Benjamin Harkarvy: A Person of Quality, Integrity, and Passion

Brian Zeger

Everything about Ben spoke to the inner life. Anything which touched on the artistic or the personal (and he would be the first to argue that those are the same) was grist for his mill—but so was a trivial everyday incident, an article in the paper, a conversation between friends. To me, he was a philosopher, a wise man, what in Jewish tradition is called a "tzaddik," which suggests both wisdom and goodness.

We got to know each other through friends here in New York, but, like most New Yorkers, got together too infrequently, a loss I've been feeling keenly in these last weeks. We overlapped at the Appalachian Summer Festival in North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains, and there, we really got a chance to talk. About a minute after the car door closed on our drive to the restaurant, the talk was ranging from meditation techniques to emotional breakthroughs to classical repertoire, which Ben approached as an insider, not a listener. I learned more about him in those couple of evenings than I know about people whom I've known for years. He was disarmingly frank about his own complicated emotional journey—a frankness which encouraged honesty in others. Although he loved to talk, he was a great listener, which makes sense because he seemed, more than anything, to want to understand.

As a relative newcomer to dance (and a very part-time collaborator with dancers), I always wanted to hear him talk about whatever I'd just seen. I knew that his viewing was informed by a panoramic view of decades of work and a sixth sense about dancers and what made them tick. He was so generous: I remember him saying, about a piece which seemed willfully mysterious, "Well, it's a piece that keeps its secrets.... How often that line has come back to me in listening to music that I can't get the hang of! His excitement about a first piece of choreography by a young student was infectious and fresh: he worshipped process in all its forms.

I'll keep wondering what he would have made of this or that—a piece of music, a personal anecdote, a new friend. He showed how you can keep an open heart while applying standards learned and refined over a lifetime. Gratitude seems like a feeble word.

Brian Zeger, a faculty member since 1993, is director of concert activities for the Vocal Arts department.