Robert Cole, the great West Coast impresario, grew up in uneasy circumstances. Indeed, just before he was born his father was killed in a car crash. “Sad, very sad,” Cole told us over coffee in a Berkeley cafe. “In those days an auto crash was not good.” He chuckled at the understatement. “You die. No safety belts, and no safety glass. That’s what killed him: the glass.”
This happened in San Jose, in 1931.
“My father left me a one quarter-sized violin and that was about it,” said Cole.
Nevertheless, the trinkety violin turned out to be just the right inheritance. Cole took immediate interest and his mother, a bookkeeper ever active in the local church choir, encouraged lessons. The boy excelled. In middle school, he played clarinet and saxophone. In high school, he played sax gigs six nights a week at a nightclub called the Hawaiian Gardens. Among the featured acts, a dance band and, at one time, “trained bullfrogs.”
Cole’s interest in music was both salve and focus. As he put it, “In a difficult life, it made things easy. It was a blessing really. Huge: the luckiest thing in my life.” Cole says that often about different moments in his life, as though he has had relentlessly good fortune, as though he’s been the Artic Tern riding only favorable currents.
As for his bad fortune, he will not expand. Suffice it to say, there was never any doubt about a career in music, highlighted by his 23-year run with Cal Performances. Or the years since, having a hand in almost every major festival, concert hall, and theater in the Bay Area. In 2011, he was brought in to power up the Green Center in Santa Rosa. In 2014, he spent 10 months at the Lincoln Theater in Napa.
Then last spring, in response to a city effort to redevelop San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts, Cole was asked by World Arts West to cast a plan for reviving the site. The idea was to open an international center for arts and culture. At the end of this October, despite a petition with 20,000 signatures, the plan was rejected by a city commission, the head of which suggested that Cole’s group collaborate with the eventual winner to be chosen next year. Among the three groups still in the running, two propose that the space be transformed, at least in part, into a hotel. World Arts West has not decided whether to collaborate.
“It’s bizarre,” said Cole. “And this is the city that prides itself on its dedication to the arts.”
In recent months Cole has returned to his first love, early music. For years he was on the board of Early Music America and is now the president of the San Francisco Early Music Society, whose new season continues on Friday, Dec. 11.
Mr. Minerva’s Many Hats
While music was Cole’s calling, oddly he was never firmly attached to being a musician, or, for that matter, being a conductor, which he did on and off from about 1960 through 2013 when he led a concert in Istanbul. His own performance has always been beside the matter. There’s something else at the core, well beyond music. Call it the resplendent dreams of a Renaissance man; call it the general’s iron desire to envision and manage the most sublime campaign; a Mr. Minerva-complex perhaps, the ever wise and curious arts owl, who knows how to put on the show of shows and sell every last ticket in the process.
The simpler truth is that Cole profoundly loves music and has enormous respect for great talent. When he took over Cal Performances, Julie Mushet, now executive director of World Arts West, was a graduate student at UC Berkeley, and chaired a student arts committee: “I will never forget how he once halted a staff meeting, ran out and picked up the baton to conduct the orchestra for a Mark Morris rehearsal, a world premiere that Robert had commissioned — and also found the money for. He’s not just an impresario, wearing all these hats, but a creative talent himself. My lasting sense of him is how he greets artists; it’s an embrace with real love.”
Showman Dreams
Cole studied music at San Jose State, then spent four years in the U.S. Air Force, directing marching bands. Afterward, in 1956, he moved to Los Angeles, and went to graduate school at USC, to study musicology. But for several reasons he turned away from it.
The truth is he wanted a bigger, more engaging playground than what academe offered. In addition, he had a wife and one son to support and, being ever practical, finally took an M.A. in music education. He taught music briefly at North Hollywood High School, then conducted several orchestras in and around L.A. For a time, he was artistic director of the Ballet Society of Los Angeles.
In 1973, he got a position as an associate conductor with the Buffalo Philharmonic, stayed five years and went on to the Bardavon Opera in Poughkeepsie. Four years there, followed by three more years running the performing arts program at Brooklyn College.
By 1986, he was approaching what was for him one summit of the civilized world, finally in among the artists and musicians he admired. That fall he accepted a position as the director of a small opera company in Binghamton, New York. But he hadn’t signed a contract when, a day or two later, he noticed a two-inch ad in the New York Times calling for a director at Cal Performances. At first thought, not something he wanted; on second thought, he saw the opportunity to be with his mother, just then in failing health, as well as his two grown sons.
He applied, more on a whim than a prayer, got an invitation, and flew out for the interview. It was an applicant’s dream situation: He didn’t need the job and frankly, didn’t fully realize what he was applying for, so in the interview he was jovial and loose. A week later he was hired. “If you’re with an orchestra or even an opera company, there’s always a limit. Peter Gelb is limited, which is his big problem.” – Robert Cole
“It was the luckiest thing that ever happened to me,” he said. “You have this complete canvas; there’s no limit. If you’re with an orchestra or even an opera company, there’s always a limit. Peter Gelb is limited, which is his big problem. And here I was with total freedom. Remember I also had multiple venues. I could bring a theater company from Beijing; an African dance company from Guinea; I could bring the Vienna Philharmonic, you name it. And I did. It was like a candy store.”
Ever Greater Performances
When Cole flew out to Berkeley, New York culture sprouted from his breast pocket. He’d been a regular at the PepsiCo Festival ( from 1980 to 1989) in Purchase, New York. It was there that he first saw Mark Morris, just then starting out. It was there he first heard an early music orchestra and first saw Peter Sellars’ Mozart trilogy. Cole would go on to collaborate with Sellars several times.
Beyond PepsiCo Festivals, the biggest influence on Cole had been Harvey Lichtenstein, the legendary producer at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which Cole also frequented. That’s where he first saw musician and avant-garde artist, Laurie Anderson.
In two decades at Cal Performances, Cole acquired a reputation for bringing in well-known talent as well as the more esoteric. If Berkeley thought of itself as the Brooklyn of the West Coast, Cole made it so. For example, he brought in the National Theater of Ireland, otherwise known as the Abbey Theater of Dublin, which was founded in 1904 by W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory. The offering included several Samuel Beckett plays.
Another find was The People’s Theater of Beijing, which starred several of the most popular actors in China. The performances were in Mandarin. Cole also brought in The Berliner Ensemble, founded by Berthold Brecht. The ensemble, considered by many at the time the greatest theater company in Europe, came on their last tour ever, in 1992. The performance was Heiner Muller’s The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui, presented in German with supertitles.
Naturally, Cole also takes great pride in bringing in the Bolshoi Ballet, although he laments that he didn’t have more conviction when he first had the opportunity. When the company made its debut American tour, Cole had just taken his position, and instinctively played a conservative hand. The bottom line was he didn’t want to risk losing $25,000 to $50,000 on the commitment and so pulled out. “Everybody was on my side, the board, everyone thought it was too risky. But I didn’t assert myself the way I should have.”
As it turned out, the tour sold out and Cole would have made money. In addition, the group behind the tour received a sizeable last minute grant that insured everyone who sponsored performances would make money.
“That was one of the biggest mistakes of my whole career; it was just because I was too timid.” “…even in a financial crisis, when donations are down, if you have the right lineup you can sell tickets.”
Twenty years later, in 2009, with a plunging stock market Cole saw risk differently and brought in Yo-Yo Ma, coloratura mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli, the Bolshoi, the Mariinsky Ballet, Mark Morris, and more. “It was like boffo! I went all out; in some cases, I begged. But it was a lesson that even in a financial crisis, when donations are down, if you have the right lineup you can sell tickets.”
The Art of Rocket Science
One thing that especially irks Cole is the notion that it takes no great talent to be an impresario, merely a pinch of debonair and a little black book scribbled to smithereens with the names and private numbers of artists, agents, marketeers, and donors.
“This business I’m in is very deceptive, in part because people don’t realize what it takes to do this. The body of knowledge that’s involved. Just as I have no idea what it takes to be an astronaut; I’m certainly not applying. But people have no qualms about applying to run a theater, and sometimes these are people who have never been to the theater. They’re not even amateur theater-goers….”
Cole has long assumed that the arts are so badly undervalued in America that presenting them is never seen as a knowledge-based field like the law or medicine. “But actually it is like being a doctor, only you have to start younger. You can’t start when you’re 20 — too late.”
And what do you need to know?
“You need to know how to put together an evening with Peter Sellars and John Adams. You need to know that this project will work and that won’t. Like when I was at the Lincoln Theater: People there just wanted a rental house. But my theory is that running a theater, or any business, is developing a brand that people recognize; that sets you apart; that will attract them; and that they’ll write checks to. That’s key.”
Moreover, said Cole, you need to know about where to find the best marketing people and you need to know the art of fundraising, or “friendraising,” as he learned many years ago.
“It’s all based on liking people,” he explained. “And so maybe at the start you don’t ask a donor for a gift; maybe you just ask: ‘Would you be interested in being more involved?’; ‘Maybe, you could give a reception for the artist sometime next year.’ And the person says, ‘Yes that would be fun.’ Some people like to do that: meet the artist, one on one. So by hosting a reception they’re already donating at least $1,000 to the cause, and at that reception you invite other donors, and it all builds up … I never see asking for money as a drudge; I look forward to it. And it all starts with this: I love music; they love music.”
The Lincoln Theater
If Cole is the consummate impresario, voracious for talent, and fully in tune with all the possibilities, and how they might or might not be realized, he also doesn’t suffer fools, lightly or otherwise. He readily admits that while at Cal Performances he was thoroughly spoiled, particularly in the matter of having control of both budget and artistic planning. For him, the two are indivisible.
His tendency is to micromanage, although always with a kind word. And if you resist his advice long enough, no matter, that’s fine, he’s seen it all. Even if you’re a young flak and don’t know Lang Lang from Yo-Yo, that’s alright too, so long as you don’t parade your ignorance. But if you don’t trust his knowledge — let’s say on audience development, which in one sense is his life’s work — then he’s likely to smile, chuckle, compliment you on the possibilities of your theater or festival, and move on to something new and interesting and, above all, realistic.
Cole rarely pulls the plug on a project; to reach that point suggests poor judgment at the outset. However, during his stint at the Lincoln Theater, Cole did stop a project whose success seemed assured, even if the ways and means were politically intricate. The project, called The Way of the Rain, “a love letter to the Earth,” was a multidimensional performance piece initiated by Sibylle Szaggars, the wife of Robert Redford. The Redfords have a house in Napa Valley, and their local connection naturally gave weight to the idea, along with support from a well-known hotel, the Meadowood.
“That was all great and I really wanted to do it,” said Cole. “His wife was very nice, and we worked with them to try to make it happen, but it was just not going to fly. There was no there there. You need someone to be the manager of a production, someone you can work with to fashion together a deal, but here there was no person to play that role. No managing director of the whole project; nobody to herd these cats and tell us what the cost would be and when performers were going to come. You need a manager to make all that happen.”
And so Cole shut down the project. “I did it in a nice way; I said, ‘We’ll do this later.’”
Cole quit the Lincoln Theater after 10 months, following what he calls a “disconnect.” He had begun with high hopes, partly because he loved the theater’s acoustics. Moreover, Cole had embraced the Napa Valley PR mantra, “we need heads on beds.” Along with a producer, working for the theater, Laura Rafaty, Cole drew in talent. In one show he pulled together the Punch Brothers, Neville Marriner, and Pink Martini, the hot Oregon band that grew out of a desire in the early 1990s to produce “beautiful music” for political fundraisers.
“Many people come to Napa Valley with the idea that the audience isn’t adventurous,” said Rafaty. “But Robert always wanted to bring the best. I never heard him say, ‘bring the second tier because the audience won’t get it.’”
Cole also restructured the concerts to encourage an establishment audience coming from distant parts of the Bay Area to see a show, get dinner, and maybe stay overnight. “It was all good”, he remembered.
Until it wasn’t. “I only do things that are fun, things that are gratifying and successful. I don’t do it for the money; I just enjoy doing it.”
“It became clear I couldn’t make it work. I wouldn’t say the people in charge wanted it to work the way I was thinking, so why….” Cole let the thought go. “I only do things that are fun, things that are gratifying and successful. I don’t do it for the money; I just enjoy doing it.”
A Strange Anonymity
Whenever I think of Robert Cole I see Bill Nighy, the British actor, best known for his 1991 performance in The Men’s Room, or, in a personal favorite, Page Eight, a 2011 spy thriller. Nighy’s signature is a mix of whimsy, refinement, sadness, and a serrated wit. The excitement is waiting for him to escape his refinement and reveal himself.
So Cole as a Nighy character, is a relentless and obsessive figure, a fixer, whose life resembles a piece of antique furniture with many hidden drawers. He’s the man well known to performers but unknown to audiences that will never forget an evening years ago with Cecilia Bartoli, but don’t remember the name, Robert Cole.
These days the impresario has rounded up his quirks and obsessions, and his regrets, which include not picking up a second language in all his years of study, nor learning to play the piano, which might have lead to a career as an opera director. “That’s what I always wanted to be,” he said wistfully. “But too late now.”
He had surgery not long ago but has returned to full health. He still reads The New York Times each morning and still pores through the ticket sheets from the night before if on a consulting gig. In January, he will resume his Russian language studies with his old friend from One Cyclotron Road, the physicist and arts aficionado Vladimir Krezin.
As for his artistic tastes, Cole has come to prefer small operas and new finds like Christian Gerharher, who Ruth Felt brought to San Francisco Performances a year ago. And then there’s the early music sensation, Vox Luminous.
Asked about his attraction to early music, Cole replied, “People like me, who have heard all the Beethoven symphonies they need to hear, find the music of Bach and before just so gratifying. It’s always a whole new world.” What’s also appealing to Cole is that the music venues are small, the musicians are personal friends, often amateurs, and the audience members are themselves, musicians. It’s all his world.
Cole recently finished planning next year's Berkeley Early Music Festival (June 5 – 12), which he established in 1990 while still head of Cal Performances. The program includes, among others: Vox Luminous; the local ensemble Voices of Music; British violinist Rachel Podger; and South African keyboardist Christian Bezuidenhout.
The Escaped Artist
But now hasn’t yours been a charmed life, we asked, except for the beginning perhaps.
“No, no,” said Cole. “Not charmed. ‘By your bootstraps,’ and a certain amount of luck. What I’ve learned is that you never know what’s going to happen and so you always have to be ready for the next opportunity. It’s both synchronicity and fate.”
Fate, for example, that Cole should land in Berkeley and meet a musician, a jazz musician, no less, who also loved to play tennis. That’s Susan Muscarella, his wife, an accomplished tennis player, as well as founder and president of the California Jazz Conservatory.
“Yes, that was certainly fate,” said Cole, adding that the trick is to trust it. “I’ve been so lucky.” “One of the things I like about [tennis] is that afterward you thank your opponent; it’s so civilized.”
Although he had no interest in sports growing up, Cole has over the years become obsessed with tennis. It clears his head. And something else: “One of the things I like about the game is that afterward you thank your opponent; it’s so civilized. When I was young, I was always looking for civilization. I had an unfortunate stepfather, an alcoholic, who was crude, crass. I wanted to escape that.”
Cole escaped whenever he could.
His father’s parents lived in El Paso; his grandfather worked for the railroad. “I was what was left of my father and they wanted me there as much as possible, and so every summer I was on the train from San Jose to El Paso, either with my mother, or grandmother, or later, after I left home, by myself.”
It was those times — Cole, traveling alone between cities and states, cut off from obligation and family history, grounded only by movement itself, and perhaps by an unexpected conversation with a stranger — it was those times that he found most enjoyable and enlightening.
*The San Francisco Early Music Society season runs through March 11, 2016, and will feature a new venue: Palo Alto’s First Presbyterian Church at 1140 Cowper Street. Each of the season’s artists will perform a Friday in Palo Alto, Saturday in Berkeley and Sunday in San Francisco. Individual tickets for SFEMS’ six main concerts are $40 with discounts for seniors and SFEMS members. SFEMS also offers discounts to season subscribers. For more information and to purchase tickets visit SFEMS.org. The next concert is December 11-13, 2016, featuring the group, Magnificat.