Empire State College
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O H … It’s Magical It’s Magical (continued on page 6) Deddy Tzur ‘97 – immersed in music as a conductor, musician and composer
6 E M P I R E It’s Magical
Working with mentor Mel Rosenthal, he took photography and visual arts as well as liberal arts and music.
Like most modern composers, Tzur uses a variety of media to discover the voice of his composition. Sometimes he enjoys composing in his head then writing out the music on paper as composers of yore, or maybe just sitting at the piano and tinkling keys. More often than not, though, his work is done on the computer, creating sound design and arranging sequences via software.
He doesn’t remember an exact moment when he felt that he fi nally “broke through” as a working composer, although he points to his work on the soundtrack for the series Pensacola: Wings of Gold, with James Brolin. He created music for The New Addams Family (ABC Family), and Digimon (Disney). For fi lm, he has composed for Richie Rich’s Christmas Wish (Warner Brothers), Casper Meets Wendy (20th Century Fox) and Three Days (ABC Family). For his work in television, Tzur was recognized with a Telly Award and International Monitor Award.
conducted the Seattle, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv Symphony Orchestras, plus he created a CD for clothing retailer BCBG-Max Azria.
Currently, he is scoring an indepen- dent fi lm, King of Beggars, set in 17th century Russia. His web site notes that the score “integrates gypsy and Eastern European overtones with classical orchestral composi- tion to create a rich, dramatic musical setting.”
Although he loves composing music, doing it commercially can be hard. He needs to drum up business, fi nd clients, and get himself out there – what he terms “typical Hollywood schmoozing.” But the opportunity to work with a creative team – a TV producer, fi lm director or creative director for a game, makes it all worthwhile. Usually the creative team will view a work together, and, based on the general guidance of the director or producer, Tzur will begin to devise a score, some- times having to go back to tweak his work if something is not exactly as the client envisions. But all the effort pays off, he says, when he stands before the orchestra, baton in hand, and the music he’s imagined begins to fi ll the room ... then, “Oh, it’s magical!” m Tzur in the midst of his self-made magic. Breaking Out (continued from page 1) At Empire State College, we have wonderful opportunities to encourage students’ creativity. An emphasis on exploring ideas, rather than fi nding or parroting back the “right” answers; the chance to make intellectual connections to life experience; to investigate a particular interest or question in a one-to-one tutorial; to bring students and faculty together in residencies such as at the Adirondack/Environmental, Women’s Studies and the Keep Mills Symposium to explore specifi c issues and concepts, and residencies are all chances to enhance creative as well as critical thinking. There are constantly other opportunities being cooked up, such as the Northeast Center’s teach-in on creativity, FORUM East’s Creativity in the Workplace study, creative writing courses, interdisciplinary studies that bring divergent disciplines together to study an idea, and the many faculty members who are engaging their students with questions that invite investigation and divergent thinking. The fact that we are an institution which consistently asks students to demon- strate their learning through writing (which we now know is an important tool not only for thinking as well as expres- sion but also for discovery), assures students the occasion to synthesize new knowledge with experience and previous learning – to discover exciting, unpredictable connections, and to engage in deep thinking.
The Romantic poet Keats coined the term “negative capa- bility.” He was referring to the desirable capacity to hold (or tolerate) “uncertainties, mysteries, doubts,” enabling unconventional juxtapositions of facts and concepts that lead to imaginative insight and suspended judgment. In other words, allowing people to resist the rush to resolu- tion – a particularly troubling, and accelerating, condition of contemporary life. In an era of escalating capabilities for nuclear annihilation, an enhanced focus on “negative capa- bility” – and its resulting opportunity for creative outcomes – could be not only a useful tool for better pedagogy, but, on a grand scale, a lifesaving one. m
E M P I R E 7 W hat exactly does a Broadway producer do? “That’s a hard question to answer,” said Jennifer Manocherian ’74. Manocherian, who has produced or co-produced such Broadway hits as “Caroline and Change,” “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” “Stomp,” “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” “The Crucible,” “Damn Yankees” and others, then went on to explain: “A lead producer reads a lot of scripts, sees workshops, acquires property, options plays and puts together a team.
“The producer hires a director, who is a key person, and you have to make sure he or she is on the same page,”she continued. “The director then hires the designer, does the casting and every- thing else, so it is essential that the director has the same vision.”
After the director, the second most important person the producer brings on board is the general manager to oversee the business end of the produc- tion, she explained. Once a show is up and running, the producer is the one who keeps an eye on the selling and marketing of the show, ensuring it is run like a business that will, it is hoped, earn its investors’ money back and more. Because, of course, one very important thing a producer does is raise money.
Occasionally, a producer may be brought in at the 11th hour, right before an opening, and is responsible for anything from raising money to sitting in on meetings to offering in an opinion.
Manocherian, the mother of fi ve children, and wife of an Iranian-born businessman, came to producing later in life. Growing up in Connecticut as the daughter of a working mother – albeit a mother who worked at home writing successful cookbooks – Manocherian began college at Barnard, even though having a career wasn’t in her sights at the time. Like many women of her generation (she’s “I think only people in the theater know what a producer is. The public does not know. It knows a writer writes, an actor acts, and a director tells them what to do. A producer raises money. Well, he does, and in some cases that’s all he does. But the workers in the theater know that this is not the real thing. A producer is a rare, para- doxical genius – hard headed, soft hearted, cautious, reckless, a hopeful innocent in fair weather, a stern pilot in stormy weather, a mathematician who prefers to ignore the laws of mathematics and trust intuition, an idealist, a realist, a practical dreamer, a sophisticated gambler, a stage-struck child. That’s a producer.” – Oscar Hammerstein II Defi ning Her Life as a Producer Jennifer Manocherian ’74 fi nds success in second career on the Great White Way
8 E M P I R E 67) she left college early, at 20, after marrying her husband, and immediately started a family. She wanted to fi nish her degree – her parents didn’t look kindly on not having a college educa- tion – so she enrolled at Empire State College, in Manhattan, attracted to the fl exibility. She went on to earn her master’s degree to become a family therapist, where she specialized in divorce mediation.
Manocherian worked nearly a decade in that fi eld before being drawn to theater. She had always enjoyed a good play or musical, and began investing small amounts in shows before she eventually got involved in producing. She took a job with a lead producer where she’d “show up in her offi ce every day. Part of the deal was to learn from her,” she said. She discovered that she had the knack for raising money – fi rst among people she knew and then other investors. “I started by doing outreach to everyone I knew who could possibly afford to invest and raised money that way – basically from people who were supporting me, not necessarily theater buffs. I have moved past them, as loyalty only goes so far – unless you got them into a cash cow of a show, at which time they became addicted. Over the years, I have come to know people who are theater buffs – not so much individual investors, as fellow producers with whom I partner to raise money.”
Making plays, after all, also is a business, and someone who has a track record of making money for investors will fi nd others willing to go in on a show. However, the opposite is also true: if a producer has had a string of shows that have lost money, it may be hard to scare up capital.
For Manocherian, the decision to switch careers in mid- life has been a stunning success. “Caroline and Change,” a pre-Civil rights era drama about the relationship between a black housekeeper and the young child of the household, was a critical and popular success, and garnered a nomination for a 2004 Tony Award for best musical, as well as a Drama Desk Award nomination for outstanding new musical. “Thoroughly Modern Millie” won both a 2002 Tony for best musical and Drama Desk Award for outstanding new musical. That same year, “The Crucible” was nominated for a Tony for best play. A number of other projects have been nominated for Tonys and Drama Desk awards over the years.
Manocherian reads scripts and goes to plays in workshop to fi nd properties that she responds to. Then she puts on her businesswoman’s hat to determine whether the property has a chance of commercial success. If not, she has to pass. (Noncommerical scripts by good playwrights likely will be produced by nonprofi t theaters, sometimes with corporate sponsorship, she explains).
Manocherian is the fi rst to admit that although it’s hard work, much of what she does depends on dumb luck. For example, one of the fi rst plays she produced ran off-Broadway in a cabaret. It had been open for two weeks before The New
to keep it up and running until the reviews or good word of mouth gets out, by two weeks, the reserve was depleted, and what was needed was a resuscitation by means of a glowing review in a make-or-break outlet like the Times. So the critic showed up and wrote a glowing review. Unfortunately, the review came out on a Saturday before Memorial Day (Saturdays are notoriously the least read paper of the week) and was placed in the social pages, not theater. So not very many people ever saw the review, she said, and the show closed shortly after. “That was just bad luck,” Manocherian said.
Citing a more recent example, Manocherian noted that “The Woman in White,” which drew raves in its London run, closed because of the misfortune of its leading lady’s diagnosis of breast cancer just as the play was opening. Besides being at the whim of fate, “you’re at the mercy of a few critics.” Some shows are “critic proof” with strong word of mouth – she cited “Mama Mia,” “Jersey Boys” and “Wicked” – however, “very few shows are like that. If The New York Times pans your show it’s over.”
So what can be done to buffet the winds of fate? “First you must make a smart choice in terms of projects, attract a good team and a great director. Then it takes good reviews, a good business strategy, a good marketing strategy,” and, yes, “dumb luck.”
m Defi ning Her Life (continued from page 7) Tell us your story! We are seeking contributions for future issues of the magazine. Are you in: the food industry? law enforcement or fi re services? science, math or technology? If you are, please contact Hope Ferguson, editor, at Hope.Ferguson@esc.edu. 2005 DONORS REPORT Dear Friends, Sincerely, David L. Smith Chairman, Empire State College Foundation Board of Directors As the newly elected chairman of the Empire State College Foundation Board of Directors, I was delighted to learn that I would have the honor of introducing the 2005 Donors
and friends who made gifts in 2005. The college is literally exploding with activity, from our new and exciting construction and renovation projects, to new program developments in the area of science and mathematics and the recent honoring of founding President Jim Hall. All of this activity requires an ever increasing demand for resources, and the recently announced capital campaign, Learners First: The Campaign for Empire State College is off to a terrifi c start thanks to all of you. While this report focuses on the campaign, it should not be forgotten that the campaign ultimately represents the means by which we are seeking to accomplish one objective: providing a range of quality educational oppor- tunities to adult students. Today “nontraditional education” and “online learning” are common alternatives to the classroom-based approach to education. However, when Empire State College was founded 35 years ago by then SUNY Chancellor Ernest L. Boyer, these terms had rarely been heard. Fortunately, Chancellor Boyer recognized the need for a new kind of insti- tution and Empire State College has been providing fl exible instructional alternatives designed to meet the needs of working adults ever since. Today, with nearly 17,000 students enrolled, Empire State College is helping more adult learners than ever before. Empire State College’s ability to expand and evolve to meet the needs of an ever-changing society is largely a due to the generosity of our alumni, employees and friends. Not only do your contributions provide direct support to help with the development of the college’s new programs and initiatives, they also serve to demonstrate to the world that Empire State College graduates recognize the importance of this distinctive institution. On behalf of the Empire State College Foundation Board, I want to express my sincere thanks to each and every person and group listed in the following pages for your support of the college and its students. Your continued support is inspiring to us all. David Smith
THE EMPIRE SOCIETY Our sincerest gratitude is extended to the members of The Empire Society. With their gifts of $5,000 or more, these donors contrib- uted 67 percent of the $1,054,033 received by the Empire State College Foundation. We are honored to have the support of these donors listed below. Adirondack Trust Company
Frederick W. Baum Helen M. Baum Kathryn G. Boyer ’78 Phillip B. Catchings
Phyllis E. Dake Foundation Phyllis E. Dake
Long Island Community Foundation
Stephen Keep Mills ’89 New York Community Trust
Barbara A. O’Connell ’76 A. Lindsay and Olive B. O’Connor Foundation Richard Lounsbery Foundation
The Desmond Joy, Mccoola and Zilch, Architects and Planners, P.C.
Anonymous Dina Beaumont
Leslie G. Cohen Brenda L. Copeland ’92, ’94 James Cornell ’02 John J. Corrou ’94 Linda Rodgers Emory ’77 GE Foundation Hugh B. Hammett Hewlett Packard Company Susan T. Hollis Jeremy Jones James W. Lytle William and Shirley McClary Claire M. Olds Chad ’99 and Catherine Roberts Rodgers Family Foundation, Inc. Edward G. Saueracker Claudia Shacter- deChabert ’90 Hugh Leo Walsh Virginia Weiss ’88 * David C. Yamada ’99 EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE 2005 Recognition Societies The Empire Society $5,000 +
Recognizes those donors who contribute $5,000 or more in one fund year. The Hour Society $2,371 - $4,999
This society provides a unique opportunity for individuals to make a contribution equivalent to the cost of operating the entire college – its centers, units and programs – for one hour.
Donors in this category provide the funds which represent the tuition and fees for a half-time student at Empire State College. The Kindred Society $563 - $1,180 Donors at this level are recognized for providing funds representative of the average cost of childcare during a term for those students juggling their career and family responsibilities while pursuing their degree. The Academic Society $390 - $562
Donors in this society provide the funds which represent the average cost of books and supplies for a full-time student for one 16-week session.
Recognizes those donors who contribute $5 for each year since the college was founded in 1971. The Mentor Society $114 - $169
Established to recognize the unique and signifi cant relationship between student and mentor, donors at this level provide the funds which represent the average cost for a student to meet with his/her mentor three times.
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