting-edge artists in the United States. San Francisco may justifiably boast about its symphony and opera, but only U.C. Berkeley has an organization with the breadth and stature of Cal Performances.
Cole’s legacy is astounding. Under his directorship, a virtually unknown 24-year-old mezzo-soprano named Cecilia Bartoli made her American debut before an ecstatic, half-filled audience in Hertz Hall. (I was there. We were beside ourselves.) Lyric soprano Dawn Upshaw, feted worldwide for her interpretations of Mozart and contemporary music, made her Cal Performances recital debut the same month! Such renowned classical artists as bass-baritone Bryn Terfel and tenor Ian Bostridge; violinists Vadim Repin, Maxim Vengerov and Kennedy (aka Nigel Kennedy); and pianist Arcadi Volodos were just becoming known when they made either their U.S. or Bay Area recital debuts at Cal Performances.
Thanks to Cole, a host of internationally renowned collaborations between Nicholas McGegan’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and the Mark Morris Dance Group birthed in Berkeley. More recently, we saw Three Decembers, Cole’s joint venture with the San Francisco and Houston operas that marked the great mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade’s farewell to the Bay Area opera stage. And let’s not forget the premiere of John Adams and Peter Sellars’ I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky, and the recent airing of Dawn Upshaw and Peter Sellars’ much-acclaimed Kafka Fragments, which wowed folks in Europe but was only presented in three venues in the United States.
Cole’s contributions significantly extend beyond the classical sphere. Figure in the extended visit of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project, and performances by many of the biggest players in world music, dance and jazz, and you have one of the most versatile and rich performance series on the planet.
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Finding gems: Mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli was an unknown when Robert Cole booked her American debut at Hertz Hall in Berkeley. Photo courtesy Cal Performances.
One of the individuals most equipped to assess Cal Performances’ extensive transformation under Cole’s leadership is U.C. Berkeley Professor of English Emeritus Don Friedman. A member of the search committee that chose Cole 23 years ago, Friedman currently serves on the committee that is choosing Cole’s successor.
“I have to be very critical of the regime that preceded Robert’s tenure,” Friedman explained during a chat in my Fruitvale area living room. “While the previous director had a good financial track record and booked a lot of things that were successful elsewhere, her choices were not very adventurous. Her programming failed to adequately recognize the sophisticated nature of our community, and sacrificed uniqueness in order to achieve fiscal responsibility.”
Then as now, the search committee sought someone who could serve as both artistic director of Cal Performances and managing director of student musical activities. Friedman was especially impressed with Cole’s background, which included stints as a conductor under composer Lukas Foss, and running a small opera house north of New York City.
“Toward the end of Robert’s interview,” reports Friedman, “he said, ‘By the way, I’m the guy who makes sure the piano’s tuned.’ I went home that night and said to my wife [mezzo-soprano Stephanie Friedman], ‘That’s the guy I want.’”
Friedman didn’t have to fight very hard. The rest of the search committee agreed with his choice.
“When I heard that Robert had actually been appointed,” says Friedman, “I called to congratulate him and recommend that he program this wonderful quartet—I think it was the Chilingarian—that we had just heard in London. They were unknown in this country. He replied, ‘Yeah, I just booked them.’
“That confirmed to me that Robert was on top of everything. He is good at spotting talent, especially in the States and on the West Coast. He’s expanded the scope of the program, but always with a view to acknowledging the interests of Bay Area audiences and at the same time building new ones. The quality and scope of our programming is just amazing compared to what it once was. It now includes world music, dance, acrobats, the No Theatre and the Kabuki, the Greek National Theatre playing in the Greek Theatre—it has been very inventive and gutsy.”
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In an interview conducted in Cole’s cramped office, made possible after he shifted piles of paperwork around, he speculated why he was tapped for this job more than two decades ago.
“Actually, I have no idea,” he says. “The fact that I’m a professional musician must have been part of it, because that’s who I am. I’m really a musician/conductor who got waylaid into this business by accident.”
Born in San Jose, Cole supported himself by playing jazz sax from the time he was 16 through college. After graduation, he briefly taught music in Los Angeles at North Hollywood High School. In the late ’60s and early ’70s, he served as executive director and conductor of a ballet company in Los Angeles. He also conducted several orchestras in the Los Angeles area and taught at Immaculate Heart College in Hollywood.
Determined to find work in the cultural capital of New York, Cole migrated East. After a position as associate conductor with the Buffalo Philharmonic, he became executive director of the Bardavon Opera House in Poughkeepsie and then at Brooklyn College.
At Bardavon, located to the city’s north in the wealthy, intellectually sophisticated Hudson Valley, he built a performance series that engaged soprano Leontyne Price, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and the Merce Cunningham and Twyla Tharp dance companies. Shortly after composer Philip Glass made his first recording, Cole brought him and his ensemble to Poughkeepsie. Bardavon was the place where he learned the business.
By the time he arrived in Berkeley, Cole was ready for the next step. “My first year here, which had already been planned by my predecessor, included just one recital by a pianist,” he lamented. “So I got on the phone and invited Leontyne Price to fill the vacuum. She was at the end of her great career, but she was still great. She sold out completely and sang gloriously.”
“I was always very bored growing up in San Jose,” Cole confesses. “I wanted to be in the bigger world of the arts, and live in places like New York or London. So I tried to recreate those artistic meccas here, near my hometown, for my own benefit and the benefit of others. I tried to recreate what is in New York, only better in a way, because I had just one place in which to host all the artists from all over the world that might be booked at the Brooklyn Academy, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kitchen. I brought everything to one place where I could be involved in all the things I’m interested in.
“I knew there were other people like me who were saying, ‘Oh my God, I read about this in New York, but it’s not coming here.’ Yes, it is coming here [chuckling]. It’s starting here!”
Thus began a steady stream of cutting-edge artists and innovations. The breadth of Cole’s accomplishments includes the biannual Early Music Festival and Exposition, which at one point mounted an extraordinary historical reconstruction of an equestrian ballet; the biannual Contemporary Music Festival; Cal Performances’ SchoolTime, Family Fare, Ailey Camp and other unique opportunities for children and young people; and an astoundingly diverse performance series. This month alone, for example, sees the Bay Area–debut of the alluring, kittenish soprano Danielle de Niese, and returning artists Cecilia Bartoli, Jordi Savall, Takács Quartet, and Academy of St. Martin in the Fields (with their new leader, renowned young violinist Julia Fischer) vying for attention with Circus Oz, the Afro-Cuban All Stars and live broadcasts of radio show Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.
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Not surprisingly, finances have always been one of Cole’s biggest challenges. In 1996, after his first decade at Cal Performances, he assembled a board of directors that included faculty members, students and community members who represent different companies and businesses. The board not only provided guidance, but also quickly became the organization’s chief volunteer fundraising arm. In 2007-2008, joint efforts of the board and staff raised 18.5 percent of Cal Performances’ total income. This includes contributions from individual board members, which ranged from $5,000 to $50,000 each.
Cole also ensured that Cal Performances was in sync with changing trends. Much of the organization’s marketing is now done via its website, calperformances.org. Pre-concert podcasts, performance clips and program notes are among enticements available online.
But times have changed. Cole acknowledges that he planned his departure because he had pretty much done all that he could do here.
“I won’t say that I was clairvoyant,” he says, “but I did see that it was the right time to bring my tenure to a close. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t great things ahead. But for what I’m doing, and in this particular time frame, I thought that I had done pretty much what I could do that is different and meaningful.
“It’s not going to be easy to bring back things as unique as Peter Sellars and Dawn Upshaw. Nor, given the economic downturn, will it be very easy to bring back the Kirov Ballet and Orchestra that was just here. That programming is not going to happen, at least for the next few years, in the way it has been happening.”
Next season is the last one that Cole has planned. Already, he has been forced to reshuffle some bookings due to the economy. While he knows what direction he’d take if he were to stay on for the next five years, he believes it best to allow the next director to make those decisions.
Does he have any words for his successor?
“Good luck,” says Cole, with the laugh of someone who knows what it takes. “I’m pleased I’ve had a great opportunity to do what I’ve been able to do. Now I’ll let somebody else push the rock uphill. I’m optimistic that things will go well.”
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Music critic Jason Victor Serinus is a professional whistler who lives in Oakland with his husband David. Between writing for Carnegie Hall, Stereophile, San Francisco Magazine, sfcv.org and 12 other publications, he serves on Oakland’s Community Policing Task Force and Advisory Board. See www.jasonserinus.com.
