I attended the Vadim Repin recital on
Friday April 5th at the Valley Performing Arts Center in
Northridge. The recital was nearly as wonderful as my post-concert
experience was horrible (I plan on posting a concert review shortly).
The staff of the facility treated me and two other audience members
with a level of arrogance and rudeness that was difficult to process
let alone understand.
When I was a young piano student, my
teacher told me that it was my duty to visit performers in the green
room (the post-concert artist reception area) after concerts whenever
possible. This didn't have anything to do with fame and it wasn't
about asking anything more of the performers. The visit was meant as
an expression of appreciation for the previous two hours the
performer had just spent on the stage. If you got to the green room
and it was sufficiently crowded, then it was okay to leave. But
there's no emptier feeling for a performer than having given of
themselves only to be left with an empty green room.
So over the last 40 years or so I've
been frequenting green rooms at most of the major and at many of the
minor performing halls both in the US and abroad. Typically all are
welcome. It's not the artist's private dressing room; it's a public
reception area. Sometimes the performers are very relaxed and
generous with their time and sometimes they are not. I can remember
rare occasions when the performers were either too tired, ill or
otherwise indisposed to visit the green room. These occasions are
rare because most performers genuinely enjoy the post-concert ritual.
Typically it is one of brighter spots in the schedule of a touring
musician.
It turned out that I actually had some
degree of a personal connection with Vadim Repin I spent a week at
the Verbier Music Festival in Switzerland in the summer of 2011. I
made some friends who were in turn friends of Vadim Repin and Yuri
Bashmet and I was invited along one evening for post-concert drinks.
Much of the conversation took place in Russian, but I did manage to
have a break-out conversation with Repin about musical icons,
historical recordings, and the relative merits of innate talent
versus dedication and perseverance. We didn't forge a life-long
friendship or exchange email addresses, but it was a nice evening and
an interesting exchange.
 |
| Hanging out with Vadim Repin and gypsy violinist Roby Lakatos in Verbier, July 2011 |
At the VPAC recital I was sitting in
the fourth row slightly to the left-of-center, directly in Repin's
sightline. Given my feelings about green room visits in general, it
would have been doubly rude not to make an appearance afterward. I
didn't expect him to remember my name or the particulars of our
meeting, but I would have been surprised if he had no memory of it at
all. So after the final applause died down, I asked the nearest
usher how to get to the green room. Normally there is a door near
the side of the stage. Instead, the usher told me I'd have to leave
to the building, walk around its perimeter, and then look for the
artist's entrance near a loading dock on the adjacent street. I
asked another usher and he corroborated that these unusual
instructions were in fact correct.
So outside and around the building I
went. I found the loading dock and the door. I saw an idling
Lincoln Navigator with a driver adjacent to the loading dock that
most probably was Repin's ride. I was initially surprised that I
was the only one there. A few minutes later a man and his
12-year-old daughter arrived too. They were Russian/Armenian
musicians. The daughter was a
promising young violinist. Her teacher knew Repin's teacher and had
urged her to relay greetings from both after the concert. The father
was a professional percussionist.
 |
| Percussionist Art Sinanyan and his violinist daughter Ani. His website is artperc.com |
We
decided to ring the buzzer at the artist's entrance. A security
guard and an official-looking woman with a walkie-talkie opened the
door a crack. “Who are you? Do you have a wristband?” the woman
barked out summarily. I gave her my name and said, “Vadim knows
me but he probably won't remember my name. No, we don't have
wristbands. This isn't a Van Halen concert. I've never heard of
wristbands for a classical recital.” “Well, we use them here and
you're not getting in without one”, she answered and let the door
slam.
I
couldn't believe what had just happened. The three of us (one a
young girl) had been sent outside to a loading dock only to be
treated rudely and have a door slammed in our face. It was a chilly
night as well. I leaned on the buzzer again. Nothing happened for
quite a while. Finally, the same woman opened it a crack . She saw
that it was me again and before I could get half a word out she
slammed the door shut again while hissing, “Go away!”
The
young girl was in shock. She was excited to meet Vadim Repin and
report back to her teacher. Instead she was shivering on a loading
dock while being repeatedly humiliated. I explained to her that I
seriously doubted that Vadim Repin knew anything about what was going
on out here. Based on my sense of him he would be appalled if he did
and he would personally try to fix the situation. I told her that
unfortunately some people just need to feel important and they take
any little chance life gives them to push other people around in
order to do so. Her father and I conferred. We both agreed that
Repin would have to walk out of the door sooner or later and we'd
take our chances that would be sooner. I also told him that if we
were unsuccessful, I might be able to email some of my friends from
Verbier and get Repin to send a picture or an email to his daughter.
He shouldn't tell her because I couldn't guarantee I'd be
successful, but I was reasonably confident I would be. I just
didn't want to leave his daughter with nothing but this negative
experience.
Sure
enough, the doors opened about ten minutes later. Out came Repin and
an entourage of a dozen or so people, none of whom had wristbands.
Repin saw the girl and her father and immediately walked up to them.
They started conversing in Russian. With the mention of their
teachers, he smiled and his eyes lit up. He posed for pictures with
the girl and even said a few words to her in Armenian. He turned to
me and said, “I know that we met but I can't remember your name.”
I told him that I'd be surprised if he did remember it and I
reminded him of the evening in Verbier. He was as cordial as I had
expected him to be. I thanked him for a wonderful recital and told
him he should visit Los Angeles more frequently, which is all I
wanted to convey in the first place. After a short cigarette break,
he got into his limo and drove off.
As
soon as I went home I logged onto the VPAC website. I looked through
the personnel listing, and with the assistance of Google Images I
quickly identified the name of the self-appointed gatekeeper. Her
title, ironically, is “Director of Audience Services.” She had
her moment of importance and I hope she enjoyed it. I'd love to hear
her justification for why she felt it necessary to behave as she did.
I want to know exactly what threat she saw posed by two well-dressed
middle-aged men and a 12-year-old girl, and why it was necessary to
summarily dismiss them without even as much as an “I'm sorry”, a
“please” or a “I'd like to thank you for attending the concert
but...” The artist's warm, spontaneous, genuine reactions to the
“interlopers” made it abundantly clear that her judgment was in
error and that the very premise of her actions was completely
out-of-line. In addition to posting this account on my blog and
various social media, I'm forwarding this account to the VPAC
hierarchy, some classical music bulletin boards, and anyone else I
can think of who would even consider attending a concert at VPAC.
Normally
I don't post things like this, but it is a
particularly odious feeling to watch a 12-year-old girl's enthusiasm
get trampled upon just because because somebody can. Bullies need
to be called out. Such people should not be allowed anywhere near
paying customers, much less be put in charge of Audience Services.
The Valley Performing Arts Center is a very young institution. They
clearly understand little about how successful performing arts
organizations operate and how they need to treat their customers.
They should take their cues from the wonderful music their performers
play. This music is meant to inspire the greatness within our souls
and to speak to our better selves. We can best serve it by treating
each other with respect and by acting like decent human beings.
What's the point of taking the trouble to put forth concerts by
world-class artists only to negate the entire experience through the
mindless actions of a few thoughtless individuals? Why would I ever
go back there and why would I ever recommend anyone else to do so?
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