New leader takes the reins at LIU Post's Tilles Center

Outside Tilles Center for the Performing Arts, lamppost signs trumpeting its status as “Long Island’s premier concert venue” are meant to catch your eye, and no one is more keenly aware of them than Tom Dunn.

On Aug. 15, Dunn, who grew up in Levittown and turns 51 in December, began work as executive director of the center at LIU Post in Brookville. It’s up to him to maintain the brand and those bragging rights — and build upon them.

“I’m really excited to continue to elevate and expand the programming,” said Dunn, who’s got a $6 million annual budget and more than 20 years of experience from leadership positions in the arts. “My primary responsibility is to create an engaging and dynamic world-class schedule of events here.”

“The other side of my responsibilities is fiscal management and leading a team,” he added. “My short-term priorities are the 2022-23 season. That’s where my energies are focused.”

Season 42 at Tilles, like previous ones, features a diverse lineup of 70-plus music, dance, theater and other events. They’ll be presented at the 2,200-seat concert hall and the more intimate 504-seat Krasnoff Theater.

Daryl Hall, a touring production of the 2015 Tony Award-nominated “Fiddler on the Roof,” Penn and Teller, Neil deGrasse Tyson and LI’s own Patti LuPone are a few of the upcoming pop-flavored events.

Your tastes lean more Classical? They’ve got you covered with the American Ballet Theatre, string quartets from the New York Philharmonic and Juilliard, and the Lviv National Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine, which, Dunn said, “we’re honored to be presenting at this moment in time.”

“There is really something for everyone,” according to Dunn, who said most of the programming was in place before his arrival. “Still, longer term, I really do want to think about capacities for growth.”

During our mid-July chat at Tilles, Dunn reeled off ideas already bubbling in his brain. Summer festivals — jazz, Americana, electronic. Building partnerships with outside promoters. Writers’ talks. Podcasts.

“There are really many ways to sort of move the needle in terms of continuing to engage this community,” he said.

Making a significant difference requires not just fresh, bold ideas, but devising ways to realize them. It’s a two-tiered challenge for which Dunn is uniquely qualified, according to Reynold Levy, former president of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

About 20 years ago, Levy hand-picked Dunn for his senior management team overseeing the $1.2 billion physical redevelopment of the world-famous campus on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

“Tom was the first person I hired,” Levy told Newsday. “He is one of the rare people who has his head in the clouds and his feet planted firmly on the ground. Ultimately in the arts, realizing an important vision requires resources, requires teamwork, requires a variety of constituencies and nowhere more so than a university environment.”

Dunn checks off all those boxes, said Levy. At Lincoln Center, Dunn managed operations in David Geffen Hall and Alice Tully Hall, and other on- and off-campus venues. Most significantly during his 16 years there, he was a founding director of David Rubenstein Atrium, a performance space and visitor center.

“I was lucky enough to create the programs there,” said Dunn. “It took the best of what happened at Lincoln Center and shared it with the community at no cost. All the performances were free.” These included artists from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and screenings as part of the New York Film Festival.

Dunn has directed the Southampton Arts Center, an organization focused on inclusivity and community-minded programming, since 2018.

“Southampton Arts Center is anchored in visual art, but it’s not a museum,” said Dunn. Its multidisciplinary programming that spans art, music, film, photography and other genres held enormous appeal for him.

In addition to guiding SAC through the COVID-19 pandemic, Dunn cultivated relationships with National Geographic, International Center of Photography, Hamptons Jazz Fest and other groups.

“We brought in some vibrant programming for the Southampton community,” he said. Beyond the Streets, which showcases graffiti and street art, was featured, as was Hamptons Doc Fest.

“We’re a documentary film festival. We don’t have brick-and-mortar space,” said Hamptons Doc Fest founder and executive director Jacqui Lofaro. “We are very careful about who we collaborate with.”

Dunn’s spirit and enthusiasm were key to their working relationship and, Lofaro said, turned Southampton Arts Center into “the perfect venue for us.”

‘A lot to work with’

The fact that Tilles is part of a university is an added turn-on for Dunn, who acknowledged that it’s important to him that presentations at Tilles are “relevant within university life. I want to engage the students,” he said. “I want to engage academia.”

Down the road, don’t be surprised to find him auditing a directing class in the theater arts department as he strives to make his mark.

It’s no secret that Bruce Springsteen’s legendary “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” was recorded live there on Dec. 12, 1975. Would Dunn love to come up with another landmark event that happens under his watch? You bet.

“Building on the great work of the past 40 years,” he said, “there’s a lot to work with in that regard.”

There’s also competition from other venues in Nassau and Suffolk counties. He mentioned the Paramount in Huntington, the NYCB Theatre at Westbury and the UBS Arena in Elmont.

“They all have great acts, but the key is differentiating ourselves,” he said. “I think the Tilles experience is elevated, a little sophisticated. It’s a different experience.

“Our venue is a concert hall with terrific acoustics,” he added, “so in addition to contemporary acts, we’re able to host the best touring orchestras from around the globe.”

Married with three children, ages 14, 17 and 19, Dunn lives in Huntington. His love for live performance began when he was a kid.

The passion started with a Kiss — as in Gene Simmons, gobs of face goo and the lizardlike tongue.

“My father took my brother and me to a Kiss concert at Madison Square Garden in the late ’70s,” he said. It made a deep impression on the youngster. Rush’s “Moving Pictures Tour” in May 1981 at the Nassau Coliseum was another memorable event.

The performers and venues vary, but Dunn’s takeaway remains the same.

“What I appreciate most about concerts and live events is the communal experience,” Dunn said, “that we’re all sharing something that is ephemeral and singular to that moment.”

Expanding genres

Dunn graduated from Holy Trinity Diocesan High School in Hicksville and majored in English at Fordham University. Moment to moment and year by year, his artistic palate has expanded.

“Musically my tastes align with the WFUV crowd,” he said, referring to the National Public Radio affiliate founded as a student-run station in the late 1940s at his alma mater. (See box: Tilles exec’s personal playlist.)

His career, like his taste in music, is varied. He’s been a writer, director and producer straddling theater and TV. “I’m still writing a little bit with my writing partner, Dan Callahan, who’s one of my oldest friends,” he said.

In 2002 Dunn and Callahan, along with Brendan Connor, another longtime pal, co-
authored “Who Killed Woody Allen?,” a celebrity satire mashed up with a murder mystery. The friends had intended to present Allen’s play“Death,” but then lost the rights.

A review of their show’s Los Angeles run in Variety notes that they “didn’t get mad, they got even.” In fact, they got creative. Writing their own show is a textbook lesson in the power of pivoting. The strategy has been valuable throughout Dunn’s career.

According to Jordana Leigh, whom Dunn hired at Lincoln Center as the associate director of the David Rubenstein Atrium, Dunn’s secret to success is pretty simple.

“What he brings to the job is that he really gets the arts and he cares about the arts,” said Leigh, who has risen to be senior director of artistic programming at Lincoln Center. “He wants the arts to be central to what we do in our lives.”

In July, Dunn concluded our interview with a quick tour of the empty concert hall at Tilles Center. Asked to consider his role in shaping what’s going to fill the stage and 2,000-plus seats, he said, “It’s exciting. It’s hard not to feel goose bumps.”