Musical Philosophy (previous version - please remember dates are not adjusted)

I play and teach music because music is an exploration of the human condition.  Music is a collaborative art form that involves the performers, the authors and the audience members.  One goal of this collaboration is for all parties to explore the emotional, aesthetic and intellectual complexities of life through a sonic medium.  Music is the only activity, curricular subject and art form that uses sound to such a high degree to provide this exploration.  As a result music gives us a unique opportunity to wrestle with what it means to be human.Music Teaching

An essential component of a student’s education is to wrestle tooth and nail with, and to search for what it means to be human.  Studying music allows them to explore their humanity by interacting with sound on intellectual, aesthetic and emotional levels.  This intellectual interaction starts with musical literacy.  Music contains many linguistic properties and students learn to decode and create this language just like any other by connecting sounds with meaning as well as connecting symbolic representation with meaning. 

As students give meaning to those sounds, whether that is finding the story behind the music or even simply finding the proper method to produce those sounds, they are making musical decisions.  Making a musical decision is an aesthetic interaction: they have gone beyond the decoding process by deciding how to qualify the music. 

As students struggle with the aesthetic and intellectual components of the music they must also deal with the affect of the music: this is an emotional interaction.  I have found the emotional complexities of music to be fascinating as well as striking.  I can also identify the role music had in my emotional understanding of a very difficult point in my life.  Three years ago I found out that a great friend was being sent to the war in Iraq.  I remember the next day sitting in a practice room thinking about my buddy and being very scared.  It is impossible to verbally describe the complexity of the emotions I was feeling, the images that kept jumping into my brain and the physical discomfort I felt that morning.  After sitting for a while I began to make music.  Sometimes it was the music on the page.  Sometimes not.  As I played I eventually began to understand some of what I was feeling.  The emotional experience of making music helped me articulate that I was twenty-three years old and that there was a chance that I would have to give a eulogy that I should not have to give.  That I felt helpless.  It helped me understand a part of life that I will never be able to put into words.

Performing Music

Music is a part of every culture on Earth. While this ubiquity is impressive consider that many cultures do not have any sort of written language and less than 25% of people in the world have access to the internet. Yet we all have music.  It is not a coincidence that music accompanies the dancing at a wedding. Music also says what the words of a eulogy could not. 

When I perform, I make music with the knowledge that I have the opportunity to change lives, and the desire to do so.  This excerpt from a speech by Karl Paulnack, director of the Boston Conservatory Music Division, to entering freshmen effectively articulates the job of musicians:

“If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you’d take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at 2 AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you’re going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft.”

I play and teach music because I want to empower every soul in my classroom and every soul in the audience to live a great life.  Music is a unique and essential way to explore the essence of humanity and I want to bring it to as many people as possible.