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Performances are my emotional nourishment.
At the beginning, the withdrawal was terrible, but it also gave me some psychological distance.
Im 67, and I want one more chapter, she says.
(She claims to have no idea what that will be.)
Moss has presided over a citywide shift in arts presentation.
Lincoln Center struggled to shed its staid uptown identity, and its concert-music offerings were overwhelmingly oriented toward Europe.
Rather than supplying distilled excellence, she needed to offer ambiance, theatrics, and genre-mixing.
She didnt have to invent the wheel: Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Serious Fun!
summertime dance festival had launched in 1987.
Thats where the culture was going, she says.
There was a whole new generation of artists who were also tired of the routine.
As Lincoln Center flowered, so did the competition.
But Moss was astute at identifying and cultivating like-minded artists.
Over time, Moss has challenged the classical music Establishment to dismantle some of its stringently defended borders.
Whats happened to artists is tragic: entire livelihoods wiped out, she says.
Moss is not sanguine about the near future.
It may be years before touring performers can travel freely or audiences will feel comfortable packing into large auditoriums.
She says it will take a vaccine for Lincoln Center to go back to being Lincoln Center.
The performing-arts world that emerges after the emergency has ebbed may be thoroughly transformed.
I see art as a force of nature within the human psyche, she says.
Art has a way of finding the people who need it.
