This week In the Hot Seat with Larry LeBlanc: Theresa Vibberts, Executive Vice President, Artist Manager, National Director of Booking, CAMI Music.
Theresa Vibberts has a solid reputation for being a shrewd businesswoman who has done much in shaping the performing arts sector to compete in today’s competitive consumer marketplace.
Scrappy, classy, and creative, Vibberts is also an astute judge of both the musical merits and business power of her clients—some of the world’s leading instrumental soloists, conductors, and ensembles across a broad spectrum of the performing arts, including classical music, jazz, world music, dance, and more.
In her current position since 2018, Vibberts serves as an artist manager and oversees CAMI Music’s North American business and booking strategies.
At CAMI Music since 2011, Vibberts previously served as Southeast Booking Agent; East Coast & Midwest Booking agent; Artist Manager & East Coast/Midwest Booking; and as the company’s VP, Artist Manager, and National Director of Bookings responsible for booking national tours, producing promotional events, and creating audience development strategies.
Along the way, Vibberts has represented global artists and companies such as the American Ballet Theater & Studio Company, MUMMENSCHANZ, National Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine, Ballet Folklórico de México, Cirque FLIP Fabrique; Lang Lang, Lil Buck, Chad Lawson, Jules Buckley, Ray Chen, Cameron Carpenter, Pablo Sainz Villegas, Savion Glover, the Queen’s Cartoonists, Howard Shore, Max Richter, Sir James Galway, Jon Batiste, and percussionist Antonio Sanchez’s “Birdman Live” film project.
As well, Vibberts has overseen highly successful collaborative partnerships with other agencies on behalf of such artists as Farruquito (with IMG Artists), and Max Richter with the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (with Jensen Artists).
Prior to joining CAMI Music, Vibberts was head of production at photographer Danny Clinch’s Three on the Tree Productions in New York where she worked on music videos for Pearl Jam, Bruce Springsteen, Blind Melon, and others. She also coordinated the production of festival DVDs for Outside Lands, and Bonnaroo, and worked as a producer on the 2011 film, “Live at Preservation Hall: Louisiana Fairytale,” featuring the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and My Morning Jacket.
Previously, she interned for a year in the music department of “Saturday Night Live.”
Vibberts holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music from the esteemed Capital University Conservatory of Music in Columbus, Ohio.
At CAMI Music, you both oversee talent management as a general manager, and bookings as an agent. A departure from the industry norm?
Within our slice of the business, within the performing arts world, there are very,
very few people who are both general managers of artists and booking agents. I do that. A wonderful talent, Ted Kurland (CEO, The Kurland Agency), also does that. But there really aren’t that many who play both roles the way that I do.
So the norm in the performing arts world is that there are those who only manage or only book?
In my world, absolutely. That’s usually the way that it works. Somebody will either be a booking agent or a manager. But not both.
As manager, do you negotiate recording, and film & TV-related contracts?
Absolutely. I work with labels and work on recording contracts. I also work on hiring publicists and work with things like podcasts, where I will hire a sub-agent to represent the podcast. I do everything and anything.
Most discussions of the future of performing arts tend to dwell on national and state issues. But the arts are truly local. Every small town in America has an arts program, whether it is theatre, dance, music, or whatever. Meanwhile, arts and cultural organizations have undergone tough economic times in recent years resulting in programming cutbacks, and increased attempts at fund-raising.
None of us have ever experienced anything like the changes of the past 5 years, including the continuing impact of COVID; the breakdown of music distribution that led to the rise of streaming which is now buckling under its own weight; and the convergence of music and social media.
Meanwhile, performers in all genres, and at all levels, face disastrous skyrocketing touring costs —with hotel, food, fuel, vehicle rentals, and personnel costs rapidly rising.
It is insane, especially for those coast-to-coast 7 to 12-week tours. It used to be the longer the tour the lower the costs. You could amortize it, but that’s not even the case anymore. It (touring) is getting prohibitive. The problem with the performing arts specifically, and especially with a dance company or a theatre company, is that they can’t supplement income with album sales or streaming. So, it (touring) is just an extra challenge. It is really hard.
With most rock, country, and hip-hop shows, there are from 15 to 20 to 40 personnel traveling. With a theatrical production or with an orchestra, you are essentially moving a Broadway show from city to city, and at each stage of the process now, the tour company is whittling down its choices.
If a date or two is blown out due to COVID, or by the weather, with a theatrical production or with an orchestra, and if it is halfway through the tour, then that could affect the financial welfare of the entire tour, especially impacting those performers from overseas.
Oh yes because the margins are so tight on the budgets with everything that you just said. As a business, we are all trying to kind of re-invent how we are doing this, and there is just no clear answer. The music industry, it’s not like law or going into medicine, where it’s clear-cut. You become an intern. Then being a resident, and then attending, and then…
You first study, graduate, and then go on to work between 10 to 14 years to become a doctor.
The music industry is not like that. There’s a million different ways to be successful, and in half of those ways, none of us have figured out yet what they are, which is both exciting and fun, but challenging also.
In bringing an international orchestra to America for a tour, if there’s a COVID incident, even one or two dates lost, it could be a nightmare.
Yes, with COVID we have the emergence of a new tour personnel, The COVID Safety Officer. With the Ukrainian Symphony tour, we had as many COVID tests as they could find. We are lucky in that the venues are caught up by now. They have strict protocols in place.
When playing bigger venues, the same union staff is in place whereas with PACs (performing arts centers) you may be dealing backstage with temporary freelance crews or with volunteers.
Yes, it’s true. But the volunteers are there because they want to be there. So they are doing everything that they can so they can be there. And they are doing it the right way. I almost don’t want to say it because I don’t want to jinx it, but we have been relatively lucky in terms of the amount of touring our artists do on the CAMI roster. It’s huge. On the last touring cycle that is ramping up about now, we were pretty lucky. We had a few people that had to leave tours, and we had to replace them, and that is always really challenging. Then we test, and we do the test after the test. There’s no easy way, but we’ve been powering through.
You are well-placed on both the commercial side of live music and in the performing arts world, a sector considered high maintenance, particularly with what has gone on with COVID. One so exact in detail. You usually aren’t dealing with a few members of a band and their representatives or just a handful of venue bookers.
In normal times, you deal with nearly 40 diverse parts, and you are trying to amass 20 to 40 dates, 18 months out front.
I actually really enjoy the length of time that we have in the performing arts. I started in the rock and roll world (working for photographer Danny Clinch), and before that, I interned at “Saturday Night Live” which is about the quickest turnaround for booking an artist. You are absolutely right about the performing arts in that we are planning one, two years ahead of time, and even three years in advance.
I do everything from booking the great orchestras from all over the world to booking acts for jazz clubs where, of course, the timing is completely different. But I really like the longer booking time. What I like about it is that first of all, it’s incredible for the artist in that they become connected to being like a salaried employee. So they can plan their lives a year or two years ahead. They can plan family vacations, and they know how much they are going to make. It gives them a basic business model much further in advance.
With COVID subsiding have you been able to return to that traditional 8 to 14-month performing arts booking cycle?
I am happy to report, yes. That is shown very clearly by the fact that my entire industry is gearing up right now for fall booking conferences. We will go to regional booking conferences and start planning with promoters and presenters for their Fall 2024, and their Spring 2025. That is what my team is working on right now, and that is what we are selling. The summer is always a little slow, but yes, we are back to that schedule. We are also filling in dates for 6 months from now, 4 months from now, but not a lot. We are really focused on the Fall of ’24, and the Spring of ’25.
The first conference is in Seattle over Labor Day (Sept. 5-8), and that is WAA which is the booking and conference for the Western Arts Alliance (that highlights artists from across dance, theater, and music disciplines).
No doubt you are also preparing for APAP (The Association of Performing Arts Presenters Global Performing Arts Conference, January 12-16, 2024) in New York City?
Exactly. The main conference me and my team prioritize is APAP which is a national booking conference. It is less international. It is more North American which really is where I’ve put most of my energy in the last 10 years. It truly and deeply understands the performing rights market in North America.
The annual APAP conference is the world’s leading forum and marketplace for the performing arts. Based in Washington D.C., APAP has 1,600 organizational and individual members and serves more than 5,000 performing arts professionals every year. Its members range from large performing arts centers in major cities, outdoor festivals, and rural community-focused organizations to academic institutions, as well as artists, and artist managers in all forms of dance, music, and theater.
With COVID, you began working from home.
I did. It was a very tough decision. A few weeks into it, when all of the closures were happening, they gave up the CAMI Music offices. We had these beautiful offices in the middle of Times Square. I had a view of where the ball drops from my office. But the offices were very expensive. Non-essential. Luckily, we got out of the lease which was no easy feat. Since then, the entire CAMI Music team has been working remotely. I like it. I was also able to hire a West Coast agent who lives on the West Coast which sounds pretty smart, but we had never done that before. We’ve got employees in Europe. We’ve got employees in the Midwest. We are all spread out.
I’m talking to you from a big Colonial (house) in Western Massachusetts which my husband Jordy (Jordy Freed, dir. of Partner Marketing & Strategy, Brand & Business Development, Video & Sound Products, Sony Corporation of America), and I recently bought.
It’s a huge lifestyle change.
So you are out of Brooklyn.
For the time being. I lived in Brooklyn for 17 ½ years. During maternity leave, we began working out of our home here in Western Massachusetts which is incredible. It is huge. It has a big yard, and it has nature everywhere. But I’ve really begun to miss the city.
The goal is to save up a get a small studio (in Manhattan) because we are going to be in and out. I still have so much business in New York. That is where all of the shows are. A lot of my clients are there. It just makes more sense coming in and out of Western Massachusetts to have a small studio in Manhattan.
Where are you in Western Massachusetts?
We are in a really nice area called the Highlands in Holyoke. We are right next to East Hampton, and North Hampton. I have an aunt and a cousin in East Hampton.
The Highlands was first known as Manchester Grounds.
It is a beautiful neighborhood. We are within walking distance of the Connecticut River. It is really nice. There’s an Amtrak train station like four minutes away that takes us directly into Penn Station.
CAMI Music was based at 165 West 57th Street in New York City from 1959 to 2005, when it moved to 1790 Broadway, a 1912 building at the corner of 58th Street at Columbus Circle.
Do you miss CAMI Music’s Times Square office?
Yes and no. I miss feeling like I am at the center of the universe, and I also had a great view of Central Park. I don’t miss commuting in and out of Times Square twice a day. I was coming in from Brooklyn. It was an hour and a half from Park Slope. I would get off at Times Square, right there on Broadway. Or sometimes, I would get out at Bryant Park, and walk from there. The commute on the subways from Brooklyn to Times Square was not so bad. It was the one block that I had to walk from the subways to my offices in Times Square, navigating all of the tourists that were stopping, taking photos, and asking questions. That took an hour in itself.
My wife and I recently stayed at the New York Marriott Marquis on Broadway, and to walk out into Times Square was just overwhelming.
It really smacks you in the face.
After 9/11 New York City was a more hospitable city. but in the past two years, it has become grittier.
I know. I can feel it. And it has changed. It is not the city that I fell in love with. I definitely hear what you are saying.
A year ago, you hired an agent on the West Coast.
Yes, I have a West Coast agent Daren Fuster, and he is fabulous. What is unique about him, and the CAMI Music model, is that he actually lives on the West Coast.
Where is Daren based?
Believe it or not, he’s in the Pacific North West in Oregon, just outside of Eugene.
Hiring an agent that lives on the West Coast is a first for CAMI Music.
Yeah, it’s a new school of thought. COVID was, of course, a terrible thing but one of the silver linings was how practical, and how helpful remote work can be. It is wonderful to have a West Coast agent on the West Coast that keeps the same hours. And Daren is great. He will drive, and see presenters. He will go skiing with presenters on weekends. That’s really cool.
CAMI Music also has personnel in the Midwest and Europe as well?
We had an agent who was living in Idaho, but now he’s spending his time between Idaho and Paris. That’s Adam Tilley. He is kind of bouncing around. He does a lot of work for us with our European-based artists. And then we have artist manager Javier Manzana, based in Valencia, Spain, who represents a lot of our conductors.
With much of the performing arts sector shuttered by COVID—as well as Columbia Artists Management (CAMI) closing down in 2020 after 90 years, and the buyout of another leading management agency, Opus 3 Artists, by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music the same year, what we witnessed was an overall restructuring of the American performing arts business.
Opus 3 Artists traces its roots to the pioneering role of the legendary impresario and artist manager Sol Hurok between the 1920s and 1970s. A successor organization, ICM Artists, was formed in 1976 as a sub-division of International Creative Management, and the company became independent again as Opus 3 Artists in 2006.
The shakeup actually started further back with the death of CAMI’s chairman and CEO Ronald Wilford in 2015. Following the death of “classical music’s biggest power broker,” there was the closure of Columbia Artist Management (CAMI), a giant in the performing arts business for 90 years.
Columbia Artist Management (CAMI) served an unsurpassed roster of top instrumentalists, conductors, opera singers, and other vocalists, orchestras, theatrical, musical attractions, and dance ensembles.
The agency worked with many of the greatest artists ever to perform on the concert stage, including sopranos Leontyne Price, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, and Renata Tebaldi; mezzo–soprano Risë Stevens; contralto Marian Anderson; tenors Jussi Björling, Mario Lanza, John McCormack, Lauritz Melchior, and Richard Tucker; bass–baritone George London; bass Paul Robeson; pianists Van Cliburn and Vladimir Horowitz; violinists Jascha Heifetz and Yehudi Menuhin; cellist Mstislav Rostropovich; conductors Herbert von Karajan, Eugene Ormandy, Antal Dorati, and Otto Klemperer; composer–conductors Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, and Igor Stravinsky; and composer-conductor–pianists Sergei Prokofiev and Sergei Rachmaninoff.
As COVID deepened, it became clear that all talent agencies were going to have much-reduced income. So the question became, “What do we do?”
I couldn’t agree with you more. It was a very shocking time. With Ronald passing there was no one person to really fill that role. For example, there’s the board at CAMI Music which is run and owned in partnership between the president of CAMI Music Jean-Jacques Cesbron, and Ronald’s son Chris Wilford. I didn’t get to work with Ronald Wilford for very long, unfortunately, but what I learned from him, and I saw through working for him, I see very much in my boss Jean-Jacques Cesbron. I also think you see it in other leaders in the field like (former CAMI personnel) Tim Fox (now at AMP Worldwide) or Doug Sheldon (Sheldon Artists), people that have gone off, and taken different paths.
The Columbia Artists Management (CAMI) closure after 90 years was one of the most shocking, and disruptive moments in American, if not global entertainment.
It was an institution. For 90 years, and to go belly-up in the pandemic, it shook our business as a whole. I found out only 24 hours before it was announced. CAMI Music had spun off a year prior. In 2004, CAMI Music was a subsidiary of Columbia Artists, and a few years later we became completely autonomous. We were our own company but, of course, with the same board still run Chris Wilford. Chris is very hands-off with the company, and he understands the music business. He was a touring musician, and he is a wealth of music knowledge. He has always been a great supporter of me, and all of CAMI Music, and what we do.
It was really hard watching our former parent company go under. CAMI Music was special because we were a separate entity. We are only 15 employees spread across the world. We are lean and mean and that saved us. Being international, being smaller, more boutique. My team is myself and four others.
Another industry-wide disruption happened in 2016 when CAMI’s Theatricals Department shut down. All the staff were let go, except its president Gary McAvay who had been at CAMI for over 40 years. He passed away in 2022 in New York City at 68. He had represented hundreds of titles and artists, including “Cats,” “Stomp,” “Chicago,” “Annie,” “Carousel,” “Sunset Boulevard,” “Grease,” and “Starlight Express.”
Gary died last February right before I was to meet with him in Memphis for a production (“Memphis Jookin’: The Show”) that he had been instrumental in helping us create at CAMI Music. He is sorely missed. He was a powerhouse. When Columbia Artists (CAMI) went under, Gary came to CAMI Music as a partner, and he brought some of his projects over to us, including “STOMP,” “The Four Phantoms,” and “Piaf, No Regrets.” Me and my team of bookers represented those projects for only a short time, unfortunately. He became one of our producers for the production with Lil Buck, an incredible dancer based out of Memphis. We were set to go, and on the eve of production with our partner The Orpheum in Memphis last February, Gary passed away about a week before. So he never got to see that production that he worked on.
(“Memphis Jookin’: The Show” was conceived and choreographed in part by its star, renowned local dancer Charles “Lil Buck” Riley, recognized as a celebrated exponent and importer of what is known as “jookin,’” an outgrowth of the “gangsta walk” and “buckin'” street-dance styles that accompanied the rise of Memphis hip-hop in the 1990s. The production made its world premiere on Feb. 11, 2022, at The Orpheum in Memphis.)
“Memphis Jookin’” toured nationally.
There were two sold-out shows at Lincoln Center last February. We are currently touring “Memphis Jookin,’” but we are looking to do some bigger projects. Lil Buck is part of the CAMI Music family. We love him, and we will keep creating opportunities for him.
Even prior to COVID, the entire arts ecosystem had evolved far beyond recognition. Dates were once traditionally booked as part of a subscription series. That aspect of the business had largely disappeared. Also, for decades, PACs booked shows directly, often risking a loss that was usually underwritten by sponsorship or endowments. As those waned pre-COVID, PACs began doing more commercially viable shows and encouraging co-promotes.
From experiences with COVID-related uncertainties, and the cancellations of tours and shows, have new business templates evolved in booking performing arts tours?
Absolutely, and they are still evolving day by day. When COVID hit, I always say I have never worked so hard to lose money in my life. It was exactly what you said. It was days and days of—I would never say canceled as you said—but we postponed shows. Every day, I’d wake up– and at CAMI where I’ve got a roster of 60 artists that I am directly responsible for touring anywhere from 5 to 50 dates a season—and I was postponing all day. And nobody really knew when it would end. It really became the manager’s job to stay positive, and to come up with some set of plans for postponement. Some were for a year. Some tours we postponed by 6 months.
Now we are seeing the result of those postponements, which is great. I have artists that have finished touring; some that are currently touring, and many of those dates were pre-pandemic.
With the bookings, it changed more because audiences behavior is changing. What we saw before the pandemic was a subscription model, where audience members were buying tickets long in advance, and were always showing up for shows. That is changing. We are not seeing advance ticket buyers the way that we did pre-pandemic. It is more like a commercial venue or a jazz club being walk up. Which is interesting, but it is harder to anticipate than what we are used to in the performing arts, fan-find subscription model.
What has also changed is the level of patronage for many PACs. When bringing in international orchestras and dance companies in past years PACs were able to assemble a high number of donors to cover costs, Much of that sponsorship has dried up.
Yeah, touring international orchestras has always been part of the lifeblood of the performing arts, and even before the pandemic one of the most difficult tours to accomplish logistically, Not CAMI Music tours, but just in the recent season we saw the Munich Orchestra tour canceled, and the Budapest Orchestra tour canceled.
A few months ago, I and my CAMI Music team finished touring the Ukrainian National Orchestra. It played everywhere from all over the country to the State Theatre in New Jersey, and Carnegie Hall in New York. It was subsidized, and we worked really hard to accomplish that.
But you are right, the donors that would put forth so much money to subsidize international orchestras are dwindling, and we are seeing fewer international orchestra series all over the country.
As well, the impact of PBS on the sector has greatly waned. At one point PBS was instrumental in breaking new stars well-suited to the performing rights sector. Today there don’t seem to be similar mediums or platforms that can create star vehicles in that world.
I disagree. This is something that I have been paying a lot of attention to lately, specifically in classical music. NPR, PBS, and competitions, those are what we used to look to in order to sign the new great classical star. I don’t believe that is true anymore. What I believe now is that you look at the digital streaming platforms, and you look to who is streaming Peaceful Piano. Classical music is being consumed. So who are the artists getting the most plays on playlists like (Spotify’s) Peaceful Piano?
One major difference between the performing arts world, and other sectors is that in pop, rock, country, and hip-hop, the goal of most artists is to be a big success; to be famous, if you like. That is many artists’ idea of what success is. But in the performing arts world, that is not necessarily what success is deemed to be. Success may be if the artist or a conductor is able to tour once or twice a year on their terms, and are able to perform and record the music that they want to, and collaborate with the people that they want to. That’s success on their terms. Many of them don’t seek or need major contracts or celebrity status.
So there’s different levels of career advancement being considered when you first meet with a potential client in the performing arts world to what their goals are.
Yeah, the definition of success, I couldn’t agree with you more. But it is different from artist to artist. How a conductor might define his or her success will be different from an instrumentalist, which will be different from an opera singer. So it is really different from artist to artist. Having initially studied classical music, and then going into rock and roll, and moving back into the performing arts, I understand that at the core of every discussion around the definition of success the guiding light is artistic integrity. Talking about your technique, your skill, what it means, what you can contribute to society, to communities, which I never felt was as a dominant a force in that regard in the pop and rock world. It was streaming numbers, major album deals, and music videos. That stuff matters. It definitely matters, and it plays a role in the performing arts, particularly with instrumentalists, but there is a lot more focus on artistic integrity and talent, and the hope that they will be defined and experienced through audiences.
Here’s another difference with performing arts. In general, the median age of emerging artists in pop, rock, country, and hip-hop skews far younger than the performing arts world, though there are instrumentalists and dancers of all ages as well. In other words, performers are viewed as being too old after reaching 30 in other genres. So there’s a contrast between the differences in ages with different goals.
Yes, we are trying to address that now. We want artists like violinist Ray Chen who has quite a young following. You see that in the way that he will do competitions (with non-professionals) that play with him, (along with the Los Angeles Philharmonic) at the Hollywood Bowl. It will be all digital, and young people submit videos online.
Former child prodigy Ray Chen, the 34-year-old Taiwanese-Australian is renowned for his savvy use of social media in making classical music more accessible to young people and expanding the reach of the art form.
Similarly, pianist/composer Chad Lawson is hailed as a streaming star creating classical music for the Spotify generation.
That is exactly right. Chad Lawson is a perfect example. As a1 Universal Decca artist, his music cuts across classical and jazz charts. He recently had five songs in the Top 25, and that was across jazz and classical. And his music is being consumed by people aged 25 to 40. That is his key demographic. We are seeing a lot of his music being consumed Monday to Thursday nights. We think that it is college students listening to piano music while they are studying.
Leading up to the birth of your son Max being born on May 31st, Chad’s music was a constant in your households.
Chad is an artist that I listen to. Not because he’s my client. but his music calms me down so much. This kid, yeah. My greatest hope is that he is going to be a percussionist like I was, but he will know music. That’s for sure.
Like so many I discovered Chad through Spotify.
I’m not surprised at all. (Streaming music) is creating a new consumer. If I am looking to see who I should find as a classical artist, I’m going to go to the record labels, and I am saying, “Who are your greatest streaming artists right now?” People are listening to classical music across Spotify, Apple Music, and all of the digital streaming platforms. Now what I am working intensely on trying to do is find a way to marry that streaming consumer with the live ticket buyer for performing arts centers. It is a very hard uphill battle, but that is the future. Getting someone to buy a ticket for an artist that starts by them listening to Spotify.
Streaming, and even more so, social networking, moves faster than word of mouth in the past. But you also have to look for a “sticky” factor with talent. Artists don’t mean anything commercially unless you are able to sell tickets to their performances.
I completely agree, and that is the tricky part. People, especially if they are independent, have gotten so used to media assets in the comfort of their own homes. Me included. I’m part of the problem. But there truly, truly is no replacement for live music. I remember right when the pandemic started, (American jazz keyboardist and composer) Chick Corea who I represented, was in our office, and nobody knew what was going to happen, and Chick Corea said, “Since the dawn of time one human has been entertaining another human. A cave man danced around the fire while other cavemen watched and clapped. That will never change. Humans will always entertain other humans.”
That moment has stuck with me, and I believe it. And I am working toward that goal every day.
You represented Chick until his passing in 2021.
I was with him and his wonderful wife Gayle when he performed at the 2020 Grammy Awards Premiere Ceremony with his Spanish Heart Band and won for or Best Latin Jazz Album for “Antidote.”
You seem to represent disparate acts that might choose to play anywhere.
Pre-pandemic I represented guitarist Pablo Sainz Villegas. Years ago, he did a concert on a floating stage on the Amazon River with Plácido Domingo. So you are right. There’s no cap on how crazy you can get with an instrumentalist in terms of where they can perform. I also represent ABT Studio Company (the American Ballet Theater & Studio Company), and they have certain requirements. They need a stage. They need wing space. But we still find ways to do outdoor shows with them.
What are the challenges touring soloists like pianist Chad Lawson or organist Cameron Carpenter, as opposed to a full company? Are there different challenges involved?
Sort of. It is easier to tour a soloist. It’s interesting that you bring up Cameron Carpenter because he’s arguably one of the great exceptions to that rule, simply because he is so specific to what he plays, which is a pipe organ. For years, we had to tour a pipe organ which was his own design, and the only one of its kind. It was like a rock and roll load-in with two full semi trucks, 88 speakers, and 8 sub-woofers. It was incredible. We toured it all over the country, all over the world.
A dance company like the Cirque company (Cirque FLIP Fabrique), needs to be routed to tour to make it financially possible, and successful which means you are not just selling an artist, and the idea to a venue. You are also selling the timing and a specific date. It’s two-fold. It has to be routed throughout the country with a perfectly traveled schedule.
Whereas a pianist like Chad Lawson, I can’t book him in Berlin, to fly out there and then fly home. Does he like to do that? No. I block the time so he can maximize his time in different parts of the world. Recently, he performed at the Royal Albert Hall (in London), and then he went to Amsterdam, and next he went to Berlin and Cologne. Then he was able to go on Spring Break with his kids.
Solo conductors are much easier to tour than big, big companies that have buses and trucks that you have to keep on the road, and you have to clump it (dates) together in the right way.
You have worked with the great Spanish flamenco dancer Farruquito, heir to one of the most renowned gypsy flamenco dynasties in Spain. He served three years in prison for manslaughter for a traffic accident, and he had some difficulty in obtaining a U.S. work visa.
That’s an interesting relationship. It is a partnership between CAMI Music and IMG, which are competing agencies. But his manager is a friend, so we have used the CAMI Music booking team, my team, to do his last several tours.
Canadian composer/conductor Howard Shore is a natural client for you given his stint as the original musical director of “Saturday Night Live” (from 1975-1980) and being the composer of the scores of “The Lord of the Rings,” and “The Hobbit” film trilogies. In addition to his three Academy Awards, Howard has also won three Golden Globe Awards and four Grammy. Awards.
Oh, he is incredible. And working with him is very full circle. I booked “The Music of Howard Shore” at Symphony Hall in Boston, and Howard has deep connections to Boston, of course. So we were sitting there having a coffee or a drink or something, and I got to tell him, “Howard, when I worked at ‘Saturday Night Live,’ there was a little picture of you taped above my desk that nobody had moved since the start of ‘Saturday Night Live.’ And it was like this temple to you. Everyone would look at it, and I stared at it every day. Now here we are, you are doing the music of ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ and we are having a brew in Boston which is really cool.”
I knew him when he was in the Toronto band Lighthouse in the late ‘60s.
Yeah, yeah. Well, he’s still chugging along. We are doing “Lord of the Rings” projects all over the world. We just did “Lord of the Rings” at Tanglewood.
Howard has been fighting unauthorized “Lord of the Rings” presentations in Europe and Ireland. He has taken legal action to prevent similar unofficial concerts in the future.
Yes, he put out a pretty adamant statement about it, and we are working on it.
A statement posted on Howard Shore’s official website reads: “We feel it is necessary to alert fans and followers of The Lord of the Rings in Concert that there are a number of concerts that have no association with Howard Shore in the UK and Germany being billed as “Der Herr der Ringe und der Hobbit” or “The Music of The Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit” produced by Star Entertainment.
“Please be warned, Howard Shore has nothing to do with these concerts. There is a current lawsuit in process to have the concerts stopped. The music that is being played is assembled from unauthorized… arrangements and not at the standard of quality insisted upon by Howard Shore.”
Will Sir James Galway (popularly known as, “The man with the golden flute) tour again? He is now 83. He and his wife, American-born flutist Lady Jeanne Galway, keep quite busy inMeggen, Switzerland with The Galway Flute Academy with daily master classes, weekend residencies, and 10-day flute festivals.
I think if it was up to him he never would have stopped touring (due to COVID restrictions), and he would still be touring. His last date was in New York with Lizzo at the 2023 Met Gala (April 30th). He definably will be back. We are talking about some ideas. He called me recently. His last big tour was his 80th birthday celebration tour. He toured all over the country, everywhere from West Palm Beach to Ann Arbor, Michigan, and his last date of the tour was right before the (air) flights began to shut down for the pandemic. He made it through a national tour, and it was great, On every single , the venues sent these huge cakes for his 80th birthday celebration. He has a gorgeous home with his wife Jeanne Galway in Switzerland, and from there they run their flute academy which takes up a lot of his time. But he does want to tour. He’s ready to hit the road again.
As multi-tasker you also work with celebrated dance companies, theatrical productions, orchestras, and conductors.
Yeah, it is so funny because I definitely am not an expert on anything, but I know just enough about every genre in the performing arts. I love that term “performing arts” because it can really mean anything, and we show that in our roster. We recently produced an immersive show, “Monet’s Garden” (that ran November 1, 2022 – April 16, 2023, in downtown Manhattan). It had been exhibited by its head producer, and our partner, Nepomuk Schessl, long before New York, all over Europe.
I just missed the show when I was in New York in June.
Oh no. We extended it three times because sales were so strong. it was in the oddest on Wall Street in the Seamen’s Bank Building (at 30 Wall St. between Nassau St. and William St.). Last summer, I spent several sweaty weekends running around New York City, going into abandoned buildings and spaces in Times Square, and the abandoned Manhattan Mall, looking for the right space. It was pretty tricky to go into some of these places, but we settled on Wall Street.
“Monet’s Garden”is 360-degree exhibition staged with state-of-the-art multimedia technology, which allows visitors to immerse themselves in the world and famous artworks of the French painter and founder of impressionist painting, Claude Monet.
It’s a beautiful, beautiful production. It really is. It is really beautiful.
So “Monet’s Garden” is still touring?
Correct. We are planning it for some cities which I’ll keep under wraps for now. Andreas and Nepomuk Schessl are amazing promoters for large art-scale shows. They brought us “Monet” for New York. So we, CAMI Music, produced it, and we are working now to help with presenting it in more cities in the U.S., and globally.
Your role in performing artists today is far different from your earlier days working for photographer Danny Clinch’s Three on the Tree Productions which specialized in music documentaries, and music videos including with Pearl Jam, Bruce Springsteen, and Blind Melon.
It was incredible. It was always about music, and I learned so much. I was with Danny for years. It was a great time. I ended up being production savvy and it changed my life.
And you were having the time of your life.
I was. Yeah, it was an interesting trip for me. The world of Danny was a very different world from going to APAP wearing a badge around my neck. APAP was a new world to me with my rock and roll background
How did you land that job with Danny after working at “Saturday Night Live?”
The internship at “Saturday Night Live” was a game changer for me, but so was working for Danny. He really took a risk with me. He knew that I had a music background, but I didn’t know much about film. I was recommended by someone at SNL. Danny had a wildly successful photo studio, but when I met him, he was starting up his film studio. That was the time that Pearl Jam had filmed their documentary (“Immagine in Cornice” in 2007) in Italy, and they needed someone for digital imaging. Of course, I had no idea what that meant, but I knew that I would figure it out.
Of course, I did.
We also shot a documentary in 2011 with My Morning Jacket, and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band called “Live at Preservation Hall: Louisiana Fairytale.”
I recall My Morning Jacket and New Orleans’ Preservation Hall Jazz Band touring together. MMJ’s frontman Jim James had earlier collaborated with the jazz group on a pair of tracks for a 2010 compilation, “Preservation: An Album to Benefit Preservation Hall & the Preservation Hall Music Outreach Program,” that also included their link-ups with Tom Waits, Merle Haggard, Brandi Carlile, Jason Isbell, Ani DeFranco, Pete Seeger, and others.
I got to work with Ben Jaffe (the creative director of Preservation Hall who plays tuba and double bass with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band), and all of the guys in Preservation Hall Jazz Band, I felt a deep connection to the way that they spoke about jazz; the way they spoke about history; the way that they felt about their contributions; and the meaning of their music, and the entertainment that they create. It made me really miss the art which is where I started as a classical percussionist.
How long did you intern at “Saturday Night Live?”
It was about a semester. I would have loved to have stayed on. I was lucky to be offered a position to come back after the semester as an employee, but I decided to finish college which, of course, I’m very glad that I did.
You had been at university before coming to New York?
Yeah, I went to a small conservatory in Columbus, Ohio, the Capital University Conservatory of Music.
There you studied music business and percussion.
Yeah, I was a percussionist. I was in the percussionist group playing drums.
You didn’t graduate. You came to New York.
Yeah. When I moved to New York, I had just turned 21. I rode in with a broken-down car with my boxes of things. I found a hotel in Brooklyn that let me put three months’ rent across four credit cards, and I got a job waiting tables on the off weeks from SNL. So I started working for “Saturday Night Live” just having turned 21 from Columbus, Ohio. It was quite a time for me.
You then returned to Columbus to graduate?
Yes. I was in a music business program, and my professor was wildly supportive for me taking a semester off and going to “Saturday Night Live.” So I came back to school. By that point, I was sold on New York. So I did something very, very hard which was graduating conservatory early. There’s no music program out there that is easy. They are all very intense. They are all very difficult. And they are all very expensive. I put myself through school, working several jobs. But I had so much support from my professor to graduate early with work-study programs. Then I just high-tailed it back to New York, and I started working for Danny.
You aren’t originally from Ohio.
I was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico then my mom who was pretty young, took me to Columbus where I lived with my grandmother, my mother and my great-grandmother for years. Then we moved around Ohio and then I went to college and then I got to New York. So yeah, I grew up in Columbus, Ohio.
And that’s pretty redneck.
And it wasn’t the nice part. So yeah.
You joined CAMI Music as a regional booking agent in August 2011.
I did. It’s so funny because I had no idea about what the business of the performing arts was.
C’mon over to the dark arts.
(Laughing) I loved working with Danny, but the business was changing. I wasn’t on the photo side, I was on the film side, and money for music videos and music documentaries was drying up. So I just started meeting everybody. I met publicists. I met label executives.
Then you met with CAMI Music.
I will never forget that. I literally sat in Ronald Wilford’s office, and I said, “I love what you do. It is very interesting to me, but I have never done this before.” I had no idea if this was going to work out. Jean-Jacques Cesbronn said, “Well, I’ve got a good feeling about you. You are hired.”
And that was 11 years ago.
What was the first project you worked on at CAMI Music?
The first artist I really directly became involved with creatively was the dancer Savion Glover.
The rock star of the tap. One none of the best tap dancers America has ever produced.
I’ll bet you don’t know that Savion’s grandmother Anna Lundy Lewis, who first noticed his musical talent, was the minister of music at New Hope Baptist Church in Newark where Whitney Houston was a choir girl. As was her music celebrity cousins, Dee Dee and Dionne Warwick previously. Whitney’s celebrated singing mother Cissy Houston is a lifelong active member of the congregation, and for more than 50 years, she has led the 200-member Youth Inspirational Choir at the church.
Oh my. All the years that I worked with Savion I didn’t know that. It’s so funny that never came up. Another fun fact about Savion is that I met my husband Jordy, then a jazz publicist for DL Media, at a Savion show when I was with Savion at The Blue Note in New York 11 years ago.
You almost immediately connected with Savion because the two of you discovered that you shared several points of mutual interest.
We found a connection because he considered himself a percussionist more than a dancer. So we really understood each other on that level. He was very, very attached to the world of jazz, and so was I. He wanted to do well as I did because I didn’t come from anything except waiting tables and learning from my mom who sold used cars. In the performing arts the word, “sales” is still sort of an ugly word, but I have never shied away from it. I love making money for my artists; whether it’s selling the right contract deal or selling the right production, I am always happy to do it. Savion really got excited with that approach. And it worked out really well. We did a show called “STePz” that toured all over the country. We did a holiday show. It was awesome.
I have found over the years that few performers know or understand the inner business machinations of entertainment. Nor do they often care to know. At one time, an artist in any genre might proclaim, “I record my music. and I tour. That’s what I do.”
They might then be told, “Well, we need you for some marketing, and do some interviews.”
They’d say, “Okay, I’ll do that.”
Now a performer has to be aware of so many different parts of their career. Things that labels and music publishers used to take care of, but don’t now do due to consolidations and eventual downsizing.
I couldn’t agree with you more. This might sound radical, but I believe it is actually criminal that students, even to this day with the amount of money that they are spending on music degrees, and they are not being given the tools they need to find a certain level of business success for themselves.
Performers must now be aware of the workings of recording, video and podcast production, bookings, live events, music publishing, social media, marketing, radio, and film and television production.
Yeah, it’s incredibly challenging, and I hope to be proven wrong in this but from what I see since graduating from a conservatory of music is that these educational institutions are not doing their job, and I think that it really hurts our ability to hire workers sometimes. You don’t study the performing arts if you are poor. You do it because you had piano lessons growing up, and you got to go to concerts.
Creatives, and not just their managers, must understand that they must learn the business. It’s like operating a small retail store. They need to know the costs and the avenues of distribution for what they are selling.
What about Black Box royalty payments in which unmatched royalties are distributed on a market share basis to music publishers or to those songwriters that do not have an exclusion clause in their contracts.
Or checking on the status of orphan works whose owners are hard or impossible to identify or locate?
Both cause the creator, writer, or artist to lose money, and not receive the proper monetary credit that their music has generated.
I’ll tell you right now that they are not being taught any of that. I speak at everything from the Lang Lang Foundation to my alma mater, the graduation class at Capital University Conservatory of Music, and I feel that schools hate me because I am mostly saying, “You are not learning everything that you need to learn. Study the business.” I’ll tell you when I find an artist at this level, at a CAMI Music level, they have to be able to advance their career for me to even consider them. And they are not being given those tools. They just can’t be instrumentalists anymore. They just can’t be dancers anymore. They have to be their own publicist. They have to be their own social media director.
Many entertainers say they don’t want to get involved with the business side of music but that’s how they get sandbagged in their careers. By misjudging, and misunderstanding management, music publishing, and recording contracts.
I tell performers to check out Todd and Jeff Brabec’s essential industry legal guide, “Music Money And Success: The Insider’s Guide to Making Money in the Music Business,” and Donald Passman’s “All You Need To Know About The Music Business.” Both books break down music industry information to very basic, easy-to-understand forms.
I feel like the more I learn, and the more I do this, the more that I don’t know.
Two decades ago clients or venue owners wouldn’t likely call you after hours. And certainly not on weekends. Working today, even from home, you have to be available almost 24/7.
It is really challenging. It is really, really changeling, especially because I have business that is happening all over the world. So I wake up at 7 A.M. to a barrage of texts and emails from Europe, and then I stay up late at night dealing with Asia. In the middle of it, I’ve got American hours. It’s a challenge, and it is something that I definitely feel that I am a part of the problem.
Working directly with artists in the past as a manager and music publisher, I had early morning hours calls from the UK when a client was locked out of a hotel room, and when a club refused to pay them.
So you know. It’s very stressful for myself and my entire team. I wish I knew a solution.
How do you plan holidays?
I just do. I take holidays. It just means I don’t jump on a Zoom when I’m on vacation. My favorite hobby is scuba diving. I tell my clients, “You are never more out of office than when you are 100 feet below the ocean’s surface.” That is when I’m out of touch.
Where do you and Jordy scuba?
We scuba mostly in a small island off of Honduras called Roatán (65 km. off the northern coast of Honduras, located between the islands of Utila and Guanaja). It is the second-largest barrier reef in the world. It is the best place in the world. We have made so many great friends in Roatán. The ocean, the coral, and the life there is incredible. The locals are incredible. We were on a dive boat several miles off the coast of Roatán when we first heard the word COVID. We were able to fly home, and then the world shut down a week later.
In Dec 2015, you survived a three-story apartment fire which erupted around 1:35 A.M. at 30 Richardson Street in Williamsburg, a block from McCarren Park. The fire quickly grew to a five-alarm blaze as about 200 firefighters rushed to put out the flames for nearly three hours. A man and a woman were killed. Firefighters found the male victim hours after finding the woman on the second floor.
You were inside your third-floor apartment when you woke to the sound of shattering windows in your kitchen. You were wearing a sleep mask and
you had earplugs in too, but you also heard your neighbor banging on the door and screaming. So you got down on the floor below the smoke and crawled over to the door.
Afterward, many of your artists and colleagues supported you because you lost everything. How do you survive that, and go on? That’s a tough one.
It is tough. It was really hard. I lost literally everything. I crawled out in the clothes that I was sleeping in. Everything was destroyed. This included an entire wall of photographs from my time at “Saturday Night Live.” All of the signed “Thank you Theresa” notes from Neil Young, and Sheryl Crow. All of the sheet music that I wrote in college. A snare drum that I had built myself. My grandmother’s engagement ring. It was really hard, but I had a slightly challenging childhood so I knew what it felt like to not feel safe in my home. So I had already developed the tools to deal with that, and I had my community of friends in Brooklyn, thank goodness. Also, the performing arts industry rallied around me.
Your clients and others supported a GoFundMe site on your behalf.
It was crazy. I’ve always said that if I was still working in rock and roll, I probably never would have gotten that kind of community support. Larry, it was really funny. For the first four months after the fire, every piece of clothing I wore was some kind of performing arts T-shirt. People were just sending me swag for months and months.
Here it is seven years later, and you are married with a new baby while living and working from a beautiful Colonial house in Western Massachusetts.
A mother and working lady with it all.
I’m supposed to make my first international trip in a couple of months. (Laughing) Oh my gosh, I don’t know how I am going to manage it.
Larry LeBlanc is widely recognized as one of the leading music industry journalists in the world. Before joining CelebrityAccess in 2008 as senior editor, he was the Canadian bureau chief of Billboard from 1991-2007 and Canadian editor of Record World from 1970-80. He was also a co-founder of the late Canadian music trade, The Record.
He has been quoted on music industry issues in hundreds of publications including Time, Forbes, and the London Times. He is co-author of the book “Music From Far And Wide,” and a Lifetime Member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
He is the recipient of the 2013 Walt Grealis Special Achievement Award, recognizing individuals who have made an impact on the Canadian music industry.
