“The conductor Roger Nierenberg took his Music Paradigm, an elaborate show-and-tell executive learning class based heavily on role playing, to the Kaplan Penthouse at Lincoln Center recently for an audience of nursing directors from NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital,” writes James Oestreich in Wednesday’s (9/17) New York Times. “Nierenberg, I thought, might as well have been selling snake oil. But no, I quickly realized, he was making real music and making good sense. ‘An orchestra is a great place to model organizational dysfunction,’ he said…. He showed how a performance might be adversely affected if the conductor micromanaged with his baton, eyes and gestures, or if the conductor were simply disengaged or fidgety…. ‘I never got so many emails,’ Wilhelmina Manzano, the senior vice president and chief nursing officer at NewYork-Presbyterian, said of the positive response she received.… The Music Paradigm is an outgrowth of Mr. Nierenberg’s outreach efforts as music director of the Stamford Symphony in Connecticut from 1980 to 2004 and of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra in Florida from 1984 to 1998…. The maestro says, ‘A community simply acts faster, more intelligently, more creatively and with more joy than a group that is primarily focused on its leader.’ ”
Posted September 18, 2014
