NEA Institute Day 1

NEA conference Day 1 – Sunday, October 14

Arrived in NYC before 10:00 a.m. Still summer here. 70 degrees, people in shorts, clouds of midges in Central Park. It's all green and leafy and feels like July.

I met my fellow Fellows tonight. What a range of personalities, ages, and experiences! There's an Italian polyglot classical guitarist from Hawaii, a Spanish media editor from Texas, an ex-CIA man from Oneida who dove headfirst into opera midlife at Glimmerglass.

I'll learn a lot.

This NEA journalism institute in classical music (there are others in theater and dance) sprang from someone's conviction that investing in artists' work was simply not enough: there needed to be some investment in the “transmission mechanisms” (i.e. radio, newspapers, websites) by which people receive the arts.

So here I am.

My hotel room is on the 4th floor of an inn at 94th and Broadway on the upper west side. There's a grocery store, a sushi bar, and a Tandoor Indian place across the street. I have a small room with a red carpet. So-so water pressure.

Most of the fellows are print journalists. A few write for radio or the web.

It's going be intense, and I'll have very little free time to bum around. That's ok.

Tomorrow, we'll meet Justin Davidson and Steve Smith to talk about covering classical music in the newsroom. After lunch, we'll hear from Alex Ross (I must must MUST remember to get his autograph for my friend Carl), take a history class with Joe Horowitz, and then hear from a guy with a philosophical bent, Michael Beckerman.

Fashion detour: I've seen a lot of jeans tucked into high boots and thin, textured scarves single-wrapped around necks. Hardly anyone is scarf-less.

More tomorrow.