The Art of Leadership: Diane Eber’s Path to The Egg

Practice, practice, practice – that’s how Diane Eber got to The Egg.

She practiced as an instrumentalist, booking agent and promoter, then executive director before following Peter Lesser in September as the Albany venue’s leader.

Eber joins numerous women venue and program chiefs: Elizabeth Sobol at SPAC, Sarah Craig at Caffe Lena, Mona Golub at Music Haven and Proctors Passport series, Margie Rosenkranz at the Eighth Step, Maggie Mancinelli-Cahill at CapRep, Teddie Foster at Universal Preservation Hall, and Joy Bennett at Old Songs. 

Eber’s first experience promoting a concert at Vassar set her course: enthusiastic self-proclaimed music nerd in love with running the show.

“The joy that I felt putting together an artist with an audience, it was unlike anything I ever felt before,” she said recently by phone. “I was hooked.”

Before Eber moved from onstage to backstage, her strict musician parents insisted she practice classical clarinet before her homework. 

“I toured Germany as a high school student with the Rochester Philharmonic Youth Orchestra,” Eber said. “I played saxophone in jazz bands, I played drums in a punk rock band.” She said, “The one thing they always always allowed and encouraged was a new instrument.” Her parents listened to classical and jazz but supported her “Even if their ears bled when we were rocking out” in the basement.

At Vassar, “I realized, after many years of training and the love that I felt for it, that it didn’t have to be tied to me performing.” She said, “I got the same full-body chills and that feeling that time stops existing, and I realized I was the one backstage, the one who put together the artist and the audience, I never looked back…I need to do this for a living.”

The first band she booked at Vassar was the Motet whose recent Lark Hall show brought Eber a happy, full-circle feeling. “A lot of the artists I booked, I’m still working with today,” she said, name-checking Marco Benevento, Medeski Martin and Wood and noting “a lot of jazz musicians from New York City would come up.” She said, “I was definitely not a music business major; I was a psychology major on paper but that was how I started.”

At Vassar, Eber “learned about booking agents, managers, how it all worked.”

Next stop on her journey from Rochester to Vassar, Brooklyn, then The Egg was as contract administrator at New York’s International Music Network (IMN) booking agency, learning, as she said, “how the business worked from that perspective.” 

Next, she worked for Warner Music Group, but soon found running large corporate events including its Grammy party “wasn’t close enough to the actual art.” So she took a pay cut to work for Celebrate Brooklyn!, “where I really learned the nuts and bolts of so many things.”

WORKING IN THE BRIC HOUSE

Two stints at BRIC, a promotion and presenting umbrella organization for Celebrate Brooklyn!, bookended her work as senior programmer and producer at the Office of Performing Arts and Film. There she booked shows for Celebrate Brooklyn!, Columbia University, the Museum of Natural History and other institutions in New York City and beyond; always strongly drawn to the most unusual. Booking shows at MASSMoCA, her first booking experience outside metro-New York, taught her about our music market and audiences.

At BRIC (founded in 1979 as Brooklyn Information and Culture) Eber moved up the ladder in a bustling non-profit that clusters display, performance and workspaces in the BRIC House (the former Strand Theater) and presents programs including the Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival in Prospect Park. Its neighbors include the Mark Morris Dance Company and the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

David Byrne played Eber’s first BRIC, in 2009. They became friends through a shared love of bicycling and “I guess because I wasn’t star-struck at all,” said Eber, never a Talking Heads fan. An instant fan of BRIC’s free bicycle valet service, Byrne rode a bicycle onstage and played a great show. Eber’s other favorite BRIC shows include indie rockers Sylvan Esso – a security guard’s video shows her dancing at one of their shows, very pregnant with her second son – and jazz-masters Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter. Star-struck at meeting Hancock backstage, “I think I literally couldn’t even say ‘Hi’!”

Proclaiming Hancock’s “Headhunters” her favorite all-time album, Eber said she learned to play saxophone improvising on “Chameleon” from it; and blasted it on the West Side Highway, racing to the hospital, in labor.

Other top BRIC shows were a tribute to free-jazz giant Ornette Coleman and a memorable night by the Books, a mixed media band that synced music to video.

She also developed a management style of trust and respect at BRIC with mentor and longtime Celebrate Brooklyn! chief Jack Walsh. 

“One of the things I learned from him is that your people have to trust you and know that you’ve got their back,” said Eber. “In this business, things can get tense,” which demands a culture of communal respect, care and support. Leaders must be open, and listen and be vulnerable.

“For many years I wasn’t the boss,” she said. “So I really worked my way up the ranks.” She began in programming at BRIC, then returned, in her second stint there, as executive producer and artistic director, then executive director.

Eber’s inclusive style impressed performer Taja Cheek who makes music as L’Rain; Eber booked L’Rain to play MASSMoCA, then enlisted her in a unique curatorial team.

“Diane is a great collaborator,” said Cheek, praising Eber’s humility and openness in inviting the performer to be BRIC’s first-ever artist-curator. “She really embraced all my ideas,” said Cheek, “and we would talk through things together in a lot of detail.”

Eber’s former colleague Emily Harney said, “Diane is a creative and inspiring leader who shepherded a large and diverse team to bring BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! through the challenges of emerging from COVID.” Harney said Eber’s every Eber decision is “always grounded in a love for and commitment to ambitious and exciting artistic and audience experiences. I look forward to seeing what she does at The Egg!”

After 11 years at BRIC, COVID shepherded Eber, guitarist husband Mike Eber and their two sons up the Hudson Valley to Kingston, and to The Egg.

Eber said, “We fled our beloved fourth floor walk up apartment in Ditmas Park and went upstate to live with the in-laws for five months; tasted life with a yard and we just couldn’t go back to Brooklyn.” In August 2020, they moved to Kingston with their sons, five and eight years old.

She said, “I knew about the Egg, I guess, forever.” Growing up in Rochester, it seemed to her a part of the skyline to the east. When she went from Vassar to her first Egg show in 2002 or ’03, “It was amazing and I was blown away.” So she followed The Egg’s programming while working downstate. 

“When this opportunity opened up, I was already living upstate and I was very intrigued,” she said, noting, “It was the space, the architecture, the magic of the space that convinced me.”

OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS, BIG SHOES AWAIT

Eber also knew that Peter Lesser, who led The Egg for 23 years, couldn’t be more revered if he’d built it with his bare hands.

“Peter did such a wonderful job of building this incredible legacy, with a great taste in music;,” Eber said. “Everything he booked has such high artistic integrity.” Bela Fleck, Laurie Anderson, David Byrne and other Egg performers, she said, were “artists that I’ve worked very closely with throughout the years.” Acknowledging Lesser’s stature and popularity, she said, “That was really nice to know that that was the sort of the energy that I’m walking into.”

BRIC and The Egg are both 45 years old; both non-profits are beloved in the communities they serve. “Everyone in Albany knows about The Egg,” Eber said, adding that multitudes see it everyday.  She said “There’s such a love for this place, so you have to build on that.”

“Nobody forgets their gig at the Egg,” Eber said, after asking musician friends about playing it. “On tour, you play a million venues and some are special. Celebrate Brooklyn! was similar, where it was very beloved by artists and that really spoke to me.” (So did) the acoustics and the fact that there isn’t a straight wall in the place, I love that. It’s a place that art can thrive.”

“I was just drawn to the uniqueness of the space, such an incredible space” said Eber, acknowledging it also presents unique challenges. “Now my family and I live upstate…and it’s hard to find opportunities where you really feel like you can craft a vision. And when I look at The Egg, I see so much room for potential and growth and opportunities. And that’s really exciting and a new challenge for me.”

As Mary Griffin, chair of The Egg’s board of directors, said in a statement, “Diane Eber brings the best of what we at The Egg hope for in an executive director: bold vision, deep connections in the world of performing arts and sincere respect for the power of artistic expression to both transport and transform our audience and community.”

AUDIENCE AND COMMUNITY: COLLABORATION

“The Egg is a next step for Caffe Lena artists who have outgrown our listening room, such as Tom Paxton, Chris Smither, Darlingside,” said Caffe Executive Director Sarah Craig. “For bands that want to play the Capital Region, it’s an important link between the club circuit and the really big concert halls. For many years there’s been good alignment (with The Egg) in our musical tastes, so there’s a lot of overlap in our audiences.”

“It’s a great facility; it’s a complicated facility, and I love their commitment to supporting New York State artists,” said Proctors Collaborative Executive Director Philip Morris. “We’ve partnered with them in projects including long-term residencies.” Morris said, “We’ve often called each other about shows offered to us;” then deferred to one another on which venue would be most appropriate for it. Morris said, “They’re a great partner and a vital part of the performance picture in this market.”

Eber brings enthusiasm for The Egg’s character, tradition and operations, plus practical experience on both sides of the stage, relationships with agents and artists and non-profit experience.  She hadn’t previously worked with a governing board, but this excites her, and she appreciates how venues here cooperate.

“I certainly recognize the amazing work that Philip (Morris) done, and I’m excited. I felt very welcome. I don’t see it as a threat at all, you know. I see them as a potential ally, as a community, sort of catalyst for all of us arts folks to kind of come together and work together…I think what we offer is different and that there’s room for both.”

Asked about her comments, Philip Morris said, “I totally agree….we’ve always been good partners.”

Despite New York City’s famously competitive cultural landscape – “like elbows jutting out,” said Eber – she helped build “this beautiful collaboration, especially among nonprofit presenters.” She said, “We were all friends, and we would all sit down, like a family doing your calendar” to avoid competing programming.

“I felt very welcomed by the other venues here,” Eber said. “There really is a true desire for collaboration, and sharing of knowledge and resources.”

NEXT!

Eber also acknowledged challenges.

“We’re in the middle of this kind of brutalist architecture, the Plaza, with weird parking,” she said. “I want to try and activate the Plaza as part of the experience so that you see the beautiful plaza lit up at night. It’s gorgeous.”

She also hopes to present simultaneous events on both stages (the 1,000-seat Kitty Carlisle Hart Theatre and the 400-seat Lewis Swyer Theatre), as well as outdoor stages – one ticket for everything.

Her first innovation, allowing visitors to bring alcoholic drinks to their seats, fits her idea of making fans feel “that this space is for them.” She acknowledged grumbles on Facebook and elsewhere, like the initial resistance Caffe Lena faced on introducing wine and beer sales, but said, “most people were really psyched.”

As Egg Board Chair Mary Griffin told the Times Union’s Steve Barnes, “This is one small part of the approach we knew and expected Diane would bring with her to Albany. Diane’s fresh perspective allows us to continue breaking new ground while keeping the Egg’s guest experience at the forefront.”

Eber said, “it’s about creating community in a space, in this incredible space…and how can art…live harmoniously with this incredible building that’s really more a piece of art itself than a normal building.”

She also seeks to foster artist residency and music-business education at The Egg. “I want every school kid in the Capitol Region to come through The Egg…and get a tour that can change kids’ lives.”

Her own family’s life has changed with the move upstate. Taking her two young boys to UPAC early on is the sort of experience that builds young audiences as she hopes to do at The Egg. Her guitarist husband Mike Eber is busy rehearsing and recording with his experimental rock band Zevious. “They’re a bunch of jazz heads that have been kind of burned out on jazz, and went for metal.”

As for booking shows at The Egg, Eber said gratefully, “Peter (Lesser) gave me the parting gift of booking a pretty full calendar” – approximately 70 shows through summer 2024. Eber has begun booking some shows already and by fall 2024 or spring 2025, she plans to book, announce and promote concerts as unified seasons. 

BRIC, Eber said, “had to reflect the diversity of Brooklyn…In New York, everything has to be super cutting edge to get people to pay attention to you.” She said, “I liked the idea that here, I’m certainly going to push boundaries, but also be responsive to what our audience wants.”

Eber said, “I feel very lucky to be entrusted with this gem. There’s only one Egg; creatively, artistically, I find that so inspiring. And when I think about the art that can fit in this space, I also find that very exciting.”