Listening to Your World, Listening to Your Future

First, the moment. Some people my age and older are nostalgic for the days of the record store. In any medium to large city, and even some small ones, you could find a good-sized selection of classical records and maybe even a smartypants clerk to tell you that you were buying the wrong one.

Then came Borders. Then went Borders.

But as all of you students know, you have access to an inconceivable amount of music on the Internet — and some of you even pay for it. My point about embracing the moment is: survey the landscape, use the tools at your disposal.

Don’t just think: “Oh, I’m going to play this concerto more beautifully than anyone ever has, and I’m done.” This moment isn’t just about repertoire, it’s about projects and relationships. I play my fair share of standard rep, but I’m in the middle of a three-year project playing a Philip Glass concerto that I commissioned. It’s the work I’m performing here in Denver this weekend.

This piece brought me together with the Venice Baroque Orchestra. We are touring around the world and now presenters want us to do something else. So in this case, a successful project is leading to another.

It took me many years to get to a place where I have three simultaneous jobs: playing the violin, running a chamber music festival in Rome, Italy and working with the McDuffie Center for Strings at Mercer University in my hometown. Along the way, I may not have gotten all the bookings I wanted, and some opportunities went to other people. But that happens to everyone. Things don’t always go your way. But they have a better chance if they involve situations you create for yourself.

To do that you need tools and relationships. That’s why we at Mercer University believe in training your generation of musicians not just in music, but in all the skills you’ll need to navigate through the music business. Our program is small —a maximum enrollment of just 26 string players who can form a chamber orchestra. They are taught by resident faculty and visiting instructors who include some of the world’s leading musicians — violist Lawrence Dutton of the Emerson Quartet, cellist Hans Jorgen Jensen, not to mention Colorado’s own star cellist, Julie Albers. This past spring our students performed with Atlanta Symphony and Aspen Music Festival director Robert Spano and Mike Mills from the legendary rock band R.E.M.

In addition to their intensely focused musical studies, we’re training our students in economics — micro and macro. Technology. Business law. Entrepreneurship. Digital rights. Fund raising, Non-profits. Public speaking. Social media. Psychology.

We are constantly thinking of ways to expand a student’s field of vision and skill set. The excellent St. Lawrence String Quartet gave a master class for ‘both our students and the Mercer Bears men’s basketball team. Then we watched the team practice, break down film from their last game and play their next one. The goal was to expose all these undergraduates to different modes of preparation and performance, different types of teamwork.

We have plans for interdisciplinary programs of unprecedented scope. And the ideas come from everywhere in the Mercer University orbit. With the School of Theology we are planning a course and performance based on Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ.

A federal judge in Macon wants to develop a project around the film Death and the Maiden. It’s based on Ariel Dorfman’s play and Schubert’s string quartet and song of the same name. Students from all parts of Mercer would be invited to study issues around political prisoners, ethics, modern history — and hear our musicians play the Schubert that started it all.

We have also gone outside the university to form partnerships with the Aspen Music Festival, the Rome Chamber Music Festival, the Colburn School Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles, and the New World Symphony in Miami. Our students can participate in master classes with and receive coaching from the New World Symphony via Internet.

So the world we are living in is an extremely exciting blend of old and new. We are playing and talking about music more than three centuries old through high-def cameras and fiber optic cables. But classical music has always been at the intersection of tradition and cutting-edge thought. Great composers from Bach to Mozart to Steve Reich and Philip Glass have found inspiration in ancient sacred words. Young musicians are sampling all sorts of old and new music to create sounds our grandparents could never have imagined.

And this new world is now yours. Look at where you are. Listen to what you love and find music that’s completely different. Think about where you want to be, even if it’s a place that hasn’t been built yet.

When I was a high school athlete and moderately motivated violinist, there was no New World Symphony and no Kronos Quartet. The Metropolitan Opera and Los Angeles Philharmonic weren’t appearing on movie screens across the country. I couldn’t play you thousands of pieces of music from my phone. And I certainly couldn’t put video of myself online for anyone, anywhere in the world, to watch me play the violin or even shoot free throws.

This new world is yours — not Yo-Yo Ma’s, not Itzhak Perlman’s nor even mine, And you have tools we never had. Use them. Make music. Make more music. And make music mean more — to more and more people.

Thank you. Be listening.