Day 3: Thursday January 16, 2014

Today, Renee and I headed to the Kenwood Academy arts high school to work with the young musicians in the string orchestra. Renee and CMOP principal string players have been teaching these students and coaching the string orchestra since October, to help prepare them for their upcoming performance of four short pieces on the CMOP concert this coming Wednesday. The students had been working very hard on the pieces, including Pachelbel's "Canon", and it was clear that they were very excited about their upcoming performance.

I began by talking with the students about my time as a high school musician playing trumpet and guitar, and how that led me to study music in college, where in the first two years, my interests quickly shifted from instrumental performance, to conducting, and ultimately to composition by the time I was 20. I then quickly recounted how at that point, I followed a pretty standard path for a young composer, a Masters degree followed by a PhD, and a half-dozen-or-so summer festivals along the way, to round out my education and training. We then did a short Q&A--one student asked how I learned to write down the music I was hearing, another asked me if music was a hard field and profession. I wanted them to hear some music too, so I played the piece Renee and CMOP were preparing for Saturday's concert--"in shadows, in silence". Then some more Q&A, with astute observations/questions about narrative in the piece (the story behind the music), and also about the inspiration for my works in general and this piece in specific.

I felt it was important to try and leave the students with some useful advice from someone who was just like them 15 years ago and has remained a musician in the years that followed, and the thought that came to me, on the spot really, was this:
follow your passion and pursue your goals, be open to the unfamiliar and unexpected, and be aware that the life you imagine for yourself now might not be the life you find yourself living 10 years from now; instead, what you're imaging now might be a path that leads you to a life you never imagined.

When I was 18, I didn't know that there were living composers--I was convinced I would be an orchestral trumpeter, since basically, I had spent all my time from about age 12 to 18 preparing to be one. But when I got to college, I learned about things I had never been exposed to before, like conducting, and new music, and composing, and my interests and passions quickly shifted--it felt strange and difficult at the time, but ultimately right--I trusted my instincts, and they were telling me that I was a composer, not  a performer.

When I looked out at these young students, I could almost see myself at 14 again, sitting in my high school band room with my trumpet and guitar, eating my lunch between rehearsals, completely in love with music. And I could feel how I felt back then, so sure about my future, yet unaware that I was so completely wrong about it all...
I'm glad that I was.