NEC Alumni Interview

New England Conservatory undergraduates can take a Professional Artist Development class in which one of the assignments is to conduct an alumni interview.  I was interviewed once in 2004 and twice in 2006.  The second interview was by a former student of mine, ironically a day after a friend emailed me this article by Doug Yeo, where Mr. Yeo mentions how being interviewed by a former student led him into deep contemplation about his life.

Here are the three interviews I did for that NEC class:

1. What did you do when you first got out of school?
2. How did you survive financially and artistically?
3. Now, looking back on the first few years after you finished school, is there anything that you would have done differently?
4. What advice do you have for someone to prepare them for life after NEC?
5. What is your work like now?
6. How do you balance any of these: performing/teaching/other work/social life?
7. Do you have any suggestions for taking auditions?
8. Do you think that there is any particular way to help get your name out into the music world?
9. What is the best piece of advice that anyone has ever given you?
10. Do you teach out of love of teaching or is it something for you to fall-back on?
11. How did your goals change as your matured?
12. So you still take auditions?
13. Are you happy with your life? How is your life compared to what you thought it would be when you were in college?
14. How much did being at NEC influence/impact you and what did you miss most when you left?
15. What I am most curious about is what you got from Norman’s teaching and how you use it in teaching and playing.
16. What has been ingrained in your system?
17. Do you ever still remember his voice telling you something?
18. Is there anything that he taught you that years letter you said, “OH! Now I get what he was saying!”?
19. Are you happy with your trombone career?
20. What would you change about your situation if you could do it at the snap of your fingers?

Interview One

1. What did you do when you first got out of school?  I continued the freelancing and teaching in the Greater Boston area that I began during my Master’s degree at NEC.  It included Rhode Island, Cape Cod, New Bedford, Boston, up to New Hampshire, and more.
2. How did you survive financially and artistically?  The Boston area is a very expensive place to live, so I had 35-45 students (mostly 1/2 hour lessons) and a morning part-time public school job (beginner brass and 8th grade orchestra…I have a music ed degree). Teaching gave me the security of regular pay but scheduling was difficult because I wanted to be a performer. Freelancing required that students be rescheduled. I earned over $30K/year this way.Artistically speaking, in addition to freelancing I played chamber concerts with a trombone quartet.  I also took nearly every orchestra audition available, and still wanted/needed to develop my skills through lessons while trying to survive financially.  I was fortunate to have a teacher who “met” with me (gave me lessons) for free after graduating, but I also paid for lessons with others when I could scrape together the money.
3. Now, looking back on the first few years after you finished school, is there anything that you would have done differently?  Perhaps I would have done more recitals, and could always have taken time to learn jazz improvisation.
4. What advice do you have for someone to prepare them for life after NEC?  Play well wherever you go, stay in shape for taking auditions, and attend them whenever possible.  The best way to learn how to take auditions is to attend them.If you have a slow trajectory toward earning financial independence through music, then keep studying, practice things that nurture your love of music, keep your chin up, persist, and always present yourself professionally, to help keep the work coming in.  It can be tough when you have to make a living while preparing for auditions, and it can take a long time to earn stability in this field.It is easy, a few years out of school, to become bitter over not having the income that people in other fields ave more quickly, after say, only one degree.  You may be able to stay positive by remembering through the lean times that you are willing to defer gratification, that you want this, that you chose it, and by focusing on what drew you to music in the first place.  It takes tremendous energy and dedication to keep practicing and studying after graduation, but some of us simply need longer than the allotted school years to develop.If your career does take off right after school, my advice is practice to stay ahead of the curve when you are faced with a rigorous performance schedule.  Young players in major orchestras have found that winning a job is different than playing one and you have to practice differently for playing new concerts every week than you did when you were preparing excerpts.
5. What is your work like now?  I rehearse and perform in Dayton’s Schuster Center, one of the greatest concert halls in my experience, with fantastic colleagues in the Dayton Philharmonic.  I also freelance, subbing in other groups and creating my own gigs for the Greater Dayton Brass Ensemble and Malarkey.  I teach at Sinclair Community College, Earlham College, Indiana University East, other schools in suburban Dayton, and at my house.
6. How do you balance any of these: performing/teaching/other work/social life?  Back in Boston, before I was making my living primarily from one orchestra I was freelancing and teaching, driving up to 35,000 miles a year, and trying to resolve scheduling conflicts between various ensembles and students.  Life was very unbalanced with a lot of late nights and early mornings.Since then, I did half of a Doctorate, played with the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, and switched to the Dayton Philharmonic.  As a result of having an orchestral job, career scheduling is simpler than when freelancing in many different groups.  I still play in other ensembles when they fit the schedule.  And the same is true for teaching.  One puts the puzzle together each year, which school on which day.  I like the diversification of working in a few locations, for security (if one job goes south, at least you have others) and as an antidote to boredom.When I can fit my games of Ultimate Frisbee or Racquetball into the schedule I am happier and healthier, but it isn’t easy.  I have a 7 and a 9 year-old (2016).  Did your question mention a social life?  Before the 2016 update to this article I had written “I have been able to schedule my teaching around Ultimate Frisbee, which I play twice a week (even through the winter!).  I am a much happier person for having this fun, competitive exercise in my schedule. Socially, since the DPO does not use trombones on every concert, my wife and I easily find the time to go out with friends in the evenings, although I hear that may change with our new arrival in March of 2007.”  Well, I was right.  With my kids at 7 and 9 we are just now restoring the skeleton of a social life.
7. Do you have any suggestions for taking auditions?  Be persistent.  Continually refine your audition skills just like any other technique, by attending, doing your best, taking notes, and making changes in time for the next one.  Don’t think in terms of winning and losing, since only one person wins any audition.  Think instead of a successful audition as one where you stayed focused and played the way you wanted.  If that happens several times and you don’t advance, then change something in your approach.  My other audition advice appears in College and Professional Auditions, Performance Anxiety, and in my book, which I am told has been used by non-trombonists because of the audition section.
8. Do you think that there is any particular way to help get your name out into the music world?  The most important thing is to develop a great reputation through high personal standards of punctuality and performance, because word-of-mouth is so important in this field.  People hear about you and call you for work when you sow the seeds of a great reputation.Besides that passive publicity, don’t be afraid to email contractors and personnel managers near where you live to let them know that you are available to work.  Offer to send them a resume or recording or to play for their principal or conductor.Print business cards for colleagues at gigs.For teaching, offer band directors to teach a free class on your instrument during band hours, where you can hand out a teaching brochure to send home with students.  Better still, when the students are fired up after your class, take their phone numbers instead of just sending them home with your pamphlet.  Call the parents of interested students, because your pamphlet may not make it home.
9. What is the best piece of advice that anyone has ever given you?  I can’t be sure that I’m recalling the “best” advice, but here is one item:The same teacher who continued my lessons for free after I graduated taught me, through his words and actions, not to close the door or give up on the possibilities for any student, because he/she might be a late bloomer.  He pointed out that you never know what the future holds for the development of another person. One’s dedication and motivation can override technical weaknesses if given enough time.
   

   Interview Two

10. Do you teach out of love of teaching or is it something for you to fall-back on?  I have always enjoyed children and teaching.  In high school I was a camp counselor, a babysitter, I started teaching private lessons, and I even did an internship where I conducted the middle school band in my district. Knowing that teaching would always be a part of my life I made my bachelor’s degree a double major in music education and performance.  In college I adopted the goal of achieving financial independence through performing, but if I now had a more lucrative orchestra job or won the lottery I would definitely continue to teach.  Although I need the income it brings, if I didn’t like teaching I would do something else as a “day Job.”
11. How did your goals change as your matured?  Some things are the same: I still teach, practice to better my playing, and take the occasional audition if winning would improve my circumstances.  What is different, now having a house and children, is the view that this is probably where my career will stay.  As a result I am working to build a larger teaching studio, further small ensembles that appear elsewhere on this website, and do more with music technology and recording.  For a long time I was always looking to the next audition, and now I act more as if I have to lay down roots and grow something.
12. So you still take auditions?  Yes, but not as often as I used to.  The job would have to pay enough to move a family, and few cities can offer the lifestyle of where I am now.  The orchestra where I now work may only be less than half of my income, but a bigger orchestra would probably mean a smaller house, more traffic, and more expense.  So I’m open to auditioning in very particular situations.
13. Are you happy with your life?  How is your life compared to what you thought it would be when you were in college?It is now almost 2017, about been 10 years since I updated this article.  10 years ago I wrote “Yes, I am very happy and I have a lot to be thankful for.  My family life is what I always knew it could be since I have known my wife since the age of fifteen.”  Thankfully, that remains true.  At that time our first child was on the way, and now we have a 9 and a 7 year-old, so many other things have changed.  You give up leisure time for the amazing but challenging experience of raising children.  So I am now even happier with my life due to the rewards of having children, but it is not easy.  I thought I was done pulling all-nighters after working on my doctorate, and for a good length of time, I was.  But now, when I must parent and still prepare a class or two that I am teaching the next day, I am back to the occasional all-nighter, in my mid-40s.  I did not think of that in college, and it would not have mattered.  Honestly instead thinking about what my life would be like in the future I focused on practicing and hoped that my hard work would eventually pay off.This may be a good place to share some of the things that you probably only pick up after school.  Some orchestras are generally happy and some are not.  I have read that musicians rate very low on job satisfaction surveys, which means that after all your hard work to win a position, you might be in an environment where people drag you down.  Some colleagues judge each other harshly.  Many orchestras are struggling financially, and even if they are not, the management often tries to make the musicians believe that they are in trouble (which brings morale down) so that they can give the smallest possible raise or no raise at all, even though everyone’s cost of living goes up.  Considering these factors and the investment and labor involved in eventually winning a position, I would say that this career is only for people who need to find out if they can make it, people like me who would do it even when people around them told them not to.
14. How much did being at NEC influence/impact you and what did you miss most when you left?  My teacher, Norman Bolter, was my biggest influence while I was at NEC and I often think of our lessons. Since I took thorough notes after each lesson I can review them anytime and when I do, they still have an impact. Norman helped my confidence, creativity, musicality, and freedom while playing, and many of his ideas hold a firm place in my own teaching.  I also miss Boston, being so close to the ocean, Acadia National Park in Maine, and family in Boston and New York.
    

    Interview Three

15. What I am most curious about is what you got from Norman’s teaching and how you use it in teaching and playing.  My reply to this statement would be a small volume if I referred to the lesson notebooks from my Master’s degree.  I wrote everything I could remember after each lesson.  Just off the top of my head, here are some of the things that I learned (or was reminded of) from Norman.  I have expanded some of these ideas and put them into my own language for teaching:
    • Playing music is like telling a story, or you might at least say that music has atmosphere.  Your trombone playing is more interesting if you tap into the story or atmosphere.  “Tapping into it” means taking a moment to think about or feel what you are doing.  Think about (feel) the atmosphere or the story the composer is telling before (and while) you play.  Writing lyrics to an etude or passage is one exercise that can illuminate the emotion or atmosphere in a piece and bring it out in one’s playing.
    • There are different layers of music.  Sometimes we are practicing to improve the technical, robotic level of a piece, and sometimes we are bringing out the emotion in a piece through phrasing, legato, unwritten dynamics, etc.  This concept helps students understand that there is emotion in music and you should bring it out just like you should play correct rhythms.  It makes emotion something tangible, audible, and less mysterious.
    • Not everything is on the page.  There are generally no markings for vibrato, how much taper or how fast you should taper to round out a phrase, and dynamics are all relative, without exact decibel measurements for each marking.
    • If you want to hear a musician exceedingly well-aligned with the music he is playing, get Dennis Brain’s recording of the Mozart Horn Concerti.
    • There are different kinds, different shades, of everything: articulation, legato, tone, etc.
    • There is no such thing as perfect.  If two people play the same piece and don’t make obvious mistakes but they use different rates of vibrato, then which one is right?
    • Dogmatic thinking is restrictive.  For instance, bigger isn’t always better when it comes to mouthpieces and you can switch mouthpieces for different music.  You don’t always have to have the same rim when you switch.  Newer isn’t always better when it comes to instruments, and bigger isn’t always better when it comes to tone.  There are different tools for different sounds.  Whether it’s regarding equipment or technique, you don’t have to follow imagined rules.
    • When practicing, go slow to go fast.  If you walk down the street you will remember more of what you saw than if you run – another useful analogy for the teaching studio.
    • A gradual approach can be used for developing many skills.  If you can’t play a passage as fast as needed, then start slow and increase the metronome speed over weeks, months, and years.  You can adjust this approach for slowness (gradually slowing down to stretch breath support), range, dynamics, and more.
    • The upper register has its own properties and doesn’t have to be thought of as just a high version of the middle register.
    • Breathe when you need air (as opposed to over-planning the breath).
    • Teaching is part psychology.
    • Norman said he was different with every student so everyone’s experience with him was different.
    • One time, early in my lessons, I began to ask a question:  “With your students, do you usually…” and he interrupted me, explaining “I don’t possess my students.”  I understood this to mean that students are responsible for themselves and he does’t take credit for their achievements.
    • Over the long term, students can learn things very damaging to their self confidence and this damage can be mitigated by care and time.
    • Students show a different side of themselves to each other than they do to the teacher.
    • Individuals have their own unique properties.
    • People don’t always value what you give them for free.

    
    

16. What has been ingrained in your system?  Certainly the gradual approach and other information described above has become an important part of my practicing and teaching.  I also remember how important it was to Norman to help develop my confidence.  We had a very honest relationship and he was exceedingly generous with me, which I try to pay forward to my students.  I also can never forget his great sound and fluid style of playing, which leads me to appreciate those qualities in musicians like Alain Trudel, Christian Lindberg, Dennis Brain, Mstislav Rostropovich, Ella Fitzgerald, and others.
17. Do you ever still remember his voice telling you something?  I certainly do hear Norman’s voice, especially on the topics that came to mind for my first answer in this interview (#15).  And since the other tenor trombonist in the Dayton Philharmonic studied with Norman before me, we share stories and ideas that we each learned from Norman.
18. Is there anything that he taught you that years letter you said, “OH! Now I get what he was saying!”?  Norman is a particularly gifted musician and playing second trombone in an orchestra wasn’t always enough of a creative outlet for him.  When I was in Boston, the Frequency Band was brand new, his composing began taking off, and his first CDs were released, all as an outlet for his creativity.  Now I also play second trombone in an orchestra and I can relate to his need for other creative activities.  So I give recitals, teach, maintain this website, run a summer trombone camp, I wrote a book, I am getting into recording and technology, have chamber groups, and I intend to embark on many more unforeseen projects.
19. Are you happy with your trombone career?  Yes and no.Good aspects here in Dayton are the quality of the orchestra and the acoustics of the concert hall.  These are important factors that I appreciate greatly because I have played where both items weren’t nearly as good.  And if I ever leave this ensemble for another one I may find that I miss what I had.I do wish that I had won one of the auditions that I have taken for better-paying orchestras because it has always been a personal goal of mine to win a seat that pays a living wage (although I would continue to teach, regardless).  So I still occasionally take auditions for groups that offer a step up, but not terribly often.  In the same vein, contract negotiations are tough and raises often don’t keep up with the cost of living.  Also, the repertoire sometimes leaves the trombones high and dry with too much time off, but when we don’t play I certainly keep busy so there is a silver lining there.
20. What would you change about your situation if you could do it at the snap of your fingers?  I would increase the orchestra’s salary, pick repertoire that was more active for the trombones, and after so many years playing second, I’d play first.  I would instantly give myself instant jazz improvisation skills.  I would also make it sunny and 75 degrees in Dayton year-round.

Written 10/6/2004, revised 11/11/2006, 12/27/2016, and 1/2/2017