I saw that as both smart planning for the future and harbinger of things to come.

There was an old adage somewhere about awakening the dragon. Advice was to let it sleep. Advice not taken. The dragon awoke, and is.

Carnegie Hall is more a museum than hall. Anybody who wants to rent it can play there. Not so with the Met or Avery Fischer. The museum on the Carnegie second floor is almost a religious experience. I got to hold and conduct with Tchaikowsky's baton! Deeply honored and left with a bit of a headache from an experience most others would find insufficient for such a response.

Of the ~850 students at the school, when I did my grad work, <50 were American. Asians dominated, wich China far ahead of second place Korea.

Music may not be important in eyes of many, but it is a thermometer, or barometer of the health of a school, a city, and a country. Those with a flourishing music program also have thriving other professions and high quality of life. They go together.

I expect the Tiajin campus to become the main, and the NYC school may be destined to be a museum, like Carnegie Hall. A remembrance of what was.

Many major orchestras in America reorganized to avoid bankruptcy; another sign of the times. There was a time when that in Boston, New York, Philadephia and Chicago would be unthinkable.

America has the perfect leader to take the country into bankruptcy. It won't be the debt that does it. It will be the deficit brought on by his big beautiful bill, and other efforts to support his cleptocracy.