On Friday, August 19, pianist Ethan Iverson added a new post to his
blog, Do the M@th, and announced it on
Twitter:
Iverson had learned that hedge fund billionaire John
Paulson, whose company bought Steinway Musical Instruments in 2013, was recently named to Donald Trump’s economic team.
“As far as I know,” Iverson wrote, “this post is the first
to make the Trump/Steinway connection explicit to an arts audience.”
The Sweeney is Michael Sweeney, former Steinway CEO, with
whom Iverson had a cordial relationship. Sweeney left the company last week. According
to CNBC, “A Steinway spokesman would not say if Sweeney, 58, resigned or
was forced out of the company, or reveal what led to him leaving.” Ron Losby,
Steinway president since 2008, has taken over as CEO.
Excerpts from Iverson’s post (not that you shouldn’t read it
yourself):
·
About Paulson: “Getting into bed with Donald
Trump crosses a line.”
·
“With the Paulson/Trump alliance in full effect,
I can’t in good conscience keep asking promoters to go out of their way to
provide me with Steinway pianos.”
·
Iverson mentions being “on the verge of becoming
a full-scale Steinway artist” and enjoying “some nice privileges.”
·
“I do think my fellow pianists should at least
be aware of this jarring dissonance at the top end of Steinway’s (pay) scale.”
·
“After all, while we all love beautiful things,
part of our greater worth is the company we keep.”
Iverson played a solo concert in Minneapolis on Saturday,
August 20. He answered a few questions afterward about his post and Steinway
decision.
PLE: You mention
being “on the verge of becoming a Steinway artist.”
Ethan Iverson: [I
was told] I could have all the privileges of being a Steinway artist, but I
wouldn’t become a full Steinway artist until I actually owned a Steinway. I
bought a low-end Boston, which is a great little piano, and was going to work
up to buying a Steinway. But I was already thinking about making requests for [Steinway]
pianos for certain venues. They gave us a great deal on the piano we used to
make our new album.
[Iverson is talking about It’s Hard, the new album by The Bad Plus, his trio with Reid
Anderson and Dave King, that comes out Aug. 26.]
Did you talk with
Reid and Dave about your post?
I talked to a couple of people in the industry and fellow
pianists. I didn’t really talk to Reid and Dave because for years The Bad Plus
has played whatever pianos are there at the venue. I think there’s plenty of room to worry about other things
about your musicianship before you become a piano diva, especially if you’re a
jazz player. If you’re playing virtuosic classical music for a living, that’s a
different kettle of fish.
Have you gotten any
pushback on your post?
Everybody seems to think I’m the hero of the hour. Both Marc-André Hamelin – in my opinion, the greatest
living classical pianist – and Thomas Adès – whom I think is the greatest
composer – tweeted positive things. Alex Ross put it on his blog [The Rest Is Noise] today. [Ross
called it “an important, dismaying read.”] A lot of people retweeted it.
Did something happen
that brought this on?
I was at dinner with a person who’s in the financial world,
and he told me Paulson was the Steinway owner and was Trump’s economic advisor.
I hadn’t connected those dots.
I think probably everyone in music just looked at the list
of Donald Trump economic advisors and didn’t really pay any attention. I didn’t
really pay any attention either, but I did see Paulson speak at the Steinway
gala [on March 14] and had a negative impression. Then I was like, “Wait a
minute, who is this guy?” And I started doing my research, and it became
obvious to me that this was something we should know about.
It’s worth knowing so people think, “Maybe I don’t need to
go with Steinway. Maybe I can go with someone else.” There’s the first
African-American piano maker, a guy named Warren Shadd, and I’ve been thinking I
should go down and play a Shadd piano. There are some extraordinary Yamahas
now. They’ve really upped their high-end game.
60 or 70 years ago, there were about 50 piano makers, and
now it’s essentially down to a couple, and everyone wants to play a Steinway because
it’s the only handmade one. It would be nice to have a little more competition
for Steinway.
This is a serious
decision for you as a pianist.
I lost a night of sleep over it. I thought, “Am I really
going to do this?” But I figured, “Who knows what the future brings?” It’s not
like I’m never going to play any Steinways anymore. There are Steinways at a
lot of venues. What I’m really giving up is being in that elite class of
Steinway pianists.
And that’s really not my personality anyway. I bang around
Bohemian style. That’s sort of what I believe in. And frankly, I think that
East Coast elite stuff is really a drag. And for someone like John Paulson, I
think almost any musician is probably not much … I can’t speak for Paulson, but
I’ve met various rich people on the East Coast, and sometimes they have an
appreciation of art only as something that ornaments their wealth. I think that
perspective is horrible.
Being economic advisor to Donald Trump, as I wrote, just
crosses the line.
What do you see as
the consequences for you personally? Beyond not being a Steinway artist?
I like some of the people at Steinway, and I know it was probably
not good for them that I posted this. So that was a little problematic. I don’t
want to make life worse for anybody. On the other hand, I’m just a little jazz
blogger. It’s hard to know what the consequences are of anything. But it was
totally dark and I turned on the light. And there might be consequences there,
I suppose. Who knows? Is this any of my business? Maybe I should just let it
lie.
Truthfully, I don’t think it’s going to make any difference
to anything. But if just a few people I know and respect who didn’t know about
it now know about it, and it’s part of the conversation, that’s as much as I
could hope for.
***
On August 23, Norman
Lebrecht featured Iverson’s post on his Slipped Disc blog, with (nice touch,
Norman) a photograph of a Steinway lying on its back.
