When Richard Mishkin was 6 years old, his parents enrolled him in the Juilliard School”™s music preparatory program for children. He was already playing the piano, which he learned from his father who “felt that if you do anything in life, you should do it the best you can and have the best opportunity,” Mishkin said. Juilliard “was clearly the best opportunity to learn how to play the piano,” and “whatever was required when I was 6, I had” in order to be enrolled in the program.
The piano ”“ and music in general ”“ has played a constant theme in Mishkin”™s life ever since, creating a contrapuntal harmony and rhythm with his educational and career choices. He attended Manhattan”™s High School of Music and Art where he took up the clarinet and the bass clarinet, then “had a choice between going to a conservatory or an academic college.” He decided on an academic college, attending Syracuse University to begin pursuing a career as a lawyer and minoring in music. From there, he studied law at St. John”™s Law School in Brooklyn, but decided not to pursue lawyering “for personal reasons” and left in 1967.
But while he was at Syracuse he was in the marching band and a rock ”™n”™ roll band. “The guy in our band is Lou Reed of the Velvet Underground,” he said. And for those who don”™t have a clue about Reed or the Velvet Underground, “a lot of people think it”™s a big deal,” he said. “I don”™t.”
The group “played regular gigs in Syracuse, played a lot of fraternity parties and at Cornell and in the central New York area,” he said. “We were an established band.”
Back in Manhattan while attending St. John”™s, “I lived on a boat with a friend at the 79th Street boat basin,” Mishkin said. “We bought an old, 39-foot 1929 power boat. It was big enough for two people to live on, and through that I started working on boats.”
He landed a job with a Manhattan film company that used a boat to entertain clients, and was “social director and captain, taking parties around Manhattan” on the company”™s boat, he said. Even there, music wound its way around his career. “I was playing the guitar and pretending to be Bob Dylan” as part of his duties on the company boat.
Four years later, in 1973, “I figured it was time for me to stop fooling around and get a real job,” he said. But the company”™s president “offered me a position as assistant producer to learn the business and stay on in a supervisory capacity involved with entertaining clients and maintaining the boat.”
The company was MPO Videotronics, the largest commercial and industrial film production company in New York at the time, he said. He stayed on long enough to learn the ropes, then spotted a niche market in the industry. “The business was changing and the kind of productions we were doing were on a very grand scale, but the technology for doing productions for less money was there,” he said. He decided he could “provide a good product for clients for a lot less money,” so he left MPO and started his own Manhattan production company ”“ RHM Productions. “It was my own company, I was single and I was having a good time.”
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A bit more than two years later, he closed his company”™s doors. “I was fed up with it, felt burned out,” he said. “And the industry was just not something I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I was in a position to say, OK, I”™m going to pursue something else.” He didn”™t realize his next decision would change his life in a way he hadn”™t anticipated. He was about to lose his bachelorhood.
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Another career change
“I always enjoyed horseback riding and decided it would be fun to spend the summer teaching riding,” Mishkin said, and he took a job at a summer camp in Cornwell in 1975. The camp director”™s name was Catherine, and she was a musician, primarily an organist and piano player. Without putting too fine a point on it, they decided to make music together, and a year later they married and “I needed to have a real job.” Mishkin took a position with the Miller Harness Co. in Manhattan, first as store manager, then director of the retail and catalogue divisions, staying there for 10 years.
During that period the couple had two children ”“ now 28 and 25 years old. Back then, however, he was commuting to New York City from New Canaan, where the couple had moved after they married. Catherine was teaching music at New Canaan schools, and eventually became dean of students at Low-Haywood School. But “I was starting to feel the pressure of not being able to spend as much time with my kids as I would have liked because of the commute and the requirements of managing a retail store,” he said. “I have a brother-in-law who owns a real estate company in New Jersey and he would ask why I would commute and work for somebody else when I could work for myself in my hometown, so I decided to change careers once more and went into real estate full time in 1988.”
Mishkin started as a sales agent for Coldwell Banker, then became an office manager in Somers and Katonah in Westchester County, N.Y., and then in Wilton.
As he transitioned into real estate, Mishkin took some part-time positions teaching music to kindergarteners and leading the pep band at the local high school. In fact, once he stopped commuting to Manhattan, Mishkin and his wife discovered all sorts of local musical interests, and became volunteer and financial supporters of several musical organizations. They attended Pro Arte Singers performances, became financial supporters and then Mishkin joined the board of directors in the early ”™90s. The Pro Arte Singers, he said, are “an amazing, highly skilled professional chorale that performs very high-caliber classical music.”
He joined the Westport Community Band, playing the bass clarinet for the band”™s concerts at malls, nursing homes and an outdoor concert in July at the Westport pavilion. He”™s been a member of the band”™s support staff, an active participant, vice president and a member of the board of directors. And the Mishkins have been supporters of the Summer Theater of New Canaan, which mounts Shakespearean and musical productions for younger audiences. “My wife and I are on the board and very much involved with fundraising to keep this thing going,” he said. “It”™s the same with the Pro Arte Singers. These things are necessary for a community to survive.
“We have a passion to make sure these things remain available locally so people can get to them and young people can be exposed to them,” he said. “If kids are exposed to classical music and to more serious musical theater and see other people enjoying it, they”™ll carry that through adulthood.”
For Mishkin, music is an avocation, “an adjunct to whatever I”™ve been doing.” And when he isn”™t at the real estate office or board meetings or band rehearsals and performances, he and Catherine find time to make music together. “We continue to play in the evening, her on the piano and me on the clarinet.”
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