Broadway Singing Coach, 87, Has Brain Injury After Street Attack

A extremely regarded 87-year-old singing coach has a traumatic mind harm after a lady pushed her to the bottom simply steps away from her Manhattan residence constructing on Thursday evening, the police and kinfolk mentioned.

Barbara Maier Gustern — who as soon as coached the rock singer Debbie Harry in addition to the solid of the 2019 Broadway revival of the musical “Oklahoma!” — was shoved from behind and struck her head on the sidewalk quickly after leaving her house on West twenty eighth Road in Chelsea at about 9:30 p.m., the police mentioned.

Associates who had been at Ms. Gustern’s residence rehearsing for a cabaret present described opening the foyer door to search out her coated in blood. A bicyclist who witnessed the assault had escorted her to the constructing, and emergency medical responders have been referred to as.

“I’ve by no means been hit so laborious in my life,” Ms. Gustern instructed her pal and colleague Barbara Bleier as she lay in her lap with a gash on the high of her head. Ms. Gustern gave the police an outline of her attacker and mentioned that the lady shouted a derogatory time period earlier than assaulting her.

Quickly after the assault, Ms. Gustern’s situation rapidly deteriorated.

She was taken to a close-by hospital after which transferred to Bellevue Medical Middle, the place docs carried out emergency surgical procedure to alleviate mind swelling, her grandson, AJ Gustern, mentioned.

“She is just not effectively,” Mr. Gustern mentioned in a telephone interview on Sunday. “Medical doctors say ought to she get better, she won’t be the place she was.”

On the evening of the assault, Ms. Gustern, a singer and sought-after vocal coach whose college students have been luminaries within the New York avant-garde scene, was dashing to Joe’s Pub on the Public Theater to look at one in all her college students carry out, one thing mates and former college students say she usually did whereas additionally offering teaching 10 hours a day.

Ms. Gustern prided herself on being among the many least expensive vocal coaches in New York Metropolis for younger actors and performers, her grandson mentioned.

Earlier on Thursday, Ms. Gustern took to social media to share an inside battle. She expressed emotions of detachment. She couldn’t bear in mind lyrics and felt as if her voice had “deserted” her. She mentioned the thought of doing a present was “like sentencing me to be tortured.”

However issues had all of the sudden rotated, and he or she discovered herself energized about engaged on her newest present, she wrote. The present — a musical cabaret directed by Ms. Gustern, Ms. Bleier and Austin Pendleton, an actor and playwright — had been scheduled to begin later this month.

“I really feel like a singer once more for the primary time in without end,” Ms. Gustern wrote.

Days after the assault, her mates and colleagues vowed the present would go on in her honor and tried to make sense of what had occurred.

“A local weather of hatred and anger has been rising all through this nation and the world,” Ms. Bleier mentioned. “Folks have had permission to behave in methods and communicate in ways in which they might have felt earlier than like doing, but it surely’s by no means been as accepted in my reminiscence. It’s simply been such a shock to the complete theatrical group.”

Surveillance video captured Ms. Gustern’s attacker leaving the realm. The police mentioned they have been searching for a lady with lengthy darkish hair who was final seen sporting a black jacket and leggings, a white skirt or gown and darkish footwear. No arrests had been made as of Sunday night.

Ms. Gustern got here to New York Metropolis from a small city in Indiana many years in the past with goals of creating it large, her grandson mentioned. She bought her begin singing in numerous spiritual homes, together with a temple the place she met her husband, Joseph, who later carried out in “The Phantom of the Opera.”

When her performing profession didn’t take off as she had hoped, Ms. Gustern turned to vocal teaching, first educating at a college and later beginning her personal enterprise.

Nathan Koci, the musical director for the Broadway revival of “Oklahoma!,” described Ms. Gustern as his “go-to” for serving to singers.

On holidays, she opened her house to anybody who didn’t have a spot to go, Mr. Gustern mentioned. When she turned 85, she celebrated by elevating cash at Joe’s Pub for her church’s meals kitchen. And when her daughter, Mr. Gustern’s mom, died when he was a younger boy, Ms. Gustern took on the function as his mom.

As she lay within the hospital over the weekend, Mr. Gustern held her hand. “She’s only a ball of sunshine in a world that’s usually darkish and doesn’t make any sense,” he mentioned. If the lady who attacked her has a psychological sickness, he added, he prays that she receives assist.

Mallory Portnoy, who appeared in “Oklahoma!” revival and had acquired vocal classes from Ms. Gustern, mentioned she was devastated.

“I don’t know the way individuals come again from one thing like this at this age, but when anyone may it’s this lady,” Ms. Portnoy mentioned, “as a result of she is so sturdy and so lively and she will be able to overcome, it looks as if, actually something.”