Go behind the scenes of ‘Conductors and Coaches’
Carolina Performing arts executive director Alison Friedman shares the backstory of the third video in the collaboration with Carolina Athletics.
Sports and music collide in Carolina Performing Arts’ latest “Artists are Athletes/Athletes are Artists” video, “Conductors and Coaches.”
The initiative celebrates the common ground between athletics and the arts at Carolina, focusing on two outstanding individuals in their respective fields. This time around, the video features Tar Heel lacrosse legend Jenny Levy and acclaimed music conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Levy has been the head coach of Carolina’s women’s lacrosse team since 1994 and has led Carolina to four NCAA championships. Nézet-Séguin serves as music director of Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain, New York’s Metropolitan Opera and the Philadelphia Orchestra, who have visited Carolina for various performances and student workshops since 2023.
Alison Friedman, the James and Susan Moeser executive and artistic director of CPA, shared behind-the-scenes information about how the video came together and what to expect from CPA in the coming months.
What made CPA want to come back to the “Artists Are Athletes/Athletes Are Artists” campaign for a third time?
This new episode is exciting because it takes the original focus on individual artists and athletes from the earlier videos and shows what elite leadership in arts and athletics has in common: grit, determination, discipline and problem-solving, in order to inspire a group of individuals to become greater than the sum of their parts.
What leadership has in common across arts and athletics is the ability to get the best out of people and bring them together for a shared goal.
What led CPA to want to focus on Levy and Nézet-Séguin for “Conductors and Coaches”?
Jenny and Yannick are both representations of positive leaders who do not compromise their standards.
Yannick is a star who, on top of all his other accomplishments, recently became one of the youngest conductors to lead the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Concert. And now we’re going to have a multiyear partnership with him and the Philadelphia Orchestra. So he’s tried and true — Carolina all the way through.
Jenny is a multinational-award-winning, generational coach. Attention must be paid. And the two of them have similar energies, so it was joyous to get them together.
How has CPA’s collaboration with Carolina Athletics been throughout this process?
It’s been awesome. They get it from the jump. From the first “Artists Are Athletes/Athletes Are Artists” video with men’s basketball to the next one with women’s soccer to this one, they’ve been the easiest and best collaborators.
There’s so much openness on their end, and every time we bring a new idea, they’re just about game for anything.
The latest campaign also speaks to the variety of CPA’s programming. What types of programming does CPA offer audiences?
We offer different things to different people, whether you like big, dramatic shows or more intimate experiences. We ensure we deliver arts experiences that can appeal to different tastes and different interests.
What’s less visible is all the work we do with students, faculty, researchers and community partners across the Triangle. Artists are researchers, and CPA is the matchmaker for so many collaborations across disciplines, from health and medicine to history and geography, so that artists, researchers and students benefit from bringing brilliant minds and creative ideas together to help further discovery and innovation.
Learn more about “Conductors and Coaches” and watch the video.
