Now a major Amazon.com TV series starring Gabriel Garcia Bernal. From her debut recital at Carnegie Hall to performing with the orchestras of Les Miserables and Miss Saigon, oboist Blair Tindall has been playing classical music professionally for over twenty-five years. She's also lived the secret life of musicians who survive hand to mouth, trading sex and drugs for low-paying gigs and the promise of winning a rare symphony position or a lucrative solo recording contract. In Mozart in the Jungle, Tindall describes her graduation from the North Carolina School of the Arts to the backbiting New York classical music scene, a world where Tindall and her fellow classical musicians often play drunk, high, or hopelessly hung-over, live in decrepit apartments, and perform in hazardous conditions. (In the cramped confines of a Broadway pit, the decibel level of one instrument is equal to the sound of a chain saw.) Mozart in the Jungle offers a stark contrast between the rarefied experiences of overpaid classical musician superstars and those of the working-class musicians. For lovers of classical music, Mozart in the Jungle is the first true, behind-the-scenes look at what goes on backstage and in the Broadway pit.
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āItās just me, Donald!ā Janet shouted, punching the mechanical doorbell. One, two, three deadbolts unlocked. The door creaked open and music blasted out.
A window shot open up above. āJesus fucking Christ, will you shut the fuck up?ā A Gristedeās bag sailed out the window over our heads, just missing me but spraying coffee grounds everywhere else.
A scruffy man in a stained yellow T-shirt pulled us inside, barricading the door with a five-foot pole lock anchored to the floor. Two Virgin Mary candles from a local bodega flickered in the darkness to the beat of music pulsing from huge old Klipsch speakers. I could smell, faintly, gas leaking from somewhere and mildew creeping across the gray walls. Through the metal accordion grate on the windows, mountains of garbage accumulated in the shaft. My heart started beating faster.
How did classical music ever bring me to this place?
Three men I knew howled with laughter on the frayed brown sofa. āDude, Iāll never get over him fucking his sister.ā Stan choked on his words. āItās so out.ā
Donald just shrugged and pulled on the fat joint that was making its rounds.
āYeah, I know. Now their kidās fucking his aunt,ā Milton chimed in, pushing his stringy blond bangs aside to see the knobs on a large vacuum-tube amplifier. āListen to this riff. Man, youāre not gonna believe.ā The record blared, and they were silent for a moment.
Stan sighed during a lull in the music. āThose cats could really play.ā
I watched Janet bend over the desk to snort cocaine through a straw. Iād never done coke, but I was feeling pressured to try Donaldās stash too. Donald drummed his fingers on the table, regarding me suspiciously. Suddenly, his attention shifted to Milton, who sprang back to the couch to roll a crisp
100 bill into a tube.
āMiltieās chasing the dragon, man,ā Billy, the third one, sputtered. āHeās totally chasing that shit.ā He doubled over with laughter, gasping for breath. Confused, Janet looked at Milton and cocked her head, the straw dangling between her fingers.
āYou know how it is, man: trying to stay up, get the buzz back, you gotta do more blow. Gotta chase the dragon,ā said Milton almost defensively, cutting two lines of coke on the coffee table. He leaned over with his
100 tube, and the lines disappeared.
āNo, man, I meant the real dragon.ā Billy chortled, knocking a tin of Szechuan noodles onto the rug. āThe one in the opera. Itās Siegfried, man. The giant turns into a dragon. Guards the trollsā gold. Shit. People think Star Wars invented this fucking stuff.ā An operatic bass wailed through the recordās pops and scratches.
āGoddam, sounds like heās coming,ā said Milton, sneezing violently. āWagnerās so out. Whatās with those Valkyries?ā The words tumbled out, and he choked on his own laughter. āPointy, dude. Torpedo tits.ā
Billy got up and switched records, carefully slipping the first one into its faded jacket. He dropped the needle, and brass instruments played a religious tune. āValhalla, man.ā He sighed, folding his hands reverentially. āCastle of the gods. Power. Power and glory, man.ā The windows vibrated as the music rose and fell.
Milton took a long swig of Beckās. āWhat kind of Wagner tubas they playing, Paxman? Alexander? Itās Vienna Phil: Solti, right? Damn, theyāre nailing it.ā He was shouting over the din. He wiped his nose and then smeared back a cowlick in a seamless motion.
These guys had fire in their bellies, I thought. I watched Janet hand Donald
250 and tuck a Baggie of coke into her purse. Young and inexperienced, I wanted this in-crowd of classical musicians to accept me so I would be asked to play with them in the cityās hottest orchestras and chamber music groups. Iād already started playing oboe as a substitute in the New York Philharmonic, even though I was still in school. At twenty-two I was too scared to do coke, though, so I tried to appear nonchalant by propping my black alligator sandals on the coffee table.
āOooh, nice shoes, Blair. Whatād you play at the Phil tonight? No, wait wait wait.ā Milton was ogling my feet. With a toothpick, he arranged a cocaine flower pattern on my toenail and snorted through the bill. Everyone exploded in laughter.
āI need more blow, Donald. I got stage band rehearsal tomorrow,ā said Stan. āCāmon, how much? Gimme a break. Meistersinger, dude. Six hours long, man!ā The intercom buzzed and Donald walked to answer it.
āBilly, you got GƶtterdƤmmerung?ā Billy nodded, pulling a box of LPs from a ripped Associated Supermarkets paper bag.
āTwilight of the gods. The end, man. Redemption. Oh, man. Beautiful. Gold. Oh, yeah, magic fire.ā
I wiggled my toes, admiring the expensive shoes bought with one of my New York Philharmonic paychecks.
āThe gods go up in flames,ā bubbled Milton. Billy dropped the needle, and everyone listened hard. As the music grew to its climax, he screamed over the finale.
āNothing like it!ā he shouted. āDonāt you love it when Valhalla finally crashes down?ā
First Movement Appassionata Sonata
Looking southeast over New York City, from the Allendale Apartments at Ninety-ninth Street and West End Avenue.
CHAPTER
1
The Magic Flute
WHEN I WAS seven years old, I wanted a magic dress. Our family had just moved to Vienna, Austria, by way of a summerās voyage across the Atlantic, and every corner of my strange and wonderful new world was filled with fantastic stories, beautiful music, and paintings about real kings and queens.
Fairy-princess clothes, like nothing Iād seen back home in North Carolina, were everywhere. The native garb of the Austrian provinces was adorned with pleats and flounces. Museums displayed golden robes from the Hapsburg Empire. Ballerinas at the opera house twirled on point in pink satin shoes and fluffy tulle skirts. Even ordinary girls wore pretty dirndl dresses that looked like costumes.
Iād looked at pictures of Europe in my grandparentsā stash of National Geographics, and now it all came to life. Iād never seen huge old churches, cobblestone streets, or snow-capped mountains at home. The worldās tallest Ferris wheel and the real blue Danube made Vienna into a childās wonderland.
Europe also cast its spell on my parents, who had almost never traveled abroad. Both born in 1921, they were the first in their families with college degrees, and our year in Vienna immersed them in the culture, history, and arts theyād come to love.
My father had just been appointed a visiting lecturer in American history at the University of Vienna. Like many World War II vets, Dad was educated under the GI Bill after returning from duty, in his case earning a PhD in the history of the American South. By 1958, he had settled into a suburban professorās position in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, which aside from the university was a quiet spot. There were occasional concerts, and the Varsity showed first-run films uptown. Dinner out meant the S & W Cafeteria over in Durham.
Before the trip, my mother had exercised her wry humor by naming our toy boats after our ship, the SS Atlantic, then sinking them at bath time. She showed me pictures of the vessel, the pier, and the āwomen and children firstā emergency drills, which turned out to be true. Nothing she said could have prepared me for the glamour on board, however.
It was 1967, and people traveling on ocean liners took dressing for dinner seriously. A string trio played as my brother, Bruce, and I checked out the grown-ups in their long gowns and dinner jackets; there was even a top hat like the ones in New Yorker cartoons. The captain could have been a movie star in his epauletted whites. As an enormous tuxedoed Arab twirled his cigar, I could not look away from an exotic darkness and blue-black hair Iād never before seen.
On the seventh day, land rose from the horizon. Casablanca! Mosques and minarets. Ancient buildings, fountains, paving stones. I smelled strange thingsāspices, maybeāand heard bleating goats and shouts from food stalls. Since my idea of good eating meant processed lunch-meat, I gawked at entire animals roasting. Beside a vat of turtle soup, a man wailed like a grieving widow, blowing tunes through his Moroccan rhieta, a sort of snake charmerās reed instrument. Men raced by in white cotton djellabas, tassels bobbing on their red fezzes.
We sailed to Mallorca, Nice, and Genoa. In each strange city, I slung my shoulder bag diagonally across my plain jumper dress for security. At the last port, we transferred to an overnight train bound for Vienna. There, amid loud sirens and clanging trolleys, our sprawling apartment overlooked the cupola of an old wooden food market, which literally sat in the middle of a busy intersection.
Dad soon traveled to Munich, bringing back a white Volkswagen bug he had bought there. In it, we bounced down the autobahn to weekends in Bucharest, Belgrade, and Budapest. In Thessaloniki, I remember the Aegeanās aquamarine sea, white stucco houses, and ancient ruins. In Capri, the surf had carved the Blue Grotto, a natural vaulted cave accessible only by a tiny opening for boats. On the Hungarian border, I set a toe onto Communist soil and tried to understand the meaning of āIron Curtain.ā
The sixties were a tumultuous period of change around the world, but none of it touched Vienna, which felt locked in the past. We immersed ourselves in Austrian treats, sampling schnitzel at the Augustinerkeller, sugary cream horns at Konditorei, and apricot Sacher torte and cocoa smothered in whipped cream. On KƤrntnerstrasse, a string quartet played Beethoven for ten-schilling coins pedestrians threw into an open violin case.
Classical music was everywhere in Vienna. Franz Leharās operetta The Merry Widow played near our apartment at the Volksoperaāthe Peopleās Operaāwhose music filled Viennaās streets. During shopping expeditions at the nineteenth-century market hall on our street, light streamed in from windows far above our heads, and the buildingās walls sealed us into everyday local life. The butcher sang arias off-key as he wrapped Die Presse around our meat. The old woman who sold us milk clotted with butter hummed a familiar Merry Widow tune.
Even the white Lipizzaner stallions at the Spanish Riding School danced to classical music, as they had since 1572. Their arena looked just like a ballroom or concert hall, with chandeliers hanging above riders wearing bicorne hats and tailcoats, guiding their horses through routines of synchronized prancing.
We met other Americans, gathering for parties in the American Embassy and private dinners at home. At Thanksgiving, I played with our hostessās Christmas doll, Krampus, an Austrian archenemy of St. Nick, and listened to a pretty first-grade schoolteacher from Chicago. She said sheād won a singing contest, and the prize had brought he...
