Tag: music education

Incarceration and Musical Inspiration Part Four: The Last Class

Posted on November 24, 2014 by - Columns

A group of inmates wearing graduation caps and gowns walks down a prison corridor.
I inserted a quarter into the small locker holding my wallet, keys, and cell phone. To enter the maximum-security prison, I would need only my ID, which the guards would keep at the front gate until I returned. I walked through the metal detector for the last time. Claire, my fellow TA, and Stuart Paul Duncan, the course instructor, followed. The prison guard leafed through Stuart’s music books to make sure nothing was hidden between the pages.

It was our last day teaching music theory and appreciation at Auburn Correctional Facility, one of New York State’s largest all-male maximum-security prisons. A semester had flown by, and I felt a deep sadness at the thought of never seeing or hearing from my students again. The inmates had little means of communication with the rest of society. There was certainly no internet access, not even computers. And we were discouraged from writing them letters. At the Cornell Prison Education Program training sessions, program leaders warned us not to stay in touch with our students. You do not want an inmate to become attached to you and there should be no relationship or friendship beyond the classroom. It is not that I wanted to become friends with anyone, but the thought that my students would just fade back into anonymity disturbed me. After today, I would never know if a student went on to accomplish something, to continue his education, or even to be released from prison. I would never know if their lives or circumstances changed. They would disappear behind the prison walls, and I would go on with my life.
I was also nervous. Every week, the inmates asked me when they would hear my music. Stuart promised that on the last class I would share my compositions. Claire had played for them one of her original folk songs, which they seemed to enjoy. She taught them the chorus and they clapped along. I was less sure of how they would react to my chamber music, even though they had spent the semester listening to 20th-century classical music and discussing compositional techniques.

After a half-hour of walking past security gates, across the prison yard, past the rec hall, the make-shift weight room, and the license plate factory, we reached our empty classroom. We set up the desks and chairs while a guard brought us the prison’s boombox and electric keyboard. Our students arrived, escorted to class in single file. With enormous smiles, they entered the room one by one, as they always did, greeting the three of us individually and shaking our hands before sitting at their desks.
Shane was visibly nervous. In addition to sharing my music, Stuart had promised that he would perform one of Shane’s compositions on the keyboard. This was not Shane’s idea. He was by far the brightest student in the class, but he was painfully shy. He shared his thoughts quietly and eloquently, garnering great respect among his peers. In a few short months, Shane had learned to notate his own melodies, achieving the goal he had set for himself at the beginning of the semester.
Shane was a leader in the class, a role that he never experienced in prison. It was known among the inmates and prison educators that Shane was gay. In his other classes, he wrote openly about his struggle to maintain his identity in the prison environment. Shane seemed perpetually downtrodden and timid, unlike some of his fellow students who were spirited and full of energy. Others were more subdued, some seemed angry, and a few had days during which they could not focus. In essence, our classroom was filled with students experiencing a full range of human emotions, just like any other classroom.

Shane handed Stuart his composition, a ten-measure melody in C-sharp minor written for the piano. He looked absolutely terrified as Stuart performed the piece for the class on our little keyboard. The inmates were completely silent, listening with as much attention as they had given to Joseph Lin when he performed Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for them earlier in the semester. They treated Shane with the same respect and it was clear that they were inspired. Shane’s composition had ascending triplets in the right hand and a slow chromatic descending bass pattern in the left. As the melody reached higher and higher, the bass moved downward. The harmonies were clear, the ideas consistent. I was very proud of him. When Stuart finished playing, the students burst into applause and Shane turned bright red.

Next, Stuart met with each inmate individually to go over the final exams. He wanted to conduct another pedagogical experiment. What would happen if the students were asked to assign themselves a grade for the semester? Would an inmate’s self-assessment match the grade Stuart planned to give? “What happens if a student tries to convince you he deserves a better grade?” I asked Stuart on the drive to Auburn. As it turned out, all of the inmates assessed their grades accurately, with two notable exceptions. One man, who we knew had led a violent gang and possessed an intimidating demeanor, believed he deserved a B-plus when he really achieved a C. The second was Shane, who felt he deserved a C-minus even though he received an A-plus.
After the meetings, it was time for me to play my music. I had printed out scores for each of the students. My piece was called He Disappeared into Complete Silence, named after a set of nine parables and engravings by the artist Louise Bourgeois. The parables were short, quirky, dark poems that accompanied Bourgeois’s stark, semi-abstract line drawings. As the title suggests, the poems dealt with the extremes of loneliness and the inability to communicate.

I realized as I distributed the scores that I had included my full name as the composer. I was supposed to protect my own privacy.
“Can we keep these?” Gherald asked.

“Yes,” I replied instinctively. Gherald began flipping through the images and penciling in his own drawings alongside Bourgeois’s illustrations.

I pressed the play button on the boombox and my piece began. The students were able to follow along in the score by reading the text. I watched with fear. Some looked noticeably bored, others completely enthralled. There was one movement in particular I was very nervous about. I even asked Stuart if we should skip it but he said no. The text is as follows:

Once a man was angry at his wife
He cut her up in small pieces
Made a stew of her
Then he telephoned to his friends
And asked them for a cocktail and stew party
They all came and had a good time

In my setting, the soprano repeated the word “party” several times, finally arriving on a high C while the wind players put down their instruments in favor of party blowers sounding in unison. How could I possibly think, when I composed this piece as an undergraduate student at Cornell, that these words would be heard by men who had committed murder? I knew from reading articles online that one of my students had, in fact, cut up the body of his victim.

When the movement finished, Gherald said, “Julia, we need to talk.”
“I didn’t write the words!” I cried hastily.

Gherald laughed. “Oh O.K., we’re cool,” he said. “I was worried about you for a second there.” I would like to note that Gherald, along with about half of my students, was not incarcerated for murder.

While the inmates listened to my music, I felt more uncomfortable than I had during my entire time teaching in prison. I felt exposed, not because they knew my full name or because I was a woman wearing oversized clothing in order to hide my form. There was no hiding behind my music. I wanted to teach at Auburn because I wanted to know if and how contemporary classical music could be accessible to an outcast population who had never been exposed to it before. My students had proven to me that they could appreciate a wide variety of music. They could read themselves into a myriad of compositions, ranging in style, cultural origin, and time period. It did not matter how distant a piece seemed to be from their daily lives; they could engage emotionally and intellectually. Would my music make the same connection? Would it engage them, move them, compel them to share their experiences? Would they see themselves reflected in my work? Was my music strong enough to outstrip my own identity and reach others whose experiences were vastly different from my own?

My piece ended and fear bubbled inside of me. They clapped, as they always did, and then waited for me to speak. Panic spread throughout my body. I suddenly found myself asking the question that I had been afraid to ask all semester: “Does this music mean anything to you?”

I stared at my students, waiting for someone to speak. I looked at them as they had so often looked at me, hoping for answers. When no one said anything, I stammered on. I found myself confessing a deep fear: “Sometimes, when I write, I wonder if it means anything. I mean, what is the point? Does my music do anything? So few people listen to classical music and sometimes I wonder if it’s selfish to try to be an artist. What are you giving to society, especially when most of society doesn’t even listen to classical music? I guess what I’m asking is,” I took a deep breath, “is anything that I write relevant to you and your experiences?”
There was silence. Then Gherald spoke. His voice was calm.

“As long as you write from a place of love, other people will love it too. When I hear your music, I can tell that you love what you do. I can sense how much joy it brings you to create, to express yourself, and that makes me feel good. That brings me joy. All you can do is write the music that you love.”

I was stunned. No one had ever said this to me, or at least not in this way. Gherald’s advice was so simple to understand yet so difficult to follow: write the music that you love. It took hearing it from a man who lives in prison—who has to work every day to find a sense of peace and happiness in a cold, dehumanized environment—for me to really understand. Gherald taught me that passion for the creative process, dedication to one’s craft, and a yearning to communicate is what makes an artist. To write from a place of love is to have a vision, to imagine a reality and bring that world to life. It means quieting the voices in your head, voices of doubt, distractions, even the voices of other composers. It means concentrating on one idea, focusing, yearning, inventing, analyzing. The act of artistic creation is a form of unconditional love. It requires complete devotion in spite of its flaws. You must believe in your own work to the point that you are compelled to create it and need to convince others of its existence.

Even if it seems that no one is listening, you have to keep going. I think Gherald understood this. From what I saw of Gherald, I believe that he had come to terms with his own imprisonment. He had about him an air of serenity and deep spirituality. His eyes were always wide and full of life. He was powerfully built but possessed a gentle demeanor. He was not the best student, but I knew he was intelligent. What struck me most was that Gherald seemed the most capable of living freely in the midst of incarceration. He seemed free. Perhaps Gherald had a vision too, a vision of his world and his place in it, that put him at ease.
All of my students touched me in a way that I will never forget. Even if I did not mention everyone’s names, each individual made a significant impact on me. I know that Stuart and Claire were changed, too. Since our experience together at Auburn Correctional Facility, Stuart has dedicated himself to researching education systems in prison. As a doctoral student at Yale, Stuart co-authored “Who needs music? Toward an Overview of Music Programs in U.S. Juvenile Facilities,” “Expressing the Self: Critical Reflections on Choral Singing and Human Rights in Prison,” and a forthcoming book with Mary Cohen entitled Behind Different Walls: Restorative and Transformative Justice and Their Relationship to Music Education.

For Claire, teaching at Auburn Correctional Facility affirmed the power of education. Claire now teaches at a public elementary school in Los Angeles. In our class, Claire helped the inmates with the least educational experience. She imagines that they struggled to learn as children and did not advance far in their schooling. These men reminded Claire of the importance of primary education, of starting children off on the right footing. Her strongest memory of Auburn is when Gherald told her that she would make a great teacher and that she should pursue her dreams.

When I asked Stuart what impacted him the most, he recalled his last conversation with Shane, shortly after performing Shane’s composition for the class. Shane told Stuart: “For the first time in my life, I feel like a human being.” Hearing his music, his internal melodies, sound through the classroom and shared with his colleagues, made Shane feel heard and understood.
Saying goodbye was hard, even though the inmates all smiled at us as we collected the books. I noticed that Gherald had written on the first page of my composition, which had the printed title He Disappeared into Complete Silence. Around the word “He,” Gherald had scrawled a “T” and a “y” so that the title now read They Disappeared into Complete Silence. I looked at him, and my sadness must have shown on my face.

“Don’t you worry about me, Julia!” Gherald laughed. “I’ll be fine.”
I smiled and said, “Being here has made such an impact on me. This is an experience I will always remember.”
“Good,” he said. “We won’t be forgotten.”

In times of doubt, I return to Gherald’s advice again and again. He has no idea how much his words have stayed with me. I try to remember that all I can do is strive to express myself through my work, to trust my artistic and human instincts, and to believe that if I dig deep and share my interior world that it will reflect the worlds of others. Our lives are not so different. Art frees us from the chains of our individual identities and connects us to something greater—our shared humanity.

Incarceration and Musical Inspiration Part Three: A Live Concert in Prison

Posted on November 17, 2014 by - Columns

A full view of the Auburn Correctional Facility building from across the street

The main entrance to the Auburn Correctional Facility, photo by Julia Adolphe

Violins are not allowed in maximum-security prisons. Auburn Correctional Facility had generously permitted us to use an electric keyboard during our music theory and appreciation course, but a violin was out of the question. Stuart Paul Duncan, the course instructor, played what he could on 44 keys. As his teaching assistants, Claire and I tried to describe what different instruments looked like. We brought in photographs. Our students—17 male inmates—were starved for culture, communication, social interaction, and creative expression of any kind. They understood that they brought this harsh, dehumanized reality upon themselves, committing the horrendous acts that lead to incarceration. Yet in the classroom, these men transformed. They were no longer nameless criminals, demonized murderers, or monstrous outcasts, but fellow human beings who cared about art, education, and each other.

In three short months, my students had progressed beyond my wildest dreams. Shane was learning to write down his own compositions. Gherald could notate the rhythms he created for his rap songs. Josh could perform the phasing part of Steve Reich’s Clapping Music by himself while the rest of the class sustained the repeated pattern. Christopher understood the difference between melodic, harmonic, and natural minor and could write scales in any key. As we listened to recordings on the prison’s small boombox, Williamson could identify motifs as they recurred and transformed. Others were still learning how many eighth notes make a quarter note and on which side of the note head they were supposed to draw the stem. Each student was at a different level, yet everyone wanted to learn as much as possible. The diversity of educational needs coupled with the students’ insatiable hunger for knowledge enlivened the classroom to an electrifying degree.

Some of my students were able to practice between classes. Clean behavioral records inside prison walls granted certain privileges, including access to the prison’s electric keyboards, a makeshift gym where anything that could be lifted served as weights, and typewriters. Being enrolled in the Cornell Prison Education Program was an enormous honor that the inmates cherished. One mistake would expel a prisoner from the program for five years. Men gave up their meals and recreational time in order to attend classes. Most students took full course loads. The remaining hours of their days were spent working in Auburn’s license plate factory, bringing in revenue for the correctional facility.

In the evenings, if my students were not in class, they would do their homework in their cells, trying to block out the noise of their fellow inmates. Prison life is harsh and unpredictable. I remember one class when three of my students were absent. We were worried: absence is impossible when a guard escorts you to and from the classroom. Those who were present told us that an inmate in Cell Block A had figured out how to steal a wireless connection. Until the guards found the culprit, the entire cell block was being punished with solitary confinement. Those three students still somehow managed to turn in their homework, passing along their booklets to students who lived in cells on the other side of the facility. I do not know how this happened.
Our students were devoted to us, to each other, and to the pursuit of learning music. And we were devoted to them. We desperately wanted to give them a real musical experience: a live performance. How could we do this in a prison? There had not been a live concert at Auburn Correctional Facility in ten years.

Stuart wanted violinist Joseph Lin to perform Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for the class. At the time, Joseph Lin was a professor at Cornell. A year later, he became the first violinist of the Juilliard String Quartet. Professor Lin was eager and curious to enter the prison walls, to share his artistry with men who had never been exposed to live classical music. The only hurdle was gaining permission from the Auburn Correctional Facility itself.

There was great concern among the prison administration that the violin was a dangerous instrument. The strings could be turned into a weapon. A knife or other harmful object could be hidden in the wooden violin body. Officers in the prison administration asked if Professor Lin would mind taking his violin apart, bringing it into the prison in pieces, and assembling it once he was inside. This way they could ensure there was nothing concealed within the instrument. Could he possibly use thinner strings, ones that would prove less harmful if they ended up in the wrong hands? Emails and phone calls went back and forth for months as Stuart and the former head of Cornell’s Prison Education Program, James Schechter, argued that the violin had to enter (and exit) the prison intact.

Even once permission was granted, we did not tell our students that Professor Lin was coming. We were afraid that there could be last minute objections at security. When we finally did arrive with Joseph, our students were shocked and thrilled, almost ecstatic. They could not believe that they were about to hear live music.

As the first G minor chord sounded on Joseph’s violin and the melody floated gently downwards, a somber stillness filled the room. No one moved or seemed to breathe. My students were mesmerized. They could tell immediately that Joseph Lin is a fantastic musician, a truly talented artist. His performance of Bach’s Sonata No. 1 for solo violin, given to a small room of incarcerated men, was unlike any concert I have ever experienced. The men were completely enraptured. I believe that my students heard every single note that Lin played. They watched each individual bow stroke. They stared at Joseph’s face, full of concentration and passion. Little by little, the inmates swayed in their seats, mirroring the way Joseph’s body naturally moved with the music. It was as if the music held some secret answer and if they listened hard enough, they would understand. These men took in everything. Nothing seemed to escape their notice.

As Bach’s sonata resonated through the air, I could feel emotions rising. The intensity and passion of Bach’s music permeated the environment. It was as if the sound emanating from Joseph’s violin filled every single particle of the space. It touched every human being in that room. I looked around. Some of the men had their eyes closed and were breathing deeply. Others had their eyes wide open, staring at Lin with shock and admiration. Some were silently crying, wiping away tears while they listened. They were not self-conscious. They were present, alive, and alert.

As I listened, I understood. Art is powerful when it makes us feel alive. Music enables us to transcend time and space, unlock memories, leap over the edge, remap the universe. In that moment, all of us were so far away from prison. We entered another world. Yet we knew, acutely, that we were behind bars. We felt freedom in the midst of incarceration. I felt that sense of liberty too, even though I could never fully understand the realities of prison. In that moment, I experienced the yearning for life and freedom because it was so powerfully present in the people beside me.

Listening to music allowed these men to explore feelings that are constantly suppressed in the prison environment. Those of us who live at liberty in society understand this feeling too, even though our life circumstances differ drastically from those who are incarcerated. Music is healing and freeing. Watching Joseph Lin express himself through music inspired the men to turn inward. The intimacy and direct access between performer and audience created an emotional dialogue, a sacred space dedicated to internal reflection.

My students had a lot of questions for Joseph Lin. Gherald, always outspoken and confident, spoke first. He said, “It seems like you’ve done this before.” I was about to laugh when I realized this was not a joke. Gherald genuinely wanted to know if this was Professor Lin’s first time playing the Sonata in G minor. Lin explained that he had been practicing and performing the work for years. More questions followed. Is the piece the same or different each time you play it? Why do you keep playing this particular piece over and over again? What is practicing like? Why did you decide to play the violin? Are you going to keep playing the violin? When are you coming back to Auburn?

Williamson spoke next. He observed: “I noticed that when you play, you closed your eyes, your mouth twitched a certain way, and you leaned your head a little to the left. Do your facial movements affect the way you play? Do they change the sound?”
Professor Lin paused. I wondered if he was as startled by this question as I was. Immediately, I began to imagine what it would be like to compose a piece inspired by subtle changes in facial expression. How do our facial expressions reveal our thoughts, our musicality, our connections to the internal and external world? While additional movements made by performers, either in the face or body, help them interpret the music, how do sympathetic movements in listeners help them process what they hear? A whole line of questioning opened.

Williamson’s observation was thought-provoking and intelligent, yet it was also naïve and childlike. This was the astounding contradiction of prison life. Here were grown men who had experienced horrors beyond imagination, who had made devastating choices and had suffered the consequences. Yet most of these men had been in prison since their late teens or early twenties. In a way, they were still like children who had seen nothing of the world. Their only mature experiences had taken place behind prison walls. All of this was evident in Williamson’s comment. People accustomed to seeing live music know that musicians’ faces and bodies move during performance. We take it for granted as an indication of self-expression. The visual signs of emoting or communicating were foreign to this man.

As I looked around the room, I saw the tension between experience and innocence, intelligence and childlike intuition, strength and vulnerability. This is the very tension that makes art: the struggle between mind and heart, logic and passion. Composing requires a constant dialogue: intuition, improvisation, and accidents guide certain musical choices while formal planning, theoretical knowledge, and practical constraints inform others. When I write, I try to evoke my inner child, to let my imagination run wild. Yet I also try to control her with conceptually and rationally defined principles.

That day in the prison’s music class, I learned an important lesson about my own compositional process and the power of art. The stark reality of incarceration illuminated my creative world in a way that I could never have anticipated. Artistic expression is an enactment of freedom. This is a maxim that we learn about, that we know and say we comprehend. When I witnessed men who were not free transform, attaining a sense of liberty through their contact with music, I understood it in a new way.

Incarceration and Musical Inspiration Part Two: The Human Piano

Posted on November 10, 2014 by - Columns

A 1932 State Education Department plaque on the entrance to Auburn Prison which reads: "ERECTION COMMENCED 1916, FIRST PRISONERS 1817 ASSISTED IN CONSTRUCTION, FIRST ELECTROCUTION IN THE WORLD 1890"
“I always knew you were a C sharp,” Gherald chuckled as Christopher looked at his card. Stuart Paul Duncan, the course instructor, had distributed large hand-written cards to the inmates, each labeled with a different pitch in the chromatic scale. It was our second month teaching music theory and appreciation at Auburn Correctional Facility, one of New York State’s largest all-male maximum-security prisons. Claire, my fellow TA, watched with apprehension as chatter broke throughout the classroom. Though Stuart had told Claire and me his plan during the car ride to the prison, neither of us was sure it would work.
“Alright, gentlemen,” Stuart called over the noise. He always addressed the inmates as gentlemen, to their great amusement (his English accent helped). He had their attention instantly. “We’re going to form a lineup!”

The men stared, not knowing if he was serious. “Take your cards,” Stuart continued, “and stand in order of the chromatic scale. We’re going to form a human piano!”

Laughter and relief swept through the room. The men gladly rose from their individual desks and gathered towards the back of the room where there was space to move. “Look! I’m next to you!” Gherald called to Christopher as he held up his own card, which had a big letter D written in marker.

Stuart, Claire, and I had been struggling to communicate basic concepts of music theory to these seventeen men with vastly different levels of education. Our only tools in the prison classroom were a rickety chalkboard on wheels that moved every time you wrote on it and a small electric keyboard which, while helpful, was difficult for the entire class to see at once. We hoped that the “human piano” would enable the students to better visualize major and minor scales, bringing the keyboard to life.
On one side of the lineup, near B-flat and A, the inmates were laughing while David held up his A-flat card as if he were posing for a mug shot. He turned left; then right, his face expressionless as the men around him roared with laughter. Claire and I had cards as well, and we took our places beside the men. I stood next to Shane and he inched cautiously away from me, avoiding eye contact.

I held up my E, realizing with a jolt that I was standing next to a man who had committed murder. It was shockingly easy to forget, in the midst of the classroom environment, that the majority of the students were serving life sentences for committing horrendous acts. I reminded myself that I was not there to treat or regard them as criminals. My goal was to share the joys and mysteries of music making, to try to understand their need for creative expression and, in turn, gain insight into my own personal and artistic motivations.

The energy in the room crackled and it was clear why. In music class, these men were able to temporarily change their identity from prisoner to student, from being numbered to being human. Music became a life force, providing vital human connection in an environment where social interaction is suppressed. The classroom provided a safe haven, enabling the inmates to engage with each other in a positive way, to explore and experiment with feelings of normalcy and inclusion, feelings that are alien to incarceration.

“Who belongs to a D major scale?” Stuart asked. Little by little, the men stepped forward, helping each other as they counted whole steps and half steps. F sharp and G flat debated who should be part of the line.

Stuart’s undoubtedly risky pedagogical experiment paid off. The students actively engaged in a constructive, educational game instead of passively accepting information recited from the front of a classroom. They took their learning experience into their own hands. More importantly, Stuart appropriated an aspect of prison culture and transformed it into a positive experience. Yet he was simultaneously challenging the prison environment by allowing the inmates to take charge and solve a collective problem. The exercise implicitly questioned the inmates’ sense of their own identity—as individuals and as a unified whole.
The “human piano” proved to our students that Stuart, Claire, and I accepted that we were not simply in a classroom but deep inside prison walls. It showed that we were willing to stand beside them, aware of their crimes, yet still believing that the human need for education and artistic expression extends to those living behind bars. The lineup was no longer a threatening assembly of criminals but a team of individuals with the potential for creativity and growth.

Though Stuart never explicitly communicated these intentions to his class, they understood. From that point on, there was a shift in the atmosphere. The tension broke. They began to trust and accept us, and we began to trust and accept them.
The inmates at Auburn sprang to life whenever we played music. The entire room pulsed with energy, excitement, and a thirst for culture and intellectual engagement. From the prison’s small boombox, we played Steve Reich’s It’s Gonna Rain, Benjamin Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, along with songs by the Beatles, Scott Joplin, Howlin’ Wolf, and T.I., to name a few. Stuart compared rhythms in Rachmaninoff to those found in salsa music. Britten’s music introduced the orchestra, revealing how instruments trade musical ideas. We discussed color and orchestration, form and motivic development.

Stuart always found a way to relate the music to an aspect of culture familiar to the men in the prison. When we listened to Quartet for the End of Time, Stuart gave historical context, sharing that Messiaen composed the work in a German prisoner-of-war camp using the broken instruments available to him. The work premiered in 1941 for the inmates and guards outdoors in the rain. Our students were well aware that their situation was not analogous; they were in prison for crimes consciously committed. Yet, the story served its purpose. It allowed the inmates to imagine music flourishing in the stifling prison environment. It demonstrated that the creative spirit lives on in the face of dehumanization, incarceration, and fear. The story granted immediate access to the music.
A group of prisoners seated at long desks attentively listening to a seated instructor who is talking.
My students were completely immersed in the musical experience. Listening allowed them to relax and be moved by what they heard. They let down their guards and open up to each other. While listening to Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-sharp minor, the men closed their eyes and swayed from side to side. They tapped their feet to the beat or conducted in time with their own made up patterns. Gherald announced that he had named Rachmaninoff’s piece “Spider Legs.” Michael said that it reminded him of how an autistic person is shut off from the world, desperately trying to communicate. For him, the music captured the frustration of a person unable to reach or be understood by fellow human beings. In essence, it captured life in prison. My initial fear that classical music would somehow be alien to these men quickly evaporated. They felt it spoke to them directly and they quickly read themselves into the music.

Many of the students described what they heard in terms of an emotional narrative, inventing a story that corresponded to the music’s building of tension and release. Stuart would then translate their observations about dramatic development into musical terminology. My students began to recognize recurring motifs, struggling to understand how a musical line simultaneously sounded the same and different. This was fascinating to them, and I felt their excitement as they strived to articulate compositional techniques. Seeing Stuart play our little classroom keyboard proved thrilling to these men who were starved for culture. Their eyes would light up like they were seeing fireworks for the first time.

Steve Reich was very popular. Stuart linked Reich’s manipulation of magnetic tape to practices of sampling found in rap music. He explained the source material for Reich’s It’s Gonna Rain, a speech given by an African-American Pentecostal preacher, which led to a fascinating discussion about the musical and rhythmic elements of preaching. We also taught the inmates to perform Clapping Music. As they struggled to master the different parts, Stuart reminded the students that this was a professional piece of music and that even paid musicians had to practice. He said that we had complete faith that they could perform the piece by the end of the semester. I remember that day; Stuart, Claire, and I left the classroom feeling hopeful. As we waited in the hallway for a guard to lead us back to the prison entrance, we heard our students inside practicing Clapping Music. They wanted to rehearse in the few minutes they had together before the guards would return to lead them back to their cells.

Being in the room with these men as they listened to the music I love transformed my understanding of art. I witnessed how music sparks communication and openness among men who have lived in a world of violence. Love, warmth, and life filled a small room set inside a vast, cold, dehumanizing prison environment. Emotions ran so high with the exposure to music that they were tangible. Connection to art and to each other generated such a life force that it was physically apparent. Each day after teaching, I would return home exhausted, feeling that I had just experienced seventeen different therapy sessions, one for each of my students. Listening to music and sharing their beliefs proved so cathartic to these men to such an intense degree that it was infectious.

Ultimately, I was encouraged and inspired. Teaching music in prison affirmed my belief that art is accessible to anyone if placed in a fitting context. All a listener needs is a way in, whether it is through the real-life events behind a composition, an imaginary narrative, seeing how instruments communicate, following how a motif transforms overtime, or understanding the composers’ aesthetic intentions. The experience of art needs to be personal. Music becomes accessible when we can project an aspect of ourselves into the work of art, whether we are conscious of it or not. Even if it is not an emotional engagement, but an intellectual or philosophical one, the music must resonate in some capacity with our thought process. Even if music pushes us, challenges us, or defies our very definition of art, it does so by speaking to us personally, by taking something we know and altering it dramatically. The inaccessibility of classical art is not an issue of intelligence but an issue of identity and means of exposure. Once we can identify, we can listen. Once we can listen, we can identify.

Incarceration and Musical Inspiration Part One: Meeting the Men at Auburn’s Maximum Security Prison

Posted on November 3, 2014 by - Columns

seven of the students from the prison seated at a long desk, one of them is raising his hand

All images courtesy of the Cornell Prison Education Program

Shane, an Auburn Correctional Facility inmate with bright orange hair that clashed against his green uniform sweatpants and pullover, told the class that he wanted to study music theory in order to “express himself musically. I want to transfer onto the page what I hear in my head.” It was our first day teaching music theory and appreciation at one of New York State’s largest all-male maximum security prisons. I was a senior in college, accompanied by my fellow T.A. Claire Schmidt and a doctoral student Stuart Paul Duncan, who served as the course’s instructor.

We pretended to not be surprised that a man serving a life sentence for second-degree murder wanted to compose and was already hearing melodies, struggling to bring his internal world to musical life. Shane was not the only one. A quiet, middle-aged man seated beside him expressed that he wanted to put music to his poems. Gherald, a tall, broad-shouldered man with long dreadlocks, said that he composed raps and wanted to learn how to notate rhythms. He also sang with the prison’s church choir on Sundays and hoped to improve his voice. Christopher, incarcerated since the age of 17, said he wanted to know “why music sounds good, why it works the way it does.” Michael, a Hispanic man seated alone at the end of the table, informed us that he used to teach a class on music theory.

Within these few short minutes of introduction, millions of questions raced through my mind. Who are these men? Am I scared? Why am I here? Do I know why music sounds good and can I communicate an answer in a way that will be meaningful? Each of the seventeen men seated around the room looked at us with calm curiosity and a sincere respect. Their eyes were wide like a child’s discovering the world, yet their capacity for intellectual and philosophical exchange transcended that of the average student. They were a striking mix of total inexperience and naïvety, having spent the majority of their lives within the narrow confines of prison, and a source of devastating experiences, having lived in dangerous communities, witnessing horrors, and committing the terrible acts that led to incarceration. One man, presumably involved in gang violence, told me that prison had saved him. He believes that if he had not been arrested and removed from his situation, he would be dead by now.
The Music Theory and Appreciation course was implemented through the Cornell Prison Education Program, allowing incarcerated men to attain an associate’s degree through Cayuga Community College. Classes offered throughout the program’s 15 years of operation include genetics, constitutional law, medical anthropology, Asian meditation, writing, theater, and economics, to name a few. Philanthropist Doris Buffet provides the crux of financial support through her Sunshine Lady Foundation. The program aims to increase an incarcerated man’s chances of reintegrating into society upon release and lessens recidivism. It enables some men to even come to terms with their own imprisonment as well as their circumstances and choices that led to their sentence.

The Auburn penitentiary of the 1820s imposed constant silence during the day and solitary confinement at night. It was also the site of the first execution by electric chair in 1890. While the “Auburn System” has since been abandoned, the incarcerated men still live in a state of dehumanization. They are the first to acknowledge that they brought this life upon themselves, committing some of the most atrocious acts imaginable. My students had murdered their lovers, even their children. They had raped women and led violent gangs. The least offensive of their crimes was armed robbery. I knew this because all of their records were accessible online. At Cornell’s training session, program leaders told us over and over again “Do NOT Google your students! You will not like what you see.” I did it anyway. I needed to know.

At home, reading of their crimes, I would feel sickened. Walking through the prison to my class, I felt scared, even though a guard escorted me through the halls and showed me which handle to pull in case of emergency. Yet the moment I arrived in the classroom, these men transformed into my students. Despite their crimes, I grew to care for them as fellow human beings whom I hoped would grow and change. They were no longer nameless men in green with an identifying number but real, emotional, articulate individuals who taught me as much about music as I taught them. I sat next to them, separated only by a desk, while they told me about the music they loved and revealed their artistic aspirations. When Claire and I moved about the room, the men would make way and always ensure we had enough space. They did everything they possibly could to make us feel at ease. They understood how they were viewed in the eyes of society and cherished the feeling of normalcy and respect created within the classroom.
Close up of one of the students listening and taking notes
I soon became accustomed to the hour of security checks that preceded each visit and the routine of waiting for the guards to lock one door before crossing the room to open another. As the semester unfolded, I was strangely no longer afraid, not even when walking through the prison yard as the men huddled in groups and stared at me. I was baffled and intrigued. Their whole world was gray concrete: not even a stray weed could grow through the cement. Just this small glimpse of prison life stood in stark contrast to the vibrant atmosphere engendered within the classroom. Instead of feeling fear, I felt inspired by the resilience and determination of my students to be the best that they could possibly be. I anticipated that the severe circumstances of prison would color all aspects of the classroom experience, but to my surprise, the room felt like a safe haven, a comfortable space where ideas could flow freely. It was the purest form of education I have ever experienced. Imagine a class where every student feels it is a privilege to learn, yearns to participate and be heard, and absorbs all of the material with passionate curiosity. Imagine a music class where every piece is fresh to the ear and observations are not bound to a preconceived notion of what makes classical art. Within the nightmare of incarceration flourished the dream of education, an unabashed, provocative insight into musical meaning and expression.

My favorite student was Shane, who did ultimately learn how to write down his own compositions. The students regarded Shane as a leader in the classroom, a role that Shane never experienced in the prison as an openly gay man struggling to survive. Shane’s partner, also an inmate, was attacked by fellow prisoners and transferred to Sing Sing for his safety. Shane’s 1996 trial was well publicized: his was the first death penalty case brought by a New York City prosecutor following the reinstatement of capital punishment in 1995. Controversy surrounded the possibility of a death sentence in the trial of a gay man when the murder was not pre-meditated. After years of appeals, Shane received a natural life sentence.

Just like Shane, most of these men only experienced life outside of prison walls until their early twenties. I was twenty-one, but they thought I knew everything. They were visibly disappointed when I could not answer a question, questions such as: “Why does music have meaning?” “Why do different people like different kinds of music?” “How does music communicate?” They knew that these were difficult questions, but they genuinely believed that an answer could be reached. With each insistence that I try to explain, my students challenged me to examine my artistic identity, what was behind my drive and desire to become a composer. I would stare at their eyes as they implored me to demystify an art form that people spend their lives trying to understand. Every lesson, I would have to confront myself again and again, admitting that I do not have an answer. In response, their insights would guide me in ways I could have never expected.

I hope to share through my remaining posts what I learned about myself as a composer and musician during my three short months as one of Auburn Correctional Facility’s music teachers. I arrived wondering why a group of prisoners would voluntarily take a class on music theory when my freshmen class hated the topic. I feared that they would feel disconnected from classical music, particularly contemporary music, and wondered if we would find common ground. Over time, they shared with me their thoughts on Steve Reich, on Purcell and Rachmaninoff, on Benjamin Britten and Messiaen, and during the last class, they told me their thoughts on my own compositions. I will never know if I changed their lives, but I do know that they changed mine. Inspiration comes from unexpected sources. I learned that if you want to be an artist, it is imperative to reach beyond your comfort zone, to explore your wildest dreams and engage your deepest fears. Push yourself as a writer, a creator, and as a person to connect with the world outside of yourself. Dig through uncomfortable material and unknown territories until you see the stalk of green striving through the crack in the cement.

***

Photo of Julia Adolphe

Julia Adolphe

Julia Adolphe is a composer, writer and producer based in Los Angeles. Her music has received performances across the U.S. and abroad by the New York Philharmonic, Inscape Chamber Orchestra, the USC Thornton Symphony, JACK Quartet violinist Christopher Otto and cellist Kevin McFarland, guitarist Mak Grgic, the What’s Next? Ensemble, Nouveau Classical Project, the Cornell University Chorus, the Fiato Quartet, and the Great Noise Ensemble, among others. Recent highlights include the New York Philharmonic’s premiere of Adolphe’s orchestral work Dark Sand, Sifting Light conducted by Alan Gilbert at the inaugural 2014 Ny Phil Biennial, a recording on Inscape Chamber Orchestra’s album American Aggregate to be released by Sono Luminus in August 2014, and the concert premiere of Adolphe’s chamber opera Sylvia at NYC’s Bargemusic in 2013.

Get ‘Em While They’re Young: New Music as a Gateway to Classical Music

Posted on June 9, 2014 by - Columns

bridge

 

Over the past several months I have found myself in a rather strange position. Although my own personal background covers little on the topic of elementary or secondary music education, I have been discussing how composition can play a more active role in our K-12 education system. These informal—and, on one occasion, formal—discussions have led me to being selected as the California Music Educators Association (CMEA) Central Division “Higher Education Representative.” It’s a role which I am happy to fill, even though I feel slightly like an imposter. Still, there are reasons why I have found myself more involved in the “mus-ed biz” as of late. One large reason is due to the fact that where I work, Fresno State, is historically a teacher’s college. The overwhelming majority of students in my program are studying music education. So, even though my own education is from a more conservatory-style background, my almost ten years of experience teaching at Fresno State has provided me with some experience in understanding the state of music education within California. Not a whole lot, mind you, but enough to get by.

As for the nature of these aforementioned conversations, they typically revolve around how (or, more precisely, if) composition is being incorporated into the K-12 system. In order to be better prepared for discussing this with my fellow educators, I took it upon myself to research what kinds of materials currently exist for teaching music composition to secondary and elementary music students. It did not take me long to realize that there is an enormous amount of material available, and that any teacher interested in implementing music composition at the K-12 level needs to only do a little bit of surface research to discover the monumental mass of material out there!

One thing did strike me as a bit odd, though. I noticed when looking through this material that many of the methods designed to teach music composition focus primarily on technique, and infrequently mention the music from which those techniques are derived. Please note: this is not meant to be a statement of criticism. Any article, lesson, or discussion that is meant to inspire young students to write music—any music—should be encouraged! However, it is worth pointing out that much of this instruction seems to be designed through the careful avoidance of new music, focusing instead on either teaching no style, or instead on the styles of music with which K-12 students are presumably more familiar. This unfortunately may be teaching music students that there is no classical music being composed today, and that a modern composer only writes popular music, songs, or film scores.
One challenge to overcome is that for many young students there is an ingrained belief that classical music is not a part of mainstream culture. It isn’t “hip” or “new.” It is not the music they are interested in, and certainly not the music that they actively hear on the radio, on television, or on the internet. As a result, many young students simply “zone out” when presented with classical music.

They find it boring.

This often leads music educators to turn to other music as a way to engage their students. They use anything other than classical music as a way to get their students interested in learning about the subject. Again, there is nothing inherently wrong with teaching non-classical music in the classroom. However, the exclusion of classical music is likely having a detrimental effect, essentially reinforcing the perception that classical music is old and irrelevant.

But do you know what isn’t “old and irrelevant”? New music—by definition, no less! Whereas traditional classical music is considered to be old, new music is—well—new. If traditional music is perceived to be “irrelevant,” new music is quite the opposite, often directly reflecting current trends in our society. If students are unable to relate to Bach, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky, maybe they can relate to Missy Mazzoli, Steve Reich, and Osvaldo Golijov.

Frankly, we underestimate students when we assume they will not be interested in new music.

I will admit that this is a very bold statement to make. However, I have anecdotal evidence to support this. My wife is an elementary music teacher in Fresno Unified, where she teaches music at four different school sites, all of which serve primarily low-income students. Part of her pedagogical approach includes beginning each class with an example of music. Sometimes she plays something classical and other times something from popular music, but it is always something that she believes is capable of engaging her students. Not that it always does. Many times in the past, when she would play examples of traditional classical music such as Mozart or Tchaikovsky, her students would be bored out of their minds. The old perception seemed to be reinforcing itself: classical music is a style of music her students wouldn’t relate to, as it was not a part of their upbringing or culture.

Then she played Steve Reich for them.

The response was, in a word, astonishing. The students began tapping along and became actively engaged in their listening. They asked questions—questions!—about the music (which, in of itself is a pretty remarkable feat). Whereas Mozart was boring, Reich was exciting! It was new—something they did not expect, especially in the context of “classical music.” They wanted to hear more! Several times after my wife played them Electric Counterpoint, they asked for it again, even over popular music examples that she had played.

While Steve Reich might be a composer that we would expect younger students to engage with, what was more surprising was the response she received when she played them Pierre Boulez. Admittedly, the students reacted with confusion at first. However, as the music played they wanted to hear more. They wanted to know where this “crazy noise” was going. Once again, the music engaged her students on a level that neither Mozart nor Tchaikovsky ever did. They became active listeners. The music was unique and didn’t sound like “stereotypical classical music.” Like Reich, her students asked to hear “that weird Boulez music” again—many times over, in fact.

My wife’s experiences introducing new music to her students reminded me of another story that I had heard several years ago, when I was still a student at Indiana University. My composition teacher at the time, Claude Baker, once told me of his own experience when teaching music appreciation during his graduate days. In a recent conversation with Dr. Baker, he recalled the story for me:

When I was still a graduate student at Eastman, I taught low brass, theory, and music appreciation at a settlement school in a predominantly African-American community.  In the music appreciation class, I tried to take a traditional chronological approach to teaching the history of music. . .and it was an unmitigated disaster.  The students (mostly high schoolers) were either apathetic or downright hostile.  After a few weeks, I decided to try a “reverse chronological” path, starting with the concert and symphonic music of the time (“the time” being the early 1970s) and working backwards…and the change in attitude was dramatic.  The students immediately became more engaged, more enthusiastic, and more curious.  Attendance and class participation improved, particularly when I drew parallels between current art music and the popular music to which many of the students were listening.

The parallels between my wife’s experience and Dr. Baker’s are remarkable. Both indicate that we are possibly missing out on large opportunities to engage music students with new music, and thus classical music on the whole. This seems especially relevant for disadvantaged communities, where classical music is often viewed as foreign.

So, if new music has the potential to be a way to better engage K-12 students, why aren’t we seeing more of it in the classroom? Well, the obvious answer is that few music teachers know enough new music themselves to bring it into the class (or worse, have their own biases against new music). However, we cannot expect the music education community to change in this regard without composers such as myself becoming more involved with the K-12 system.

We composers need to be advocates for new music in the classroom, presenting music educators with a wide range of new music literature. We need to bring minimalism, indie-classical, spectralism, and the current avant-garde to K-12 students. Granted, they may not like all the music, but it will certainly get them thinking about it. If we are to keep classical music relevant in our schools, it needs to be placed into a modern context. Music education needs to embrace both composition and new music.

Challenging Tradition: Why Classical Musicians Should Learn Folk Music

Posted on March 7, 2014 by - Columns

About a year ago I stepped into a new world of music and it changed my life. Every Sunday night the Quays Pub, a small Irish bar in Queens, plays host to a group of some of the friendliest musicians I have ever met. They are there to play bluegrass and they are there to drink Jameson. It’s a lot of fun, but it’s also serious music. It was a totally new world for me.
Though a classically trained violinist, I had begun playing folk music in college and continued collaborating with folk musicians after moving to New York City. It was always a lot of fun, but I never really knew what I was doing. My initial contact with folk music had come primarily from the notated tradition: the music of Dvorák, Mahler, and Bartók for example.
So when I stepped up to take my first solo at the Quays Jam, I was as nervous as I have ever been before a performance. I still have absolutely no memory of those first few months of breaks. I would go to play and 20 seconds later I would regain consciousness, not knowing what had happened. I was following my ear and attempting to improvise, but I was only just beginning to understand the musical traditions behind fiddle playing and folk music making in general.

The Idiot Brigade

Ethan (center) with The Idiot Brigade. Photo by Michael Weinstein.

Now, after a year’s worth of discovering this music, many late-night jam sessions, and countless gigs (I did learn how to fake it quickly enough), one thought comes to mind upon reflection. Though I play an instrument with an enormous American tradition, it was not until I arrived at my first bluegrass jam that I actually began to investigate that style. Why is it that children learning to play the violin in America don’t learn about the rich traditions of American fiddle music?

From the perspective of technique, I suppose I can answer my own question. Playing old-time, Texas-style, Cajun, or bluegrass fiddle requires a slightly different approach to technique, particularly bow technique, from the Western classical tradition. But on a purely musical level, there is so much to be gained from exposure to the sounds of fiddle music, particularly in the realms of harmony and improvisation.

I honestly don’t think this would be that difficult. Even teachers who know very little about traditional music could assign interesting fiddle tunes to their students as a break between scales and etudes. It would be a moment in the middle of a practice session to reflect on just how much musical tradition exists in America. It would be a moment to recognize that most, if not all music comes, in some way, from folk traditions. It would be a way to connect the study of music to a greater understanding of the time, place, and manner in which it is created.
Bluegrass music changed my life by forcing me to challenge my concept of the folk. Rather than understanding it solely as musical material, I now understand it as living and breathing tradition. Incorporating folk music into the process of teaching notated music could breed a better understanding of other musical traditions as well as an openness to improvisation and composition. It could further the understanding of a musician not as a technician but as a creator, and of concerts not as galleries but as singular musical events.

How do you teach creativity in the process of teaching music?

***

Ethan Joseph is a musician and arts administrator. He serves as New Music USA’s Manager of Individual Giving where he focusses on building individual support for the organization at both the grassroots and major gifts levels. A classically trained violinist, Ethan currently performs with the experimental pop group Noise & Rhythm as well as the bluegrass band The Idiot Brigade.

Reflections on Liberal Arts and Late Bloomers

Posted on September 26, 2013 by - Columns

Vassar College library

The Vassar College library, by Matt DeTurk on Flickr

Last week I had the opportunity to visit my old stomping grounds at Vassar College. I was there to sit on a panel of alumni discussing careers in the arts with students and parents. It’s not an easy thing to talk about—arts-driven “careers”—and the panel, comprised of two visual artists, a novelist, and myself, did not shy away from talking about the instability and general uncertainty of working in a creative field. We all presented different approaches to building a life in the arts, and I think the conversations left students with the accurate impression that there is no one right way to be an artist.

Wandering around campus (and noting how comforting it is that the inside of the buildings still smell the same) I felt immensely grateful for the education I received there. I am quite certain that had things unfolded differently, I would not be a composer today, and I think there are plenty of young people out there now who, like my younger self, need something a bit different than the laser-focused, technical musical education one might receive at a conservatory or through some other types of programs.
The argument that a liberal arts education has no workplace value holds no water for those who actually hold liberal arts degrees and also have perfectly good jobs. Aside from the basic essentials that a liberal arts education provides—you know, the capacity to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems, not to mention assorted other “soft skills”—there is the simple fact that a teenager entering college often has no clue what s/he would like to pursue as a career. Some don’t figure it out until after college (the acclaimed novelist on the panel was a psychology major, and never took a single English class in college!), and others don’t figure it out ever. (This is by no means a terrible thing—these people are often fantastically interesting and smart about a myriad of subjects.)

I entered college fully intending to pursue the visual arts (way to pick the lucrative fields, right?) and in fact debated between attending an art school or a liberal arts college. In the end, I decided it would probably be smart to learn some other stuff in addition to art, just in case. It turned out to be a wise move, because I quickly changed my mind about a studio art major after enrolling in an electronic music class. The lure of being able to make my own sounds was too enticing, and I couldn’t get enough of it.

Although I grew up studying piano and singing in the school chorus, I did not start noodling on an instrument at age three or composing symphonies at age seven, and I never did counterpoint exercises at the breakfast table. Rather, I was at times a super pain in the butt for my very patient piano teacher, and I had barely touched the tip of the music theory iceberg by the time I arrived at college. That’s a late start, but at the time I had no idea whatsoever that I was running behind. And happily, no one ever mentioned it.

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The beautiful thing about the small music department at Vassar was that it didn’t really matter. As I dutifully plowed (and sometimes slogged) through the music major requirements (there were a lot—aside from pre-med, music had the largest required course load), I was receiving, in addition to that core knowledge, a fantastically eclectic musical education. There were two wonderful composition professors—Annea Lockwood and Richard Wilson—whose musical philosophies were worlds apart (and they got along—go figure!). I fell in love with the music of George Crumb, Steve Reich, Stravinsky, Bartók, and Messaien, while meeting in person Nicholas Collins, Charles Amirkhanian, Kyle Gann, and Conlon Nancarrow. I had a job working for composer Pauline Oliveros’s Deep Listening organization just up the road. As a percussion student, I played in the orchestra, performed Elliott Carter’s timpani etudes, and participated in the performance art works of other students. I never felt a sense of competition (in the negative sense) with my peers, nor was I particularly aware that composing competitions existed in the outside world. That was just fine; it wasn’t time for such things yet.
This is all well and good, but one could conceivably have those experiences at a forward-thinking music conservatory, right? Well, maybe so. But the other piece of the puzzle lies in the acquisition of knowledge outside of one’s focus. The study of topics such as astronomy, geology, biology, and Italian, just to name a few examples, open windows to the workings of the world, and as a result add richness and nuance to whatever one’s focus might be. I actually discovered the music of Benjamin Britten not through a music class, but rather via a Modern German Literature in Translation course, for which I wrote a paper about his opera Death in Venice. Through courses in religion (so many that I considered declaring it as a minor field of study), I became fascinated by the concept of ritual throughout world cultures, of storytelling, of the power of the human mind to conjure explanations for, and forge universal connections between, life events both significant and run-of-the-mill. By having the opportunity to dig deeply into a variety of topics that were interesting to me, I learned how to explore the nature of creativity in a meaningful way and discovered how to engage with ideas that would later serve as conceptual stepping-stones for the development of musical works. While possessing a deep and ever-growing understanding of one’s craft is obviously necessary, there are a lot of other things that can help pull a person to the composing desk (or the easel, or the potter’s wheel) each morning.

After college graduation, the road has continued to unfold in a similarly eclectic way, and I wouldn’t change a thing. It certainly isn’t an easy life, but then it’s not easy for anyone regardless of how focused their training may have been. Many of us have musical lineages that are more patchwork quilt than classic pinstripe, but the past and present of any artistic discipline are inextricably linked regardless of how the connections are formed or which version makes it to the history books. These interconnections are what make it is so exciting to be an artist in this day and age.

So the next time someone asks, “A music/philosophy/history/religion/you-name-it major? What on earth are you going to do with that?” A perfectly sensible response might be, “The sky’s the limit.”

Preparing for Takeoff

Posted on August 29, 2013 by - Columns

Boeing B-47B

Public domain, from commons.wikimedia.org

Since I’ve been writing for NewMusicBox, each year around the beginning of school I’ve tried to share some words of perspective with composers just beginning their college education, including one post suggesting reasons not to enroll in a composition degree program. But today I want to address my back-to-school post not to the dewy-eyed incoming fresh people, but to those students embarking on their final year(s) of academic study.

For many music students, there’s a sense of shock and, occasionally, panic at the thought of reaching the end of the road following years of musical study—a journey that likely began long before college, ending in a black hole of uncertainty as many musicians begin to confront the first years of their not being students that they can remember. This is one of the frequently disconcerting parts of careers in music, and making the successful transition from student to young professional can be the single most difficult period of any musician’s life.
While the road of student life does end, it’s only as a runway does: as a necessary path to greater things above and beyond. After spending a great deal of time talking over this particular issue with participants in this summer’s Fresh Inc Festival, I want to share some thoughts on the most important things to keep in mind while transitioning out of student life:

    • Presentation matters. It’s not an afterthought or some kind of fancy icing distinct from substance. Presentation is intimately connected to the way you and your music will be perceived and evaluated—from clean, well laid out parts that help you get the most out of rehearsals, to an articulate and human preconcert talk, to a website that’s clear and easy to navigate. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that the substance of your work will carry itself, as it takes work to project that substance to others and help it come across.

 

    • Music is only one small part of the big picture. You’ll also need writing skills if you want to blog or express your vision to a grant panel; math and software skills if you want to run an ensemble’s finances; knowledge of electronic equipment for your shows; and development skills if you want to be able to raise money for your projects. Try reading through any staff directory for an orchestra or opera company, taking note of all the different roles and tasks to be accomplished. It’s not a bad template for planning out one’s own first projects. It’s also a reminder of how much takes place behind the scenes in order to bring music to new audiences. Develop a broad skillset, and you’ll always have plenty of options for achieving your goals, as well as making yourself useful to others.

 

    • Engagement is key. Whether it’s through posters at a local venue, posts on social media, or outreach activities at a local library, engaging your fans and potential audience members is a must. Finding (and better, creating) your own networks of followers and collaborators is crucial for long-term development and sustainability. Music is one of the most social professions, and you need to start engaging the larger musical community early and often if you want to have your finger on the pulse.

 

  • Cultivate a definition of success that is inclusive rather than exclusive. Everyone’s idea of success is obviously different, and it’s more likely than not that your own criteria for success will shift subtly or dramatically throughout a life in music. Be ready for and open to everything; things don’t usually happen the way we expect them to, and we make the most of opportunity when we throw out the script and open up to what’s going on around us. Most of all, avoid the types of success that come at the expense of others in favor of success that uplifts everyone it touches—the kind of success that comes from having given rather than having taken. When you are able to take pride in the achievements of others rather than treating all colleagues as competition, there’s a lot more to be gained and absolutely nothing to lose.

 

More Media Matters (Part 2)

Posted on February 1, 2013 by - Columns

Last week I suggested that an idealized “nine-to-five” lifestyle of an idealized “middle-class” American left an idealized “him” about one-third of “his” time to do anything other than work, commute to and from work, sleep, and eat. Actually “he” would have 1.5 more hours per week to dedicate to “leisure” time. But we all know that the state of the economy in the last 12 years has shrunk the “nine-to-five” demographic quite a bit. Some see this as a good thing as people diversify their talents and take up “freelance” vocations that allow them to “self-actualize” their lives through various creative outlets, like a hobby. In reality, these people are mostly using their creative talents to generate more income to make up for lost wages, more like a second job. Another argument against the idealized three-way “work-sleep-play” split is that seldom does work end when one leaves his or her idealized workplace. Often, time spent eating and time spent playing combine elements of work, thus becoming time spent working. (How many high-level business decisions are made at the golf course or at lunch?) So the idea that one has an equal chance to experience artistic expression from a “normal” work environment is a fallacy; one with a demonstrable downside.

Learning music has been shown to be important to the development of our minds and bodies. This is common enough knowledge that Barack Obama addressed it during his first presidential campaign. But to learn music one has to spend time—a lot of time—playing music. For instance: to play in my junior high school orchestra, one had to attend the 45-minute class five days per week, and one was expected to practice on weekends. Students who later became proficient usually played at least twice that much. Those of us who wanted to improvise to play jazz or rock had to learn it on our own and, thus, we had to practice even more. So, as I said last week, mastering jazz takes more time and effort than learning to play an instrument well enough to play classical repertoire, which in turn takes much more dedication and study than what is needed to play most pop music. (I’m not trying to say that there aren’t brilliant and dedicated pop musicians, but if one compares average representatives of these genres I’m sure that there would be no disagreement with the thesis.)

On the other hand, pop musicians can make a lot more money than classical or jazz musicians. I have no doubt that part of the reason for this is that pop musicians travel a tighter orbit around the Great American Culture Machine (GACM). They often look at the business of music as integral a part of music making as the creative part, and even more important than mastery of a particular instrument. And the seven-, eight-, and even nine-figure salaries that are flaunted in tabloids, newspapers, and business journals must hold some degree of allure to one who is interested in pursuing music as a vocation. But, these are proverbial carrots-on-a-stick held out by the GACM to pull in anyone who believes themselves worthy of a place on stage or, as an interviewer I was talking with earlier this week put it by way of referencing the baseball movie Bull Durham, “the Show.”
One of the subtexts of Bull Durham (for those not familiar with the classic) is the control of the individual by the GACM at the expense of talent and expression. In the movie, an aging but viable catcher is downgraded to an obscure triple-A team to coach a young pitcher with star potential into a Major League commodity. Although the mechanics of baseball are much more organized and pervasive than those of the arts, there are aspects of the music industry that resemble the world of Bull Durham. Besides the obvious aspects of physicality in music and athletics (the phylum that baseball is a species of), with its regimen of training, specialized exercise, and repetitive motion injuries, the concept of loyalty towards one’s group bordering on fealty is common to both. I’m sure that readers who are, or have been, involved in music as professional performers can relate to the catcher’s disdain at his association with a substandard team, but still taking pride and finding joy from his own performance. (It’s like the principle flutist of a community concert band delivering perfect cadenzas in Scheherazade while every instrument section’s tutti sounds like a major-second cluster, or the once-famous jazz saxophonist who plays in the same group to “stay in shape.”) And I remember showing up to a rehearsal of my beloved Boys Club Jazz Band to find the director-conductor-composer-arranger-baritone saxophonist Don Ontiveros sitting at his desk with the same expression that the team manager in Bull Durham had on his face when passing the news to a player that the front office was firing him, only Don was reading a letter informing him that funding for the band had been pulled (right after we won our division at the Reno Jazz Festival’s jazz band competition).

That was the first time I experienced the utter sense of disbelief I would have felt when reading the New York Times article that appeared on its front page, had I not become acclimated to such things during my brilliant career. However, I was surprised to see this particular arm of the GACM champion the inequity of the artist-to-industry relationship so diligently. That is, until I saw the part about “certain types of music, like classical or jazz,” being condemned to poverty if streaming on the Internet is “the only way people consume music.” I had already been reading Frank J. Oteri’s reportage from the MIDEM convention in Cannes. In his third installment, “Ephemeral Playback,” Oteri outlines a discussion on “how to revitalize classical and jazz” in the digital era. It seems that the question posed at Cannes is undermined by the NYT’s piece. By insisting that classical and jazz are fodder for unscrupulous corporate exploitation, interest in pursuing them, either as vocation or avocation, is diminished. If one were prone to conspiracy theory, an indication of the GACM being engaged in the practice of contraindicating the highest standards of cultural performance to the culture being created to foster consumer-only tiers could be perceived.

A possible better way to address the issue under discussion at MIDEM might be to reintroduce classical and/or jazz music into the core curricula of public education on a par with other subjects, such as math or English. The aforementioned research shows this will boost a student’s ability to master those other subjects and perform in society when schooling is done as well. And the explanation can be coupled with recent press showing a growing dissatisfaction with the current approaches to core curricula. Granted, the single attempt by documentarian Ken Burns to broaden the reception of jazz by American television viewers was greeted by an avalanche of invective from the jazz community (who thought its scope to be too narrow) and the jazz academy (who saw flaws in its timeline); but this shouldn’t make jazz, or any form of music, anathema to the Great American Culture Machine. Indeed, Burns should be, and is, credited with taking on the challenge of educating the GACM consumer class. But trying to encapsulate a genre is often to declare it complete, finished, over…in a word, dead.

This is possibly the biggest problem one confronts when involved in the practice of creating new music, like an 800-pound gorilla in the room. But it is also one that can, and hopefully will, be effectively addressed as a media matter. The relationship between the media and the arts is reflexive. The most obvious facet of that reflexivity is reportage and prose (as well as poetry). Music is generally removed by genre and style, as well as by issue and time. Hip-hop primarily addresses issues of class-differentiation by skin color and poverty, which were previously addressed by folk music and post-modern jazz (but folk music still speaks to a plethora of class-differentiated issues); but what music is addressing issues of culture deprived curricula in education?
To be continued…

New Music for New Ears

Posted on January 16, 2013 by - Articles, Commentary

Our bows hovered in stillness for as long as the ethereal, haunting feeling of Marcos Balter’s Vision Mantra lingered in the air.  Slowly lowering our arms, the audience began to applaud, and then—the moment of truth—we broke down that fourth wall that formalizes the relationship between listeners and performers and asked the audience what they heard in Balter’s piece.  At first, no one spoke.  My body tensed as I thought, Oh no, they didn’t get it.  And then, with a confident air of nonchalance, a three year old in the second row raised her hand.  “Bumblebees!” she announced.  “Yes!!” we agreed.  We had joked in rehearsal about how the piece, with its pianissimo tremolos, did indeed resemble some sort of insect mating call.  A few seconds later, a parent in the back tentatively spoke up.  “Yellowstone,”  she volunteered, explaining that her family had gone on vacation there a few years ago and the sounds in the piece reminded her of the beauty of the national park.  Now that the ice was broken, kids and parents alike became more and more eager to share what they heard.  “Wind chimes!” offered a nine year old.  All the adults in the room oohed and aahed in agreement.  After the concert, we asked several kids what their favorite piece was.  Out of Haydn, Borodin, and Balter, all chose Balter.  Note to self, we all thought, we should always program new music on kiddie concerts…

A performance of Marcos Balter’s Vision Mantra

A performance of Marcos Balter’s Vision Mantra

I have often noticed that kids have a greater attention span and much more curiosity about classical music than adults give them credit for.  Performing this outreach concert at the Music Institute of Chicago not only confirmed my hunch, it also convinced me that children are incredibly open-minded and receptive to challenging music, not just the fluff on the “Mozart for Kids” CDs (What’s that?  It will raise my child’s IQ??  I must buy it!).  Furthermore, a child’s interest in a particular kind of music can influence their parents’ perspective.  If that three year old, sitting on her papa’s lap, hadn’t made it known that she knew exactly what kinds of sounds Marcos Balter had been envisioning in his piece, the other adults in the room may not have thought up their own imaginative responses.  In this case, the children inspired their parents to look at the concert experience in a more creative way, as opposed to the stiff and formal way adults have been programmed to think of classical concerts.

It’s exactly these thoughts that the City of Chicago’s recently appointed deputy commissioner for arts programming also seems to share.  Angel Ysaguirre, formerly the director of Boeing’s global community investing, joined the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events just about a year ago, and is the driving force behind a new series at the Chicago Cultural Center.  The Cultural Center already presents a multitude of free concerts for the public several days a week.  Come February, they will begin offering a new series with a somewhat unprecedented concept.  Its target audience is—wait for it—toddlers.  And the gist of the so-called Juicebox series is to present high-quality avant-garde arts programming of all kinds—new music (both contemporary classical and jazz), theater and puppetry, and modern dance.  Starting February 1, and continuing every two weeks at 10 a.m. on Fridays, the performance space under the Cultural Center’s beautiful Tiffany Dome will be transformed into, well, something that probably will resemble a preschool classroom.  Kids will be invited to sit, lay on the floor, or, according to the folks from the Cultural Center, “roaming around the room is totally cool with us.”  With snacks and juiceboxes on hand, they will have the opportunity to experience an art form that most parents would never think to introduce their kids to because they assume it’s just too difficult to understand.  Parents and grandparents will be encouraged to bring their toddlers, and preschools will be invited to bring in entire classrooms.  Lucky for me, I’ll have the honor of observing the small listeners from a very special perspective when my quartet performs on the series next month.

The way Ysaguirre sees it, children don’t really develop their own preferences for art and music until after they turn 8 or 9, and at that point, their tastes are shaped by their surroundings and social environment.  For instance, if eight-year-old Mary’s older sister is always blasting the Jonas Brothers from her room and their parents think classical music is boring, Mary will probably develop a taste for pop music and have no interest in ever going to a symphony concert.  This concept is reflected in several research studies, all based on David Hargreaves’s “open-earedness” theory.  Hargreaves’s hypothesis—and the conclusions of most of these studies—states that the younger a child is, the more open-minded she is to unfamiliar music.  Furthermore, if children are not exposed to unfamiliar music early in life, they are significantly less likely to respond positively to it the older they become.  The age that their open-earedness disappears seems to be, at latest, nine years old.  Ysaguirre’s hope is that by offering the Juicebox concerts, he can help shape kids’ preferences and give them a taste for new music, a taste that they will not lose because they were exposed to it during a crucial time in their development.  Ysaguirre has witnessed for himself that, contrary to popular belief, kids actually enjoy listening to highly complex music just as much as simple music.  Besides, avant-garde music, theater, and dance are adventurous, just like kids are.  And unlike adults, kids are content to let the experience of a piece of music or dance wash over them, thinking about how it makes them feel, rather than searching for narrative or meaning within the work.

Miss “Bumblebees!” checks out the cello at an instrument petting zoo after the show.

Miss “Bumblebees!” checks out the cello at an instrument petting zoo after the show.

This idea that young children enjoy complex music is something I also heard from Germany-based clarinetist Sacha Rattle, who performed in an avant-garde production of Little Red Riding Hood set to music by Georges Aphergis through National Theater Mannheim’s Children’s Opera.  When four and five year olds were asked what they thought of the production, their reactions were overwhelmingly positive.  In fact, they didn’t even seem to notice the fact that the music was microtonal; they were mostly just psyched about how loud it was.  One child even likened the production to The Magic Flute, which he had seen the week before and had enjoyed just as much.  The difference in open-mindedness was huge, however, when older kids came to the theater.  The fifteen year olds, in particular, couldn’t stand the production.  According to Rattle, the story was too childish for them but the humor was too complex, and they despised Aphergis’s music.  One group even jeered that the musicians must not know how to play their instruments.  Rattle said that, more than anything, the whole experience taught him about people’s perception of new music, and more importantly, “how it should be, and could be perceived.”
As music and arts programs continually seem to be cut from school curriculums, it becomes ever more important to make sure that kids are exposed to the arts so that they remain as open-minded at fifteen as they were at five.  While the Tubby the Tuba CD is certainly one tool when it comes to teaching kids about classical music, could it be that we’re underestimating children?  When we assume they wouldn’t like or understand a challenging piece of music, we don’t even give them a chance.  As Angel Ysaguirre told me, investing in the contemporary version of an art form is what keeps the arts exciting and relevant.  Likewise, investing in new music is a way of perpetuating classical music in general.  This being the case, why on earth wouldn’t we want to expose kids to new, exciting, adventurous forms of art, while they’re just starting to develop their own tastes and perceptions?

When Ysaguirre shared with me a bit about his own introduction to classical music, I learned that it wasn’t Brahms or Beethoven that first drew his attention, it was a performance of Philip Glass’s Satyagraha.  He is well aware that for him, new music was an introduction to classical music as a whole, and it is this experience that he is hoping to invoke in the young children that attend a Juicebox performance.  One of his main priorities is to provide the highest quality programming by bringing in the best artists in Chicago.  The lineup this spring will include free performances by the Spektral Quartet, Chicago Q Ensemble, RE|Dance, Jim Gailloretto’s Jazz String Quintet, Jeff Parker, and Jason Adasiewicz with Frank Rosaly, among others.  And beginning in April, Juicebox will expand from the Cultural Center to partner with the Chicago Park District in providing additional avant-garde performances in unlikely locations around many Chicago neighborhoods.

Just as I was thrilled by the realization that the kids at my outreach concert had fallen for the sounds of Marcos Balter, I can hardly wait to see the reactions of the toddlers who come to the Juicebox Series at the Chicago Cultural Center.  At the very least, the series will expose children and their parents to some crazy and exciting performances in a uniquely kid-friendly setting.  At most, the Juicebox series has the potential to turn a few of today’s toddlers into tomorrow’s contemporary art patrons.  Who knows, this might just be the first step towards creating a generation of young people who recognize the importance of keeping the arts alive and relevant, and who will one day grow up to become the new music advocates of the future.

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Sara Sitzer

Sara Sitzer
Photo by Julisa Fusté

Sara Sitzer is a freelance cellist in Chicago. A member of string quartet Chicago Q Ensemble and the Elgin Symphony, she also performs regularly with the Milwaukee Symphony and the Firebird Chamber Orchestra in Miami. Sitzer is founding artistic director of the Gesher Music Festival of Emerging Artists in St. Louis.
She holds performance degrees from the University of Wisconsin and Boston University, and completed a three-year fellowship with the New World Symphony under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas.