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Act Three

Upon turning sixty in 2005, Mr. Mauceri announced that he would be leaving the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and looked for ways to bring his varied experiences together for what he called, “Act Three.” In May of 2006, the Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina and its President, Erskine Bowles, unanimously elected him chancellor of the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem. Established by the General Assembly of North Carolina in 1963, NCSA is part of the UNC system and is America’s first public arts conservatory. The campus represents most of the elements of Mr. Mauceri’s life and work with its schools of music, dance, design & production, drama, and filmmaking.

During his first year as chancellor, Mr. Mauceri created a dynamic new model for an administrator of a conservatory by interweaving his conducting career with his students and faculty. Students from all of the school’s disciplines had direct contact with his workwith the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Detroit Symphony and the Hollywood Bowl, where he brought 21 high school ballet dancers to participate in his induction into the Bowl’sHall of Fame. He conducted NCSA’s all-school production of West Side Story and brought the entire production to the Ravinia Festival for a single sold-out performance.

In November of 2007, four NCSA string students played in the Radio Symphonieorchester-Wien (Vienna), under the chancellor’s direction, culminating a week of recitals, symposia and concerts commemorating the 50th anniversary of the death of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and in December of 2007, Mr. Mauceri published his first book, Celebrating “West Side Story,” for the newly created NCSA Press.

At the start of his third academic year, Chancellor Mauceri successfully led a name change for his school and on August 8, with the signature of Governor Mike Easley, the University of North Carolina became the official name of the institution. In addition, over fifty million dollars of new funds have been allocated for the school during his tenure and he has appointed world famous dancer, Ethan Stiefel, as Dean of Dance and world famous Hollywood producer, Jordan Kerner, as Dean of the School of Filmmaking.In spite of the world-wide economic downturn, Mr. Mauceri navigated UNCSA through years three and four of his tenure without canceling a single on-campus performance (more than 300 each year), and most recently, he began his fifth year having led a successful campaign to hold UNCSA harmless in spite of statewide cuts to all state agencies.

Mr. Mauceri continues to conduct, edit and write. He directed the world concert premiere of Dimitri Shostakovich’s score to the Soviet film, Hamlet (1964,) with six alumni actors from his school and the North Carolina Symphony, having received special permission from the composer’s widow. He brought a unique program of Entartete Musik (Hindemith, Weill and Korngold) to the Nashville Symphony. In addition, he delivered a major speech on the economic impact of the arts, directed a symposium of how the artscan be used as the center of all teaching and learning, and wrote an article on the use of critical editions in 19th century opera for Cambridge University Press. His arrangement of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue for Lang Lang, Herbie Hancock, and orchestra, was seen and heard by 100 million people at the 50th anniversary Grammy Awards Ceremony. He brought the UNCSA symphony, under his direction, to celebrate the reopening of the North Carolina Museum of Art, in the spring of 2010, with a triumphant performance of Mahler's Second Symphony, played within the museum. As chancellor, he has created alumni hubs in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C., and has spoken to Roarty Clubs, as well as at major symposia at Harvard University, the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Vienna University, the BBC, NPR, and PBS.

Mr. Mauceri lives in Winston-Salem and New York City with his wife, Betty. Their son, Benjamin, lives in Los Angeles and is Vice President of Business and Legal Affairs at Comedy Central.