The Alphadyne Foundation – who were they? Christine Cox didn’t know, and neither did Google seem to know when she checked late last year in the dark days of the pandemic when organizations like hers struggled to stay alive.
Cox is the co-founder and artistic director of BalletX, a Philadelphia-based contemporary dance group. Although she tried to remain optimistic about the prospect, funding slowed and donors tired of the video views. Then, in December, the Juilliard School president Damian Woetzel called and said a mysterious benefactor named Alphadyne might have some money. Cox drafted a proposal and tried not to awaken her hopes. A number of scholarship recipients had already turned down BalletX, and even at its best, it usually took forever for money to arrive.
But eight weeks after she sent her pitch, the money came in from Alphadyne. It was real money, six-figure money, more money than any donor had ever given them in a single year. Even now, Cox can’t believe it’s real. “We have never received a gift like this,” she said. “My jaw dropped and I started crying.”
The scenario was repeated at various performing arts organizations in and around New York over the past year. At the Harlem Dance Theater. In the National Sawdust, the concert hall in Brooklyn. At the Kaufman Music Center in Manhattan. A phone call came in, a proposal was requested, and then, within a few weeks, it was booming: a serious piece of change, courtesy of the Alphadyne Foundation, whoever they were.
The group that helped select recipients turned out to be as colorful as Alphadyne.
In addition to Woetzel, this included Jay Dweck, a financial technology consultant and violin maker, who made headlines in 2014 for installing a multi-million dollar violin-shaped Stradivarius pool in his garden. and Annabelle Weidenfeld, a former English concert manager who fell in love with the legendary pianist Arthur Rubinstein in the 1970s despite an age difference of six decades – and vice versa. (A decade after his death in 1982, she married the English publisher Lord George Weidenfeld, an engagement that made her the titular lady.)
Gil Shiva, a former board member of the Public Theater, was also won over to attend. (Alphadyne helped sign the audience’s Shakespeare presentation in the park this summer.)
Philippe Khuong-Huu, former managing director of Goldman Sachs and founding member of the investment firm Alphadyne Asset Management, united them all. Khuong-Huu, a 57-year-old Frenchman of Vietnamese descent, is by and large the primary person responsible for the Alphadyne Foundation, which didn’t exist before the pandemic.
It’s also relatively private. His only real foray into the public eye came a decade ago when his purchase of a 10-room Park Avenue terraced duplex drew the attention of The Observer. At first, he declined to be interviewed for this article and only agreed after learning that a story about the foundation would take place with or without his contribution.
In the interview, Khuong-Huu said that when the pandemic broke out in New York last year, when the pandemic broke out in New York, he and his Alphadyner colleagues were seized with a sense of urgency and, although he did not use those words precisely, were indebted to noblesse.
“We realized early on that this pandemic affects people very unevenly beyond general inequalities,” said Khuong-Huu. “Once the crisis is over, you will have people who did something about it and people who didn’t. We had to do something immediately. “
This is not usually how it works in the nonprofit art world, where organizations go to enormous lengths to identify potential donors and spend years carefully nurturing those relationships before asking for a single dime.
During the pandemic, however, Alphadyne was part of a growing group of philanthropists, a sector that has often been criticized for being slow to respond to a crisis that was acting in a rush, according to Sean Delany, former head of the New York State Charities Bureau.
“I’m not saying this is a universal revolution, but I’ve seen a lot more of it than I have seen in normal times,” Delany said.
The performing artists were particularly overwhelmed last year and, for various reasons, often had no access to financial relief. Between July and September 2020, when the average unemployment rate was 8.5 percent, 55 percent of dancers, 52 percent of actors, and 27 percent of musicians and singers were unemployed, according to the National Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The foundation pledged to give away an initial $ 10 million and identified efforts already ongoing in New York to help people in need.
Khuong-Huu said Alphadyne’s money went to ReThink Food NYC, through which restaurants feed the poor; Accompany Capital, a nonprofit that supports refugee and immigrant owned businesses; and the Bronx Community Foundation.
More than half of the foundation’s money went to the performing arts, a sector in which Khuong-Huu has some expertise. He sits on the board of directors at Juilliard and his two teenage daughters are award-winning violinists.
And he was a firm believer in what would help artists more than handouts.
“For artists, what they need most is performance,” he said. “Getting a check from the government is good, but going to a concert is very, very meaningful.”
To make sure the money was being used to get the cast back on track, his SWAT advisory team came in.
Dweck – his Stradivarius-shaped pool was back in the news when Mariah Carey rented his house last summer – knew Khuong-Huu from her time at Goldman Sachs, where they partly bonded over their mutual love of the violin.
When asked for recommendations, Dweck immediately thought of the Perlman music program, which became another Alphadyne recipient. With Kate Sheeran, executive director of Kaufman Music Center, he helped create Musical Storefronts, a pop-up concert series that ran in New York from January to April.
“We have 100 percent acceptance,” said Dweck of the musicians’ interest. “People said, ‘Where and when?'”
The side of the series, an empty Lincoln Center storefront, has been donated. Sheeran said Alphadyne provided the necessary funding at around $ 450,000 for the center to provide well-paid work to 200 artists, as well as sound engineers and ushers. Many of the musicians have not had a paid live performance since the beginning of the pandemic.
“We were just so grateful,” said Isaiah J. Thompson, a jazz pianist and the youngest Juilliard graduate to appear on the series.
Lady Weidenfeld, who Khuong-Huu had met through the pianist Menahem Pressler, her companion since Lord Weidenfeld’s death in 2016, helped out from England, suggesting projects and changes, and checking artist fees and the like.
Woetzel connected Alphadyne to National Sawdust because he supported independent artists. “That was the community that was hit the quickest because there weren’t any gigs,” said Woetzel.
National Sawdust had cut staff by 60 percent and cut wages, and artistic director and co-founder Paola Prestini said it was unclear how the venue could survive. But Alphadyne’s money enabled him to build a digital platform, commission work from 100 artists, commission 20 composers for $ 3,000, and conduct workshops and masterclasses. The digital engagement numbers have increased.
“It was transformative – I couldn’t believe it,” said Prestini. “It suddenly felt like the community we were trying to build just froze.”
This year, Prestini said, Alphadyne National gave Sawdust a second round of funding, again in the six-figure range, and more than the first time.
At BalletX, the Alphadyne money filled the gap in their budget and gave their dancers 20 weeks of paid work. Cox has commissioned 15 choreographers, five of whom have performed live this summer, including in June.
Two non-profit arts organizations used Alphadyne funds to partner with the Violin Channel to create a 10-episode online concert series that ran February through April. Geoffrey John Davies, the founder and executive director of the Violin Channel, said the performers were paid concert prices for four hours of work and the footage was reduced to a 40-minute show and 10-minute interview, which the artist would hold the rights.
In the end, Davies said, the show sparked millions of views. Production of a second series, also supported by Alphadyne, is slated to begin in June.
“They were just overjoyed,” he said of the artist. “I was inundated with lyrics that said, ‘Thank you, thank you.'”
Overall, Khuong-Huu said the Alphadyne Foundation granted $ 6 million to the performing arts but refused to provide any further details on how much more it had put into their fund this year. The foundation has not yet issued any public statements or press releases and still does not have a website. Khuong-Huu also said it does not accept unsolicited requests.
The foundation is still mysterious, although news of its size has spread throughout the New York art world. Anna Glass, executive director of the Dance Theater of Harlem, said the organization received $ 250,000 from Alphadyne in the fall – three weeks after submitting a two-paragraph proposal. The money helped cover two residence bladders for 16 of their dancers.
Still, said Glass, she hardly knows anything about the giver of the gift.
“Just want to say thanks, man behind the curtain,” said Glass. “Whoever you are, thank you.”
