Karl E. Held, a longtime arts advocate who was a producer on the Tony Award-nominated 2009 Broadway production of Ragtime and most recently on the Off Broadway hit Kowalski, died of a heart attack June 23 in New York City shortly after attending a performance at Carnegie Hall. He was 63.
His death was announced by a spokesperson for Kowalski. Gregg Ostrin’s comedy, about the first meeting between Tennessee Williams and Marlon Brando, ran in January and February at Off Broadway’s Duke on 42nd Street. Producers recently announced their intentions to move Kowalski to Broadway.
Karl Edward Held was born on June 7, 1962, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania (as an adult he split his time between New York City, Hollywood and his hometown). In 1990 he joined Emmy Award-winning producer Roger Englander and Freddie Gershon of Music Theatre International to create an acclaimed video series capturing the conception and creation of Broadway shows with their original creators. The series featured conversations about musicals including George Gershwin’s works, Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins and Into the Woods, Kander and Ebb’s And the World Goes Round, She Loves Me, Starting Here, Starting Now, Forever Plaid, Claude-Michel Schönberg’s Les Misérables, and George Abbott’s The Pajama Game and Damn Yankees.
Throughout his career Held collaborated on various projects with Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood, the Spoleto Festivals (Charleston, SC, and Spoleto, Italy), Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Seiji Ozawa, John Williams, Frank Wildhorn, Yo-Yo Ma, Harry Belafonte, Betty Buckley, Elaine Stritch, and the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. He also produced projects with the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, Princeton University, Princeton Theological Seminary, Gettysburg College, Westminster Choir College, and the American Boychoir School.
In 2009 Held joined the Broadway producing team of the Terrence McNally-Stephen Flaherty-Lynn Ahrens Ragtime. Tony-nominated for Best Musical, the production took home four Tonys (Best Book, Best Score, Best Orchestrations and, for Audra McDonald, Best Featured Actress/Musical).
Other New York theater credits included Into the Woods (1989) and White’s Lies (2010).
Beyond the theater, Held’s producing work extended to major civic and cultural events, serving clients such as the governors of Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey, the Pennsylvania Governor’s Arts and Humanities Councils, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, Citizens for the Arts, the National Trust, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
In 2005, Held led the renovation and gala reopening of the Gettysburg’s historic Majestic Theater, transforming the 1925 vaudeville house into a state-of-the-art performing arts facility. He also spearheaded the creation and launch of the Gettysburg Festival, a ten-day interdisciplinary arts festival, and founded The Ambassadors Series, an international concert and lecture series at Gettysburg College. In 2007, he produced the Governor’s Arts Awards at the Majestic at the invitation of then-Governor Ed Rendell.
Other projects included a four-CD box set of Sondheim’s works for the composer’s 80th birthday, and a 15-year archival project with composer Alice Parker, supported by the NEA. He also served on national councils for The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, including its 25th Anniversary Celebrations in 1996. From 2005 to 2010, he was instrumental in bringing the Leonard Bernstein Center for Artful Learning from the Grammy Foundation in Los Angeles to Gettysburg College.
Held served as President and CEO of The American Boychoir School and was the founding executive director of the Princeton Center for Arts and Education. He also served as Senior Advisor to the President of Gettysburg College from 1997 to 2009, working with three administrations, and held leadership roles with the Adams County Arts Council, the National Trust for Historic Gettysburg, the Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, and the Nassau Club in Princeton.
He is survived by brother Michael Held of Las Vegas.
Memorial services will be held in both New York City and Gettysburg. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Adams County Arts Council or any organization supporting the arts.
