Manage costs, dream big
Peter Herrndorf, the head of the NAC, works hard to keep things in balance
Peter Herrndorf likes to dream big about the National Arts Centre. Recently reconfirmed in his post as CEO for two years, he is setting out perhaps the most ambitious schedule the centre that will hit the Big 50 in 2019 has seen in many long years.
“We want to be an organization that is left brain, right brain,” he said in a recent interview over lunch in Le Café.
“One side is very conscious of keeping a tight lid on costs and living with the constraints of tough times. The other side is the side that says, ‘let’s dream big.’ ”
That means big statements, and one of the most visible will involve the building itself. After almost five decades, it is in need of repair.
“By 2019 this building will be 50 years old, the production equipment and the facilities will be 50 years old. It was a building that was absolutely state-of-the-art when it opened in 1969, and now you don’t have to look very closely to see (it fraying at the edges). We are looking at all of that to see what we may be able to do to improve that as part of 2017 (the 150th birthday of the country) or as part of 2019.”
As previously reported in the Citizen, this will mean a major statement on Elgin Street, where Herrndorf is determined have the NAC “embrace the national capital and not have its back to the national capital.
“The second thing is that the National Arts Centre simply does not have the visibility that it should have downtown. And the third thing is, after almost 50 years a building gets tired. And (a bold architectural statement) has a way of refreshing. You get the best with the old and the new.”
The planning process is advancing, he says, adding that he expects to be able to start bringing a proposal to the City of Ottawa, the National Capital Commission and the federal government this year.
He’s not about to spill details yet, except to say that whatever happens, there will be more women’s washrooms in the renewed NAC.
“It is an issue that I get asked about almost every week. When the architects asked us if there was anything we had to have, everyone said women’s washrooms.”
He admits to being very impressed with how the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto managed to marry the old and the new when it folded a sleek glass and steel concert hall around its 19th century facility on Bloor Street, near the Royal Ontario Museum, another building with a big-time makeover that Herrndorf does not favour quite so much. None of this means that the NAC is looking to build a concert hall, he says.
“That’s something we can do. We can maintain the best of the building and make more of a statement.”
One fly in the ointment about this renewal plan is the decision of the City of Ottawa not to run a pedestrian walkway to the NAC from the LRT tunnel.
“We were disappointed the city did not grant a pedestrian walkway. I spent a lot of time talking to Jim Watson about this so I understand where he was coming from. (So) It’s hard, ultimately, to say somebody’s right or wrong here. (But) it’s not what we wanted.
“We are determined to plow ahead anyway. And the hope still is that the LRT brings lots of people into the core of the city and that has got to be good for the arts centre.”
On the right-brain side, there are big plans.
The NACO will tour China this fall. The details are expected soon. And in 2014, in honour of the start of the First World War, the orchestra will travel to Britain in October for concerts in London and in the area around Salisbury Plain where Canadian soldiers trained before being shipped to the killing fields like the Somme.
The plan is to play a big ceremonial concert in London in October 2014. “Then part of the hope is to take the orchestra to one or two of the cities on the plain in tribute as a thank you to those cities.”
And there are two more Scenes to host. The NAC’s Northern Scene festival, the largest gathering of artists from Yukon, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, Nunavik and Nunatsiavut ever presented outside the region, runs April 25 to May 4.
The Ontario Scene in 2015 “won’t be the kind of artists who are through here all the time,” promises Herrndorf. “It will be a fresh look at Ontario.”
And then in 2017, there will be a massive effort to honour the 150th birthday of Canada.
Expect a five-to-six weeklong Canada Scene featuring as many as 500 to 600 artists, he says. And then, somewhat cryptically, he says there will be one big national project that will involve the National Arts Centre with prominent organizations in five other cities.
“This kind of a project would open in each city and then all come together in Ottawa,” he says, likely around Canada Day. It’s a good chance that it will be a theatre project, he says, telling the story of Canada.
For an immigrant lad from the Netherlands, who came to Canada just after the Second World War, the idea of nation-building is paramount. He is fond of saying that this is the role of the NAC, “nation-building through the arts.”
As a young man Herrndorf was active in cultural endeavours, singing in choirs at school, that sort of thing. He would go on to a career in journalism, starting in newspapers, at the Brandon Sun before moving to television at the CBC and TV Ontario and magazines such as Toronto Life, where he helped found the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards, to finally working in one of the most prominent cultural institutions in Canada, the NAC.
When he finishes his latest appointment he will have spent 15 years as the CEO of the NAC.
“My appointments have always been short ones. The latest extension was two years,” he says. That’s at the behest of his wife, Eva Czigler, who remains in Toronto. “She keeps saying ‘the short ones I can live with’. She has been incredibly patient, but I don’t think she ever imagined I’d be here 13 years later.” Herrndorf, who is 72, spends 80 per cent of the time in Ottawa at the same apartment he has had on the ByWard Market for his tenure, and 20 per cent of the time in Toronto. “We have a date every Saturday at lunch.” And he’ll also make time for a basketball game with his son or a baseball game featuring his beloved Blue Jays. (He’s sure the new-look Jays will succeed this year BTW).
But for a man who once ran a magazine all about Toronto, he’s “really become certainly as much, if not more, of an Ottawa person.” And one suspects he really would like to still be here in 2019.
It’s not all fun and games, though. Herrndorf carries the weight of the NAC’s success or failure around with him.
On a recent night, he dropped into performances at all five halls at the NAC. : “I had to drop into all (of them). If you’re looking at a 40-percent house, it’s painful.”
He says his health is good after a brief battle with cancer. He was away for three months and now has been back on the job for six. “It reminded me of how boring recuperation is. It’s a really stimulating place. Who wouldn’t rather be doing that.”
One thing that will also happen under his watch is the replacement of Pinchas Zukerman as the music director of the NACO.
This is a critical appointment for the NAC. The music director is a “playing coach.”
Zukerman, for all the criticism that has been directed his way, is a world-class musical talent. He has made the orchestra much better and because of his presence the NACO has been able to recruit great players.
“It is very important that whomever comes after him be a formidable figure musically and have an ability to inspire the orchestra.”
“These are big shoes to fill. I’m not sure that people in Ottawa (realize) that they’ve got this world class musician/conductor living here. I think that when he leaves they are going to miss him terribly.”
Also part of Herrndorf ’s mandate is audience development, and he notices the age of the audience members taking their seats in Southam Hall. Attracting younger patrons is a concern and that’s where, he says, the music series NAC Presents and the Fourth Stage come in, both started under his watch. But still, the Fourth Stage seats maybe 100 people and the NAC Presents is rarely on the main stage. He also has high hopes for the English Theatre program under director Jillian Keilly.
Still, the challenge is part of the culture business these days. Every venue is wrestling with it.
When Herrndorf wants to take the pulse of his place of business he goes to his favourite spot, the Green Room, which is a small cafeteria in the bowels of the endless backstage that few members of the public ever see. It is the place where dancers and musicians, mingle with stagehands and administration types to gossip or bitch about the food.
“One thing about a job like this: you learn an enormous amount. So I have probably been to 500 classical concerts since I’ve been CEO. So you learn a great deal and it’s great for that.” For a guy who got his start in the Kiwanis music festival in Winnipeg, he really couldn’t have landed in a better place.