News
August 31
"You've reached me on the busiest day of my professional life," Ed Cabellon, Assistant Director of Student Activities chuckled over the phone on Tuesday, the morning of Billy Joel's concert in Cohen. He sighed, half joking, half nervous. Neither sharp with sarcasm, nor heavy with regret, he uttered it as a matter of business. No big deal. The excitement, the nervousness, and the disbelief of a man largely responsible for coordinating one of the most complex events on the Tufts campus in recent years all seemed finely packed into a few superlative yet seemingly subdued words: "the busiest day of my professional life." Such a feeling of paradox - something so grand yet so simple - was not an uncommon emotion in the months, weeks, and days leading up to Joel's performance earlier this week. Nor could it be escaped during the show or in its aftermath. Whether in its infancy or just earlier this week, that idea, that gut-rumbling confusion, evoked with a flutter of four words across the lips, "Billy Joel at Tufts", has left the campus inundated. Some seemed to be willingly drowning, submerging ourselves in the sea of rumors and speculation, giddy with the thought of an American icon potentially creating his art in the very same room in which we have often slept through seemingly interminable classes of Bio 14. Still others have not been as eager, indifferent to the musician's work, skeptical of the organizers' projections, and put off by some students' zealous fandom. "What's the big deal?" they ask, "What's the big deal." Minutes before the show begins Tuesday night, the ten feet that separate the first row of seats from the stage in Cohen are alive with the patter of nervous feet. During these charged moments, before the lights dim and Billy Joel walks across the stage to slightly acknowledge a crowd 600-strong on its feet applauding, roaring, crying for his presence, Concert Board Chairmen Aaron Wright and Christian Trentacosta wander around cautiously, chatting with friends and clearing up minor details with Cabellon. The suits they wear fail to hide their subtle anxiety; they are happy but still very, very nervous. "I didn't sleep at all last night," Wright says, shaking his head and smiling. I ask Trentacosta what he expects to see tonight, thinking he'll respond with something along the lines of "a rock god" or maybe "a great show." Tretacosta, a native New Yorker, pauses and replies "I expect to see a lot of smiling faces." Minutes later, the duo stand upon the darkened stage, welcome the audience, and introduce Billy Joel. Trentacosta raises his fist in the air, imagining perhaps more than a few smiling faces in that unlit crowd roaring in front of him. But the event - that moment of cheering Jumbos hollering above the first few chords of Joel's first tune "Summer Highland Falls" - did not just materialize out of Cohen's stage. Months in the making, the Joel concert had in recent weeks been met with both a groundswell of support and often an impossible to ignore chorus of doubters and dissenters. The Fall Rap Show was cancelled; tickets were considerably more expensive than those for Joel shows at some other universities; there were less than 500 tickets available for a school that boasts an undergrad population numbering upwards of 5,000 students; the speed of people's computers or their Internet connection seemed to dictate their success in purchasing tickets; Sony Music, Joel's record label, took 60 tickets; the music department had to cancel some classes and reschedule others; $35,000; $35,000; $35,000. It is no surprise, then, that the collective voice of discontent, that recurring chorus of "What's the big deal," was not always far from whatever Joel-related news filled the Daily's. And it is no surprise that a few grimaces and groans could be caught Tuesday amidst the nodding heads and wide eyes, when rap fans were deprived of a fall show or when the some diehard Joel fans were deprived access to their hero when he was oh so close. The week before the concert, Wright was fully aware of these skeptics, but was confident in the choices he had made. "We did the best we could with the constraints we had," he said, speaking at first of the decision to sell tickets online via Tuftslife.com. But almost as the words left his mouth, it seemed as if he decided his argument ought to apply to Concert Board's general work over the past few weeks. Referring to the Rap Show cancellation, Wright acknowledged that not everyone on this campus would accept the decision. "I'd be upset too if the rock show were cancelled." The timing - Joel's desire to come in November, the same month during which the rap show is traditionally performed - led to the final decision, and coordinators claim that had Joel wanted to come in February, the Jazz Show would have been cut. "Some people are missing the big picture, they are more worried about their own tastes than what's best for the whole community." And is Joel what's best? "He transcends boundaries too," Wright added. "He's a rock god. Christian and I aren't his biggest fans, but we knew Billy Joel was not an opportunity we could turn up. He's universal." Wright, a New Jersey native, said this as if referring to gravity, or the boiling temperature of water: "He's universal, if you're an American you know 'Piano Man.' Who growing up in the '80s, hasn't sung 'Uptown Girl,' or seen those cheesy videos?" "We made a management decision and we think we did the right thing," Wright said of his teamwork with Trentacosta, other Board members, and Cabellon. "We're really committed to providing some great music, it makes it all worth it." "When we found we got it," Wright said of Joel's agency accepting Tufts' bid, "I was happy, I was smiling." Last Tuesday night as the sun rose on Tufts in a previously unknown post-Billy state, one was hard pressed to find anyone who wasn't smiling right along with Wright. "He's a big name and he's inter-generational," Jodi Neally, Director of Student Activities said. Neally joined Cabellon, Dean Bruce Reitman, Dean Kristine Dillon, Adele Bacow, and a number of trustees in the first few rows at Cohen. "Ed Cabellon and the Concert Board deserve a lot of credit," she said. President Larry Bacow, due to a prior commitment, missed the first half of the show, but snuck in to catch the last two hours. The morning after the concert, he tried to explain just exactly why the Board deserves that credit. "I loved the fact that it was organized by students with support from Ed Cabellon. It shows what we can accomplish when we work together." Bacow made a beeline for the side door immediately after Joel's last number and reached Joel on his way out of Cohen. "At the end of the concert I thanked Mr. Joel for a wonderful evening. I told him that all of Tufts appreciated his appearance, and that we would welcome him back to our campus any time." The president returned to his wife (an amateur pianist herself), while Joel's manager whisked the star into a car and off to Logan where they were to catch a late charter flight to his next venue. It's the morning of the concert and shortly after hearing from Cabellon that I'd reached him on the "busiest day" of his professional life, I sit down to chat for a few minutes. The Assistant Director's third floor Campus Center office is alive with action: students and faculty rush in and out asking questions, dropping off notes, picking up keys. That chaotic feel is made festive, though, as the office is scattered with balloons and streamers. The week before, Cabellon had been named Outstanding New Professional by both the National Association of Campus Activities and the National Association of Personnel Administrators. Like winning both an Oscar and a Grammy in the same week, Cabellon is happier, prouder, of decorations strewn about his office by students and faculty than the awards themselves. "How much do I love my students?" he asks as his cell phone vibrates across his desk. He picks it up and launches into something about the Student Activities van and a piano tuner. Cabellon, who was basically responsible for coordinating the efforts of various Tufts departments throughout the planning process, spoke of the cooperation between groups as disparate as TLSV and the TUPD. "It's had its challenges and its rewards," he said. "[It's] definitely a growing experience. This is my second year here, but it's this event that has really made me a part of the Tufts Community, made me feel a part of this place." But Cabellon would much rather talk about someone else, "I'm thrilled for Concert Board. They have been criticized, but no matter what you say, they have done a great job and done a lot for the students and the University." Together, Cabellon and the Concert Board did not build a new dorm or raise faculty salary, but still, Cabellon thinks that last Tuesday's event will have a lasting effect on Tufts. "Indirectly it will increase our recruitment. Tour guides can now say 'just last night we had Billy Joel.'" The word Tufts was uttered a number of times last Tuesday night on most of the local late night news programs, and Cabellon feels that some public recognition could not help but get prospective students interested. "It will increase our spirit, I think, though it will be easier to tell after the imprint of the show has set for a while. This also lays the groundwork for other big name artists," Cabellon continued, positive that if Tufts put on a perfect "show" of sorts for Joel, the musician and his people will spread the word that Tufts is a welcoming venue for artists of similar stature. There has been a lot of head nodding and smiling lately and around the Student Activities office - it seems almost infectious. When I return the next day to ask a few post-Billy questions, the streamers still hang from the ceiling, but this time they seem to evoke something beyond just the pride at having won a few awards. It feels like shrapnel from an explosion, the aftermath of something grand, something of a milestone. I enter Cabellon's inner office and the first chords of "A New York State of Mind" float out from his computer speakers. He looks at me. "The whole day from start to finish was perfect," he says. "Normally with events like this, something will go astray. Usually there is a moment when I say 'Oh my god!'" Cabellon grabs his face with mock shock and mouths the words 'Oh shit' silently. "But I didn't have that yesterday." Cabellon starts and doesn't let up; pride runs through him like caffeine and he talks freely, happily. "There was good karma on this one from the beginning. I felt school pride last night, people screaming, clapping in unison. They stood before he even played a song." Still he goes on, carefree, "If it had to take Billy Joel for people to feel that spirit, then great, people can say 'this is my school, our school.'" Cabellon does not shy away from his own surprise or pleasure. "Waking up today I think Tufts is a different place. I've been doing some reflecting. One thing I've definitely learned is that there is no 'way' to do something like this. We had to reinvent systems to make it work." As I left Cabellon's office Wednesday afternoon I ran into Trenatcosta sitting on a bench near the quad reading the Daily. Pleased with the way things had gone he asked me if I had a good time and what my favorite part of the show was. "Scenes form An Italian Restaurant," I confessed. "And yours?" "Ahhh, Piano Man," he laughed a little, admitting to the clich?© of his answer but not apologizing. He smiled and nodded his head again. "Yeah, Piano Man."
