Venues
Events
VideoMusic
Interview with NYC Music Impresario George Steel
On the 20th anniversary of Columbia’s Miller Theatre, the executive director heads west to helm the Dallas Opera
George Steel (Photo: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders)
| | More
This season, Miller Theatre at Columbia University celebrates its 20th anniversary, and George Steel, its maverick impresario, bids the hall a fond farewell. In advance of opening night, we checked in with Steel for one last backward glance at what it’s all meant for him.
You were just 30 years old when you took the reigns at Miller Theatre. Now, 11 years later, you are celebrated for having the kind of consummate taste and enterprising zeal that has changed the musical landscape of New York. What were you thinking when you first took a seat behind the big desk at Miller?
When I first took over in 1997 (boy, what a long time ago that seems suddenly), I wanted to discover a programming solution for the theatre that gave it a unique role in New York’s musical life and that made it a cultural leader—not a miniature of something available elsewhere. I wanted to put repertoire and composers back at the center of programming and to reach out to new, younger audiences for the performing arts.
Miller is widely considered a beacon of smart programming, both in the areas of early music and very contemporary work. Could you be the presenter you are if you were not also a performer? I hear you even slip into Leonard Bernstein’s jacket, literally, when you conduct.
Because I am a conductor, I am able to focus better on the things that will help performers and composers do their best work. And I know—as all performers know—that I am the servant of the music. Remembering that eternal truth creates a very positive environment for everyone: audiences, performers, composers, funders, press—everyone. And yes, I have been conducting in one of LB’s tailcoats. I retired it this year (I was beginning to wear it out), and have switched over to another less-fragile LB talisman—his red pocket square.
You’re opening the 20th season at Miller—your last before heading off to Texas to become the general director of the Dallas Opera—with Iannis Xenakis’s Oresteia. Why did you select that work? What do you think that piece has to say to a New York City audience in 2008?
I selected Xenakis’s Oresteia long before I had any idea of leaving for the Dallas Opera. I chose it because it is amazing, because it has never (!) been staged in the US and because my collaborators and I were all dying to do it. Like all great art, its only responsibility is to be great. We are drawn to it by its greatness, not by our own; whether or not it speaks to us is our responsibility. It’s a little like the proverbial Delphian oracle in this way, if I may be romantic about it.
Looking back over past seasons, what’s been the most memorable show at Miller?
Amazing to say, I don’t often look back—the greatest shows are always ahead!
What advice do you have for the next person who will sit at your desk?
Have fun, and program what you believe in, not what you think you are supposed to program.