In Durham, At Duke

As I emerged from the passenger side of a green Mini Cooper to a wet Joe Van Gogh parking lot, I’m informed that Durham has been dubbed the smartest city in America. Reading from his BlackBerry, it’s appropriate that Aaron Greenwald is the one who tells me this. After all, he’s the type of person that got the city this distinction.

Greenwald does not have a Ph. D. He is not a professor. (This is, however, not to discredit his two degrees from Columbia and his Fulbright fellowship). When I see him, he tends to dress casually. Sartorial and work-appropriate, but I can’t recall ever spotting him in a tie. As director of Duke Performances, Greenwald’s influence on University life is a bit different. He’s not the ever-identifiable figure like the president, but his hand is visible every time you walk through the Bryan Center, past those Duke Performances posters. Even more, backed by a staff of six, he is changing the University arts culture one performance at a time.

Now in his third season at the helm of the organization, Greenwald has transformed Duke’s artistic culture, bringing top international performers such as Shen Wei, Laurie Anderson and Branford Marsalis to the University’s stage. But for every marquee name Greenwald draws, what’s distinguished him is his thematic approach to programming.

At the core of the three seasons Greenwald programmed is this self-conscious notion of Duke as premiere Southern institution, one that studies its place in the community and the role it serves. It’s a notion that you become increasingly aware of with every performance you see and with each conversation you have with Greenwald. It doesn’t overwhelm but does pervade. Of course Greenwald is not the only person at Duke working and­—that wicked buzzword—engaging with the community, but few are operating at the same level to examine and reconcile this long-standing schism.

Greenwald says that Duke’s task in relating to the community is tougher than its collegiate neighbors. UNC gets a pass because it’s public, and N.C. State because it identifies more as a technical school. “People in Durham and the larger community have this interesting relationship to Duke where they’re like, ‘I know there are a lot of really great people there, and I know there’s something to be gotten there, but it’s tough to access,’” he says. “Duke, at the other side—we have all these great people here and we want to make them available, but the delivery mechanisms are sometimes just not coherent.”

It becomes appropriate, then, that we are having this conversation off-campus.

His programming is situated in the community, seeking to draw in University members—students, especially—and those from outside the Gothic walls. In looking at the current season he’s programmed, that perspective becomes apparent. Earlier this year, Greenwald told me that the core of 2009-2010 season looks at how music and arts have arrived where they are, tracing the modern through the African diaspora from the farthest shores of Zanzibar through the Caribbean and into the South. Even physically, the programming has gone beyond Reynolds and Page to the Hayti Heritage Center and later to that East Campus bastion of anarchy and indie rock, the Duke Coffeehouse.

Duke, he says, is “a school whose endowment and wealth and funding literally came out of the soil of North Carolina. We’re making a real effort to locate our programming in that fertile soil.”

This is apparent in talking to Greenwald. In the space of one breath, he’ll go from talking about his love of the Dirty Projectors to modern music’s roots in Theolonius Monk. The first time I met him, we talked about the seminal post-punk band Les Savy Fav. In subsequent conversations, I’ve had to take notes and Google all the names he casually mentions. He knows his stuff.

But as much as the 30-something director and his appreciation of Brooklyn indie rockers are likely to appeal to a student audience, this isn’t exactly what’s distinguished his tenure. In fact, he is the first to admit that his predecessor, Kathy Silbiger, whom he says had “unimpeachable taste,” might have been more adventurous in her programming. Silbiger ran the Institute for the Arts, from whose ashes Duke Performances rose, for 22 years before retiring in 2006. And as adept and dedicated as she was, Greenwald says that the base audience had slid.

“She was doing quite well with the opportunity she was dealing with,” Provost Peter Lange says, telling me that there were visibility problems that were due in part to funding. But with the University’s 2006 Strategic Plan—culturally, focused on fostering a richer arts environment in a neo-Nasher era—these problems have deteriorated with the advent of readily available funding and the Allen Building’s support.

Enter Greenwald as interim director in January 2007 amid a large-scale national search for a permanent director. Foreshadowing things to come, he told The Chronicle in 2006 his appointment was a, “great opportunity to put forth a plan of how I want Duke Performances to operate.”

Scott Lindroth, vice provost for the arts, says Greenwald did not just “step in” to the post with his official appointment in January 2008. In many ways, his hiring following a successful first season of programming serves as testament to his abilities to form an organization that, under less capable hands, might have suffered a serious identity crisis.

After all, the 2006 Strategic Plan offers only a vague description of what the organization should be, the authors promising to “increase support for its programming, encourage national and international partnerships, and plan and implement major improvements in facilities.”

Indeed, Greenwald’s 2006 interview evinced what would come. Greenwald acknowledges the difficulty in forming an identity for Duke Performance in a vacuum. “In a sense, that’s good because we’ve had to figure out what Duke Performances has to be.” Lindroth says these are the things Greenwald mentioned when he interviewed for the post, and these are the things he has brought. And he’s lived up to every aspect of the Strategic Plan.

As much as the message is consistent between Greenwald’s Smith Warehouse office and the Allen Building, he assures that he is allowed incredible creative autonomy. Although Lange and Lindroth will admit to sending over the occasional programming suggestion, they say it’s Greenwald’s gig. “The biggest role I had was in getting Aaron,” Lange says.

But Lange has kept a good eye on what’s going on by consistently attending events. He cites the recent Sun Ra Arkestra and Mingus Big Band performance, one that took place at the same time as the Homecoming football game, as a perfect example of Duke Performances’ success, noting the mix of people he saw at the event, including his non-Duke-affiliated companion. Lange says this is what Duke Performances has succeeded in doing. “It builds community, and it builds shared experiences.”

But the provost has made one other important stride: subsidizing student tickets. Integral to building an audience and being at a university is mobilizing the student population. Greenwald said that he has tried to make programming interesting, appealing and accessible to students, going so far as to make the advertising student-friendly. But Lange’s subsidy, which makes all student tickets a mere $5, is playing its part.

Of course, numbers can always be better and it’s something Greenwald is aware of. Lange says he would like to see students leave Duke with “a more substantiated appreciation of the arts.” But Greenwald, in the nitty-gritty of things, knows this is a more difficult task than it seems.

“It’s a hard thing to define to a student not why Duke Performances exists, but why this is stuff, you know, that’s important and why you’ll enjoy it,” Greenwald tells me, seeking the right words. It’s the sort of existential crisis of his job. His baseline goal is to fill seats, but ultimately, it is the art that he values most.

He says, not surprisingly, that it all comes back to this idea of Duke. To Greenwald, these artistic experiences are core to the University’s educational mission. “You just have to at some level… believe an institution like Duke is fundamentally a liberal arts institution,” he told me. Duke Performance could, with its “high level of virtuosity” and “rigor,” change your life. Or it could not. “The Hallelujah Train,” for Lange, was the musical equivalent of a religious experience.

In all his goals, Greenwald remains confident three years in. “We’ve had missteps, but I feel like if you’re able to deliver a brand in that fashion with [this] level of integrity, people will start to come back again and again, and you’ll start to develop a community.”

Ticket sales remain on the rise, students are turning out in record numbers, and there are still two years left in the Strategic Plan. But for Greenwald, for Duke Performances, this train is only starting up.