Peter Benoliel Lane

FAYETTEVILLE — Peter Lane was seeing a cello for the first time, and he didn’t quite know what to make of it.

Lane was in the living room of his family’s home in Woodside, Calif., staring curiously at the large stringed instrument. The cello belonged to a member of the Philadelphia String Quartet who was staying at the Lanes’ home while the quartet performed in the San Francisco Bay area.

“I’ll bet you can’t play ‘Frere Jacques’ on that,” said Lane, who was around 7 at the time.

Lane looked on in astonishment as the cellist played the French nursery song flawlessly. He followed with Camille Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals and several other selections.

“I went running into the kitchen and I said, ‘Mommy, Mommy, I want to do that,’” Lane recalls. “I had the opportunity to hear an instrument, and I fell in love immediately.”

That was a life-shaping moment for Lane, who went on to become a professional bass player before moving to performing arts administration. That connection, between child and art form, is something he’s always seeking to replicate for young people in Arkansas as president and chief executive officer of Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville.

Lane, 52, officially began at the center May 1, 2009. In less than 21 months, he has expanded it in ways that were once merely dreamed about.

Partnerships have been formed and strengthened with other area arts facilities, nonprofit and for-profit, as well as the University of Arkansas. New programs like Artosphere, a regional arts and nature festival that drew more than 15,000 people last year, have been launched. So too has Digging up Arkansas, an interactive play performed in schools that will teach more than 5,000 students about Arkansas history this year.

Perhaps most significantly, a long discussed expansion of the center has begun, with the December announcement that a new 2,200-seat theater will be built in Bentonville, part of an ambitious plan meant to ultimately redefine the performing arts scene in Northwest Arkansas.

Lane has been at the forefront, increasing the center’s reach through his seemingly limitless energy and enthusiasm.

“He’s got an unbelievable work ethic that puts him front and center, 24/7,” says Jeff Schomburger, chairman of the center’s board of directors and the man who led the search committee that brought Lane to Northwest Arkansas.

“He wears me out; I tell him that. ... We knew that when we chose Peter, we were going to have to strap our helmets on and get to work.”

To think, it wasn’t that long ago that Lane was unaware of the center’s existence.

When Lane was first contacted, roughly a year before he took the position, he had been in performing arts management for a quarter century, the last 20 years on the East Coast. He knew little about Arkansas - and even less about the Walton Arts Center.

He left extremely impressed after an interview that was mostly spent with him grilling board members on their vision for the center. Lane was certainly interested in the position, but the prospect of moving to Arkansas and commuting between Fayetteville and Villanova, Pa. - where his wife and two teenage sons live - wasn’t particularly appealing. (His sons are finishing high school in Pennsylvania.)

Lane talked it over with his uncle, Peter Benoliel, a former chairman of the board for the Philadelphia Orchestra as well as Lane’s lifelong mentor and the person for whom he is named. Ultimately, he decided to take the position and commute back as often as possible.

That’s not easy, given the scope of Lane’s responsibilities with Walton Arts Center, but he knows he made the right decision.

“At the end of the day, what we do is marry artists and audiences,” Lane says. “I’ve had the great pleasure of being on both sides. To be that facilitator, that person who helps people communicate and understand or get excited about [the arts], there’s no better job in the world.”

LEARNING FROM LEGENDS

Lane had no idea what was expected of him on that day in 1983, only that he was to show up by 9 a.m.

Lane arrived at the Palo Alto (Calif.) Chamber Orchestra’s offices bright and early, unsure of what exactly he would be doing on his first day as the orchestra’s part-time manager. A friend had said the orchestra was looking for someone, and Lane, who up until that point had made his living as a professional bass player, applied.

When Lane reported for work, orchestra founder Bill Whitson pointed him to a desk with Lane’s name on it and said, “Here’s your gig.”

For the next 2 1/2 years, Lane learned how to run an arts organization. He learned how to manage volunteers, read a balance sheet, sell tickets, market, put programs together and take an orchestra on tour.

“It was all trial by fire,” says Lane, who is classically trained as a bass player but no longer performs professionally, although he enjoys playing with his uncle (who plays the violin). “I had the confidence to do it because of my training as a musician. I knew what happened on stage; I just didn’t know what happened behind it. It was a neat transformation.”

SWITCH IN INSTRUMENT

Lane still played bass professionally at the time - he switched to the instrument from cello while in seventh grade - but found himself increasingly drawn into management. He worked with the Oakland Youth Symphony and the San Francisco Symphony in the mid-1980s, and put together the latter’s youth touring orchestra program.

Then he raised half a million dollars in a single year and took the youth orchestra on a tour of Europe in 1986.

Benoliel, who has a lifelong involvement with the performing arts, says it was apparent that even in his 20s, his nephew had what it takes to be an effective performing arts manager.

“I would say three things [are key],” Benoliel says. “One, he’s got a professional background and training as a musician. Two, he has a passion for music that goes beyond the classical realm, even though he’s grounded in that. Three, he has superb interpersonal skills, the ability to relate to a lot of people.”

Another tip from a friend paid off for Lane. He was playing in the Aspen (Colo.) Music Festival when someone said there was a job opportunity in New York.

With a sister already living there, Lane switched coasts and moved to New York. He was the executive director of the New York Pops for 10 years, working under the late music legend Lyle “Skitch” Henderson.

Henderson guided bands for Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby, and was the bandleader for The Tonight Show when Steve Allen and Johnny Carson were hosts.

“What Skitch taught me is that it’s really about the product, making sure people have a good time,” Lane says. “So what I’ve tried to do in my career since then [is] erase those barriers.”

At one of the first New York Pops concerts Lane attended at famed Carnegie Hall, he saw people in the audience singing along. Horrified, Lane sprinted to see Henderson and tell him what was happening.

Henderson smiled. What Lane considered a faux pas, Henderson viewed as people having fun, enjoying their time with the performing arts. It was a good thing, he told Lane.

“A light bulb went off,” Lane says. Henderson taught him that a patron of the arts didn’t have to sit bolt upright and politely applaud at a few designated times. What mattered was that a show connected with the audience.

Lane knows that people don’t respond to the same show in the same manner, nor should they. That’s why it’s important to find different ways to attract people to the arts - whether that’s through Broadway, Beatles impersonators or other productions, such as Blue Man Group or Digging up Arkansas.

Digging up Arkansas, a three-person play about Arkansas history written by Fayetteville’s Mike Thomas, has been performed around the state, and Lane hopes that next school year, even more children will see it. Lane says he learned more about Arkansas from the 45-minute show than he would have by reading a dozen books - and he can re-create the audience participation gestures to prove it.

Lane wants to find ways to connect all Arkansans to the arts.

“I’m strictly about a regional approach and a statewide approach,” Lane says. “We can’t afford not to be, because art doesn’t know any boundaries.”

LOVING THE ARTS

Lane frequently drove his sisters nuts.

The oldest of three children, Lane would barge into their rooms late at night, eager to play some new piece he had learned for the bass.

“You’d say, ‘Get out of my room!’ and he’d say, ‘No, listen to this,’” recalls sister Stephanie Lane-Kerman with a laugh.

Lane took up music shortly after his childhood encounter with the visiting cellist. He rarely needed to be pushed into practicing, because he displayed talent right away and had a genuine passion for music.

“It really came from my mom,” Lane-Kerman says. “She never pushed us; she just exposed us to things.”

Lane’s enthusiasm was nurtured by his instructors and the public schools he attended in Portola Valley, Calif., located near Woodside and not far from the San Francisco Bay area.

In a perfect world, Lane says, every kid would receive the same sort of education he did. All students took painting classes, spent time in the band or orchestra, and sang in the school choir - “even if you couldn’t hold a tune,” he says.

More arts opportunities existed outside of school. By age 15, Lane had played his first professional gig with the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra, the same orchestra he would manage a decade later, and by the time he earned his bachelor’s degree in music at San Francisco State University in 1982, he had played in a jazz trio, folk band and “practically every symphony in the Bay area.”

His first practice with the chamber orchestra had gone badly, and Whitson had to stop the music every few minutes to correct Lane. He thought he wasn’t going to be invited back, but after practice concluded, Whitson praised him, telling the teenager all he needed to do was practice the selections.

In Lane, Whitson saw someone who was passionate about the arts and simply needed refinement. Nearly 40 years later, Lane follows that example, choosing enthusiastic people over those who are polished but lacking passion.

“It’s much easier for me to teach someone who’s interested in the arts how to read a box-office statement or put an ad together, but it’s really hard for me to teach someone who’s versed in accounting or some other discipline how to be passionate about the art form,” Lane explains. “I think the most successful people in our world have a nall-consuming passion for the arts world.”

BUILDING HIS DREAM

Lane-Kerman says her brother has always been “a very upbeat, outgoing person,” and he needed that sort of enthusiasm when he left the Pops and became the president/CEO of the Mann Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia.

Lane dreamed of working in the outdoor cultural arts, but the place he chose had come across hard times andwas teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. By the time Lane left 10 years later, the debt had been wiped clean and the center’s mission had been redefined, as new shows attracted people who had never gone to the onetime summer home of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

“He rescued the place,” says Peter Gould, the former chairman of the Mann Center’s board. “He and his team really put the Mann back on the map as far as being a viable place for major groups to hold concerts.”

Lane took a similar position at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts (Bethel, N.Y.) in October 2007, but a difference of opinion over his duties between him and the chairman of the foundation that runs Bethel Woods led to him offering his resignation within a year.

He was working as a consultant when he was contacted about the Walton Arts Center position. The committee’s demands were high; board chairman Schomburger lists five specific criteria, including previous experience as a CEO, someone with passion for the arts - ideally a former professional artist - and someone willing to be a highly visible face for the center.

“We said, ‘We’re going to stretch ourselves and make this a national search,’” Schomburger says. “We were either going to get what we want or die trying.

“I couldn’t be more delighted to say Peter has really delivered in all five of the things we were going after.”

Lane lives on the Fayetteville square, and when the weather permits, he walks to work, where things are going well these days. During a time when performing arts centers around the nation are struggling, Walton Arts Center is connecting with more people than ever before, and the planned expansion will give it the opportunity to continue what Lane calls the “G word” - growth.

Lane is excited by Artosphere, the quality of the center’s programming and its strong donor base. What really makes him smile, though, is the thought that the center is connecting more kids to the arts.

“I had the opportunity for a cello to be right in my living room, for me to sit right up and look at it and see this great thing happen,” Lane says. “Not every kid has that opportunity, so our education programs here are so vital. That’s what makes it really exciting for me to be in Northwest Arkansas.”SELF PORTRAIT Peter Lane

DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH Nov. 10, 1958, San Francisco

MY HOBBY IS Sailing

MY FAVORITE PLACE IN THE WORLD IS Paris

ONE PLACE I WOULD LIKE TO VISIT IS The Galapagos Islands

IF I HAD MORE TIME, I WOULD Play bass in a jazz band

IF I HAD AN EXTRA HOUR EACH DAY I’d learn to tango

THE BEST ADVICE I EVER RECEIVED WAS From a friend: “You can never crossthe ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.” It’s attributed to Christopher Columbus.

ONE THING PEOPLE MIGHT BE SURPRISED TO LEARN ABOUT ME IS When sailing with my family, they call me Captain Bligh MY MUSICAL HERO GROWING UP WAS Pablo Casals

THE MUSICIANS I MOST ENJOY TODAY ARE Mstislav Rostropovich and Diana Krall

ONE WORD TO SUM ME UP Passionate