1. For young musicians in school contemplating a life in music, the world must seem a rather bleak place.

2. New technologies continue to proliferate at a rapid pace; our lives are increasingly delineated by the objects which purport to improve our lives. With easy access to the Internet, we are flooded with enormous amounts of information of all stripes. Increasingly, we have come to expect such access.

3. As a conservatory student I found myself in an alternative universe with its own system of logic and values. In that environment, the highest aspiration was a life as a performer, the clear implication being that all other musical activity indicated lesser talent..... My life experience leads me to reject these assumptions and values.

4. The author talks about working with an arts program in El Paso and going into schools to work with small children and quotes one of the letters as, “ Thank you for coming to my school today. I liked it when you played the piano and made funny faces. Your music was very beautiful. When I went home, I thought about it and I didn't feel so hungry.”

1. A rather pungent opening and quite a set up. This could could go into a diatribe on why everything is terrible or why this is not true. This opening raises an effective question in the readers mind. Much like at the beginning of a class the instructor can raise pungent issue and then spend the class “unpacking” it through the questions of the students and a little guidance. Now I see.

2. The last line is a very important message and one that can not be under emphasized. We live in an age when the Internet and television hand us large amounts of information on command and delivered in a nice often thoroughly well crafted package. As someone who produces live art it is important to realize that this is the “training:” of the audience and that they have expectations that have been cultivated as a result of this experience.

Expectations:

• consistent message

• well informed message

• multiple intertwined narratives

• intellectual challenge (to discover something in each return to a a piece)

• that the piece/lesson be as inclusive or not as possible and that this be clear from the outset. (if one is going to limit, it must be clear)

• a knowledge of a human message, integration. A good composer/teacher/artist etc can integrate real life with cold facts in a way that a computer never can. Using tools as tools and building off of this offers exciting opportunities.

3. Part of my process of preparing for graduation from the conservatory is an assessment of what has changed in my thinking. This quote points directly at that. When I entered NEC I assumed that I would cultivate my skills as a composer to the exclusion of my abilities as an educator. In my second semester I found myself in an internship where the line quickly blurred. I now am able to see that for myself, creation and education are inseparably linked, in fact I find that I function optimally as an Artist/Teacher/Scholar and that when I don't engage one of these components I am unable to succeed with what I am attempting to accomplish, it is the way I function.

4. It is a simple poignant testimony that gets to the heart of what art can do, allow us to transcend our daily drudgery, in this case a child who is hungry. In other stories I remember; allowing holocaust survivor to sustain themselves for months on end by silently rehearsing Beethoven String quartets in her head. What is striking about this example is that the performer was not on a major concert stage, she was in a class room with a nasty little piano and she was not presenting a recital as much as working with the students to establish some simple human bond. In this simple little corner of the universe magic happened, the performer was able to transcend the boundary and speak with sounds, is that not what we do?

5. Should we not be training our students to define their success by the quality of their contributions?

6. In a world often lacking in joy and comfort, we cannot doubt the need for the deep emotional, spiritual and intellectual engagement of great music.

7. To the conservatory student looking out at the world today, I say: you see a world that needs you. How you choose to fill that need is up to you. Your privilege and your responsibility is to decide what your life as a musician should be.

5. This quote speaks so eligently to how to succeed in life. Set goals that can be achieved over and over again and that mean a great deal to the recipients and enactors. I am struck by the thought that the most effective teachers that I have had while at NEC, while some taught me a great deal, some taught me very little, but what they taught me was at the core of what being a human is and that I am able to this simple lesson and expand it over and over, thus one well taught lesson, has taught me more than the people who presented more “facts” etc upfront. Simple elegance, sort of like the parable “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he eats for a life time.”

6. An important fact to carry about in ones head and heart while going through life. I am reminded of my conversations with Robert Cogan about the composer Xenakis. Cogan met him when they were both presenting at the same conference. He noted that other musicians were continually asking him about the math behind his music, for which he is noted, but that Xenakis wanted to speak about the emotion that had driven the music. Looking back I see that Cogan gave me a story, one that he knew I would hold on to because of my interest and one that has a clear message, that this quote elegantly states; art has a duty to engage the human emotionally, spiritually and intellectually. If I miss one of these components in my work as a Artist/Teacher/Scholar, it will not be a success.

7. First I must state that not all people see a world that needs them, that is often a question. But leaving my pessimism aside I want to address the responsibility that I have inherited as a musician. I must once again recognize my teacher, Robert Cogan, in a lesson that I didn't quite understand I was learning or why I was learning it. At the end of last year I Was preparing for my enrollment in classes for this year and I sought out the advice of my teacher, as this has often been a good way to gain insight and guidance on ones path in music. I will never forget my confusion when I asked him if I should enroll in class A or B and he answered with; this class is taught by x and this by y, they each present you you with this information, but unlike so many teachers before him, he would not decisively say which class he thought I should be in. I pressed him further and he eventually stated that I had the great privilege to make my own decisions and that in making those decisions I would determine my path in music. I thought about that throughout the summer and eventually decided that he was attempting to train me to be a better decision maker because as a composer that is what one must do, time and again. In juxtaposing that lesson with this quote a new level of understanding is emerging, that the “privilege and responsibility” are mine. These words have come up time and again in my private lessons and now I am beginning to understand that this was an opportunity to rehearse a skill that I will use for the rest of my life. I am fortunate that in each decision that I make I have an opportunity to discuss it with my teach and gain feedback and wisdom about my decisions. I am very fortunate that I get to not only do this with my private instructor but also with my internship adviser, Larry Scripp and that each thing that I do at NEC has been discussed in regards to my development as an Artist/Teacher/Scholar.

- A bit of a sidebar, in seeing that this one lesson, ie “How to make a decision,” taught by Robert Cogan and Larry Scripp, in contrast to this quote I begin to appreciate the multidimensionality of each lesson that is accounted for by the cubes. This simple lesson, which I apply in my music, in my teaching and in my life is why music seamlessly teaches us to educate, musicians spend their life being critical of their every move, with good guidance we learn core lessons that are applicable on every level of education and life.