Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music

by Blair Tindall

  “People give me booze, but I don’t drink much,” he said, picking a fat bottle of German Goldwasser from a high shelf crowded with liquor gift boxes. He tapped one of the crystal glasses, which made a ringing sound. “C-sharp,” he observed, pouring a half inch in the goblet. Golden specks fluttered to the bottom.

  There was that ticking again!

  “Sam,” I asked finally, “did a metronome get turned on in your bag?” He held up his palm, signaling me to be still. The irregular beat continued.

  Click-clack. Click-clack.

  “That?” he asked. I nodded.

  “It’s just my heart,” he said. “There are ball bearings in there. And pig valves.” He seemed to relish my look of shock as he started telling me the story of his childhood as a blue baby and the pioneering surgery in Baltimore in 1947, when he was nine. He also recalled his 1965 operation; it hadn’t turned out to be the “final correction” his doctor had expected, because his heart problems reappeared in the late 1970s.

  Even that operation wasn’t his last. Onstage at his new chamber music festival on Cape Cod in 1980, Sam had realized something was terribly wrong. The veins in his hands were pounding, and his pulse raced to two hundred beats per minute. He was rushed to specialists in Alabama, who diagnosed full heart failure. Rare in a former blue baby, coronary artery disease had ravaged him. No one was hopeful. Rushed into surgery, he got new heart valves from pig donors, fitted with the latest technology in stainless steel ball bearings.

  “That’s what you’re hearing now,” Sam said.

  In intensive care for two months, Sam had hallucinated and gone in and out of a coma. He didn’t remember, but he was told that he swore and screamed. He remembered the unbearable pain, though. After he swung at an aide, nurses tied his arms to the bed. Blood transfusions topped eighty pints at a time. His brother, Martin, rushed to his side, only to receive a phone call from New York informing him a Chinese food deliveryman had bicycled into their mother, killing her.

  After two months, Sam came out of it, returning home to his wife and daughter at their new 83rd Street apartment. It took months to get used to clicking in the wrong tempo, and his internal beat, audible to others, drove Sam’s collaborators nuts. It was like trying to perform with a metronome set at the wrong speed.

  The pills he’d taken before the concert were diuretics, blood pressure medicine, and other prescriptions. Well, the blue one was Valium, he admitted. The kids at Juilliard thought he was skinny from AIDS, Sam said, flashing that grin I’d begun to adore. He must keep his weight under a hundred twenty-six pounds, though. He would simply die otherwise.

  “Enough of this old story,” Sam said. “When I saw you in the elevator, I told myself you were one of the unattainable ones.” Sam squeezed my hand gently with his strange, clubbed fingers. He apologized for slapping my hand at the concert and tipped my chin toward him. I tasted blood as we kissed.

  “My gums bleed from the blood thinners,” Sam said, wiping his mouth and leading me behind the lacquered screen where geishas peeked shyly from their fans. He lit a candle on the windowsill over the empty spot where he’d removed his broken radiator. Light flickered against his spare cast-iron double bed, antique table, and chair.

  “Promise me you won’t run away,” he said, removing the two top studs from his tux shirt. A row of rectangles protruded a half inch from his sternum, like a zipper you’d expect to see on Frankenstein’s monster. Now I understood why he wore turtlenecks so often. Removing his tux shirt, Sam explained the chronology of his scars. There was the diagonal one from the 1947 operation, a north-south number from 1965, and so on. His entire torso was laced with incisions.

  “Everything works, though,” he said sheepishly, his voice crackling as he looked down his body. I already knew that from his response to spying on the Jacuzzi scene at Itzhak’s soiree.

  Sam handled me gently, kissing my neck, stroking my long hair, and caressing my shoulders as he slid my blouse onto the chair. We climbed into bed and made love. Afterward, we lay on our backs, our arms tangled around each other.

  “My damn circulation,” he said, looking away. He’d rejected the doctors’ various suggestions for a permanent implant or for a shot in the dick each time he wanted to make love. He kissed my forehead.

  “I understand if you want to go home.”

  I didn’t care about the sex. All I saw was Sam’s courage, his dedication and discipline, his taste. I stayed. His heart clicked away beside me in bed until I dozed off. At midnight I faintly heard him close the apartment door, leaving to practice as he said he would.

  In his nightly routine, Sam hailed a cab downtown to a huge apartment in the San Remo. There, he practiced on a rich man’s Steinway every night until the sun rose behind him over Central Park, its orange rays glinting off Essex House and the other buildings diagonally across the park. In return, the man had access to Sam’s nubile Juilliard students. A female Chinese pianist without a work visa had just moved in with the man, trading sex for financial support.

  After several hours, the night sky began turning pink. Glancing at the picture window over his shoulder, Sam placed his hands on the keys to repeat his banging practice. Just once more and he’d be perfect.

  * * *

  After nearly a decade in the Allendale, I had an assortment of neighbors’ keys—including Rob Fisher, Sam, Sydney, Marni, Jorge, and Joan—and at least five sets to flats now full of Korean cellists. Everyone distributed their keys to neighbors, since as musicians who worked together we might as well have been family. This way a quick phone call could arrange for a friend to water the plants, feed the cat, or collect the mail. Picking out Sam’s key, I turned off the bathroom light, eyeing the brown stain that was spreading across the ceiling.

  Heading down the hall, I pushed open the stairwell’s swinging door. It was early for Hippolito, but there he was, rag at the ready. The stairwell’s elaborate faux-Greek mosaics barely showed through thick dirt, and years-old sludge coated the windowsills and window glass. Hearing me, Hippolito jerked away from the keyhole and furiously polished a doorknob down to solid brass shine.

  On the ninth floor, I let myself into Sam’s apartment. I’d overheard his intense practice sessions without knowing it was Sam. Once I knew, I adapted parts of his routine to the oboe. Knowing Sam these past two months had dramatically changed my habits. Watching him try to maintain his health was an eye-opener and made me grateful for my own good health. Unlike Sam, I could exercise. I vowed to put a lifetime of crash diets behind me and started running several miles a day.

  “Almost ready, honey,” he said, and rushed around the piano room. Despite the building’s decrepit condition and sloppy conversions, many of the rooms retained their original spaciousness. Sam leaned over the suitcase he’d take on tour tomorrow, carefully smoothing the lapel of his tux jacket, folding tissue paper saved from the dry cleaner over it. More tissue lay stacked in the closet next to a box of odd shoes, orphaned as a result of the difference in his feet, an effect of his childhood surgery.

  “Almost ready, honey,” he repeated nervously. Switching off the space heater beneath his splintering window, he penciled one last fingering onto music that seemed to have numbers over every note, reviewing his work before closing the score. He lined up a pile of arias on the lid of his glossy black Steinway, nudged the papers in perfect alignment, then rubbed away a dusting of ceiling plaster. Looking over the room one last time, he turned out the light.

  “Um, ready, I think,” he said.

  In the taxi’s backseat, Sam, at forty-nine, looked boyish in his turtle-neck and blazer. No one would have ever guessed his age, all the more remarkable, given his physical ailments. We pulled up in front of a building on Central Park West and went upstairs to an Argentine investment banker’s birthday fête—just the kind of party, filled with intellectual, fashionable people drinking sophisticated cocktails, that I’d dreamed of attending back in North Carolina.

  The hostess knew Sam through Bo
bby White’s circle of journalists, executives, old-money scions, and artists. Ana loved classical music and had served as chairman of the board during the first season of a chamber festival Sam had launched in 1980. Now in its sixth season, the Cape and Islands Festival was firmly established, and Ana’s fund-raising efforts were a big part of its success.

  I recognized newscaster Garrick Utley, who was far taller than I’d imagined. Bobby White stood in the kitchen, chatting with someone in a black sheath dress. Sam introduced me to General Foods CEO Jim Ferguson and his wife, Esther, a tiny blonde with an energizing South Carolina lilt.

  This fête was nothing like the parties thrown by most freelance musicians. Our events took place in small dingy flats. The guests were orchestral musicians like me who schlepped in wearing dowdy black dresses and tuxes that smelled funky from many nights of performing. Refreshments came in the form of Chinese takeout containers and liters of jug wine. Conversation revolved around gossip or who was contracting gigs and how to get on their hiring lists.

  Ana’s party took place in a huge co-op apartment overlooking Central Park. Her caterer had adjusted the lighting, arranged flowers, and created a spread of tiny hors d’oeuvres, each of which included at least four ingredients and looked like a miniature work of art. The guests wore elegant clothing.

  As Sam and I crossed the room for a glass of wine, I heard bits of conversation about bank mergers, a Connecticut regatta, and the dealings of a museum board of directors. I imagined people were making appointments to play golf together or to bankroll some new company. The room was alive with power and progress. Unlike my freelance-musician parties, where much of the activity consisted of complaining and getting drunk, big things were happening at this event.

  While the hired bartender opened a new bottle of chardonnay, I observed the action. This party looked a bit like the ones a cellist ex-boyfriend of mine named Fred sometimes attended, where the rich and powerful interacted with artists, journalists found a good story, and performers made connections for funding and publicity.

  Fred had existed on a higher echelon of the music business than that of freelance orchestral musicians. He was more of a soloist and chamber musician, and he hung out with other musicians who had won solo competitions and had big management. Even if I had been the most talented player, I could never have fit in with his circle of famous string players and pianists, since there simply wasn’t the same demand for oboe soloists. I would always have to settle for lower-paying orchestral work, where I had to depend on contractors to hire me instead of creating my own path.

  Still, I had found Fred’s network intriguing. One of its members, Marya, a flutist, ran the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival. The New York Times had lavished 3,500 words on the three-week series, explaining how it got started after the flutist had married an investment banker. The banker had urged his wife to start a festival in the Hamptons so she could spend the summer with him instead of jetting off to other festivals.

  Ana’s bartender handed me the wine, and Sam and I plunged into the crowd. I stayed quiet after he introduced me to a management consultant, listening hard to learn what such a person did. In fact, his work sounded far more interesting than I’d expected. I was curious to find out more about what investment bankers and lawyers did too, since I rarely ran into people with these jobs. I felt out of my element, but I desperately wanted to belong.

  Sam talked knowledgeably with a man who sold Oriental antiques and had just returned from Hong Kong. A documentary filmmaker started talking with the antiques dealer about Mongolian nomads whom China had forced to stop wandering and settle in communes. She was looking for a way to finance a film about it. I sipped my wine, which was tasty compared to the swill I usually bought for myself.

  The filmmaker talked about Tibet, the Dalai Lama, Chinese Muslims, and other subjects I’d never considered. Wearing a red mandarin-style sheath dress and dangling silver earrings, she was a magnetic presence in the room. As several guests wearing business suits gathered around her, she skillfully turned the description of China into a balance sheet of what her film would cost. Pretty slick, I thought with admiration. A Merrill Lynch banker and his wife joined us. They’d known Sam for many years and donated money to his summer festival.

  “Old boy, how do you get to Carnegie Hall?” The husband guffawed.

  “I don’t know. How?” Sam smiled blankly, as if he’d never heard the old chestnut before.

  “Practice, old boy, practice!” bellowed the banker and slapped Sam on the back, nearly knocking him over. The banker’s wife turned to me and exclaimed that she loved the sound of an oboe. Her husband interrupted, now addressing me.

  “Danny Kaye—you’re too young to know him.” He continued, in a gravelly smoker’s voice, “Now let me get this right: He said the oboe’s an ill wind that no one blows good!”

  I laughed, although the joke wasn’t funny anymore. I had actually played with Danny Kaye once at the Philharmonic. The comedian had stolen Zubin’s baton to conduct the Fledermaus overture. We had great fun playing with Kaye’s exuberant beat, and he didn’t once insult the oboists.

  Smiling sweetly, I squeezed Sam’s hand. He squeezed back, as if in code. No doubt Sam was silently rehearsing a comic impression of the banker, which he would deliver in a sidesplitting performance at home later.

  Sam dazzled the crowd as he talked passionately about film, books, and his teenage daughter’s paintings. When no one was looking, Sam turned away for a handful of pills, returning in a graceful arabesque to ask about the other guests’ lives, spreading the word about Bobby’s latest album and introducing me as part of his “musical insider’s” circle.

  Although I liked most of the people I was meeting, neither Sam nor I had much in common with them. Except for Bobby and possibly the filmmaker, none would return to a dump like the Allendale tonight. Perhaps that accounted for the electricity between us all. Everyone offered something strange and useful to the others, whether money, influence, or creativity. As we gathered our coats to leave, I felt as if I’d just glimpsed a magic kingdom in which I could never afford to live.

  “Love you!” The banker and his wife bade Sam goodbye at the door. He shook my hand; his wife air-kissed Sam.

  “Love you,” Sam replied, with alarming sincerity.

  As my carpool turned toward Marlboro, October foliage lined the country road with splashes of orange and red. The sky looked even bluer against the white clapboard of Marlboro’s meetinghouse and the brilliant bronze hue of hickory beside it. The Vermont town was sacred ground for classical musicians, who came here each summer for one of the world’s top music programs.

  I’d probably never participate in the famous Marlboro Music Festival, but I might come close during this autumn week by playing in the New England Bach Festival under the direction of Blanche Honneger Moyse. She had come to Marlboro in 1949 with a group of fellow Europeans to found the summer festival and make a home in Vermont. Although the festival’s summer concerts were immensely satisfying for her, Blanche quickly grew restless during the long Vermont winters. To combat the boredom and contribute to her adopted community, in 1952 she launched the Brattleboro Music Center, a year-round educational mecca, in a house on Walnut Street that soon was filled with local people learning to make music. It had thrived ever since.

  After an ailment ended her violin career in 1966, Blanche began conducting, making her Carnegie Hall debut at age seventy-eight. She devoted herself to local amateurs billed as the Blanche Moyse Chorale. These thirty-eight singers practiced all year long, coached by Blanche in the evenings after working their day jobs. Over time, their performances evolved into the New England Bach Festival, the set of autumn concerts in Marlboro I’d been hired to play.

  I knew just how those singers felt. When I did concerts with Orpheus, the Philharmonic, or St. Luke’s, I sometimes felt a kind of joy that only occurred when I was playing music. When I was feeling particularly emotional it came out in my phrasing. The fervency
of playing could be explained as the difference between a dull reading of a passage from Shakespeare and one delivered by an actor who was not only skilled but who deeply felt the words he was reciting. At twenty-seven, I’d come to crave the musical rush, but transcendent moments were rare (particularly since I was handicapped by my bad reeds). This weekend’s performances would almost certainly deliver that kind of revelatory music-making.

  In Marlboro’s Persons Auditorium, I found my chair. Out of four oboes, I was sitting second. In J. S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, it was a big part, involving duet arias on oboe, English horn, and an alto instrument pitched in between, an oboe d’amore, which literally meant oboe of love. Some oboists jokingly called the horn a “love stick.”

  I was looking forward to playing with Steve, New York’s first-call freelancer who would be playing principal oboe. He also lived in the Allendale and used to drop by my apartment to borrow some vodka in a jelly jar. Now thirty-eight, Steve was one of the musicians who had been in the right place at the right time, filling a sudden volume of New York music gigs in the 1970s. His virtual monopoly included principal oboe in Orpheus, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and St. Luke’s.

  As Steve warmed up with silly cartoon-music themes just minutes before the rehearsal would begin, Sydney burst through the back door and found her place in the third flute chair. Sydney usually sat at least second flute with these musicians, who were mostly St. Luke’s members. She looked annoyed but quickly hid her disappointment. It would get her nowhere to act sour. She carefully adjusted her mohair sweater and smoothed out her wool pants. I didn’t blame her for being upset. A flutist of her caliber and experience should be moving up, not down.

  Her hair snowy white, Blanche hopped on the podium with the energy of someone half her age. An elegant blond woman followed. I hadn’t bothered to find out who the soloists were, but there was something undeniably special about this one.