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"Some people think the arts should just do pretty things and leave the important topics to others," Kang said. "Of course, these are the people we don't have time for."

Finding obscure but talented performers doesn't come from flipping through Web pages looking for acts to book. Kang says his role is more akin to that of a curator, responsible for bringing context to performances through research and such public events as question-and-answer sessions from the stage.

That's why he shows up all over the place: the local Rotary Club, the Edinburgh International Festival in Scotland, China, New Zealand. He has just returned from a week in Russia with Tom Kearns -- the new chairman of the national advisory board, who was also the starting point guard on the Tar Heel's 1957 national championship basketball team.

Kearns, a retired partner in a New York investment company who now lives in Connecticut, says it was a struggle to keep up with his traveling companion, who seemed to get by on only a few hours' sleep each night.

"He's extraordinarily energetic," Kearns says, "and he's great company."

More important, Kearns says, Kang's mission to shake hands around the world will pay off.

"He will continue to open a lot of doors that hadn't been opened before," he says. "I'm really excited about it. A lot of great things are going to happen in Chapel Hill and for the state of North Carolina."

Planting relationships

Kang and Kearns met with the largest arts organizations in Russia and took in a full schedule of performances, including the Bolshoi Ballet. Kang said they went to establish relationships that might pay off later.

"If we don't do that, why would they want to come here?" Kang said. "They can get the money elsewhere. It's not about the fee. If we can get them to buy into our vision, we think those efforts will pay dividends in the years to come."

When Kang wasn't meeting people, taking in performances or getting his three hours of sleep a night, he was blogging. As he did on his trip to China, he posted travel-journal entries and photographs. He blogged about one day in a museum in St. Petersburg where he unintentionally took a flash photograph of a masterpiece painting.

An older woman screamed at him in perfectly good English: "Hey you! Have you never been in a museum before? What are you doing?"

Kang has spent plenty of time in the refined world in which he operates. He studied violin from age 7 to 22 and worked in an art gallery in New York City. At 31, he took over the Detroit Symphony, becoming the youngest and first Asian-American chief executive of a major orchestra.

In Detroit, he won praise for his programming and led a fundraising drive that restored a venerable concert hall. But four years later, he resigned in exhaustion after the symphony's million-dollar deficits wore him down. He went home to his wife, Lisa, and newborn daughter, Emma.

Moeser recognized Kang's fundraising ability and determined that the Detroit orchestra's financial problems weren't his fault. Kang has been busy raising money for an arts endowment and reports that more than $13 million in cash, pledges and estate gifts has been secured.

The goal, he said, is building UNC-CH's performing arts reputation so it can draw ever more impressive performers, produce more of its own shows and convince the Triangle that the campus has a vibrant scene. All of that is growing amid a 20-year construction and renovation plan under way to create an "arts common" on campus.

Back in his office, a white hard hat sits within reach, next to pictures of his family and of famous performers.

"We'll never know when we're done," Kang said of the construction, and the same could be said of his own work.

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