President Tony Woodcock
Inaugural Address
27 October 2007
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Ask that your way be long,
At many a summer dawn to enter.
With what gratitude, what joy!
Ports seen for the first time;
Stop at Phoenician markets,
And purchase fine merchandise,
Mother-of-pearl and corals,
amber and ebony,
And sensuous perfumes of all kinds,
Buy as many sensuous perfumes
as you can;
Visit hosts of Egyptian cities,
To learn and learn from those
who have knowledge.
Mr. Chairman, members of the Board of Trustees, members of the Board of Overseers, members of the Board of Visitors, Mr. Lesser, and Mrs. Steiner, Distinguished guests, members of the NEC community and friends … I am deeply grateful for your presence today and the confidence and good wishes it provides.
To the boards, I am thrilled and honored that you have entrusted to me the future of New England Conservatory—an institution that is so important to the training of our most outstanding young musicians. My special thanks to Chairman Jack Vernon for the support and encouragement he has so generously given to me.
I am grateful to the past presidents of NEC, who have set the course of the Conservatory on a trajectory of greatness. But I am particularly indebted to President Emeritus and former Acting CEO Laurence Lesser. Not only did he step in to guide the Conservatory last year, but he was my most patient tutor and I his most needy student during the two-month period last spring when I was allowed to observe the workings of NEC. We are fortunate to have such a great teacher, performer and mensch here at NEC. Thanks Larry.
Thank you to all those—from faculty, students, staff, alumni, universities, and the City of Boston—who have brought greetings, and especially to Dr. Joseph Aoun, President of our good neighbor Northeastern University. And a special thank you to my colleague Joseph Polisi, who came up from Juilliard to officially welcome me into the fraternity of conservatory presidents.
I would like to thank the many people who have worked so hard to make this day possible. Thank you to Jane Manopoli Patterson and Eloise Hodges, who served as co-chairs of the Inauguration Steering Committee. A big thank you to our Events Director, Janet Goff, for masterminding the day. Thank you to the numerous friends who made contributions to this event and who are listed in your program book.
In planning the program for today, I wanted it to be about music, and music performed by our students, so I’m also grateful to those you have heard already: George Li, Melanie Campbell, the Parker String Quartet, and the Inauguration jazz trio. And I look forward to tonight’s performance, which showcases the best of the Prep School and the College’s Orchestral program: the Youth Philharmonic Orchestra reunited with players from their recent tour of China under the direction of Benjamin Zander; the NEC Chamber Orchestra coached by Donald Palma; and the NEC Philharmonia conducted by our guest Larry Rachleff. Pete Nicholas, one of NEC’s great good friends, will be the narrator in Copland’s Lincoln Portrait, a work which for me celebrates America in the way Elgar is the voice of England. I am grateful to all our performers.
A special welcome to my guests who have traveled far and wide to be here today: the wonderful violinist Julia Fischer and her fiancé Wilfried Hoffstetter; the head of the Red Cross in Minneapolis and leading member of Minnesota Orchestra’s Board—Jan McDaniel Cummings and her husband, Tom; my great friend and mentor—George Litton; from Minneapolis, one of their community’s leading philanthropists—Sage Cowles.
And the most important people of all: my family. My wife, Virginia, whose love and support over the last nearly thirty years has been the source of my inspiration and the foundation for my career. I am reminded of Dorothy Parker’s quote, “Behind every successful man, there is a woman looking absolutely astonished.” And our son Thomas, of whom we are very proud and who has traveled all the way from Missoula, where he is studying at the University of Montana. His majors are in psychology and snowboarding. Not necessarily in that order.
American Adventure
My family and I came to America in 1998 for what we described as an American adventure. And boy we didn’t know what we were letting ourselves in for. Relocating six thousand miles to the West Coast is very different from visiting. You really get to know the culture when you have to take your driver’s test, secure a mortgage, buy a house, and find schooling. And then, there is the language … Two nations separated by a common language doesn’t begin to describe the experience. I remember my assistant at the Oregon Symphony expunging two particular words from a report I had written—“whilst” and “fortnight”—because she said no one would understand them. And I, in my turn, had to point out that in England we stopped using words like “behooves” in 1640. But I have to say that we love America, we love living here, we love nearly all Americans, and we consider this our home; and we feel very privileged and honored to have been accepted wherever we have chosen to live.
My career to date has been in the performing world. I come from that heady, exciting, amazing, intoxicating, totally seductive world of orchestras, musicians, great conductors, international soloists, foreign tours, recordings, and all those that support them. And I decided after thirty-two years in that field to move to a different part of music’s continuum—to running a major conservatory, a conservatory incidentally that has produced many of the musicians I have employed. And it was NEC that did this—its energy, its magic, its history and tradition, its inspired students and equally inspired teachers, and the opportunity of using whatever talents I have to make a difference. And making a difference in our world presents huge challenges.
Reinvent the Art
As I take office today at NEC, it is against a cultural backdrop that many musical dystopians insist upon painting in the most grim and pessimistic hues. The attendance for orchestras is shrinking, they say. Many orchestras and opera companies are operating in the red. Very few orchestra jobs become vacant each year, and for each one hundreds of musicians show up to audition. The musicians who are anointed for jobs in the Top Five orchestras may earn six-figure salaries, but their job satisfaction, if we are to believe recent surveys, compares to flight attendants and federal prison guards. The record industry has imploded. Media coverage, from press reviews to television, is evaporating, and classical music and jazz are becoming virtually invisible to the general public. Music education in the schools has nearly disappeared in many parts of the country.
Such talk of Music’s Demise seems to me a kind of self-fulfilling prophesy. Unlike Cassandra, the doomsday prophets are all too readily believed. It’s like Alan Greenspan talking about the economy. As soon as you see his Angel of Death picture on the front cover of the Times, the stock market plunges. And he’s retired.
To me, the world of music seems to be at an inflection point, in a period of transition. Darwinian, yes, but with many optimistic signs of coming out right. Perhaps most compelling, though, is that all the promising developments have to do with innovation, with reinvention of the art form, with entrepreneurship. And it’s in such reinvention that New England Conservatory should and has been taking the lead. We should be producing young musicians who can reinvent the art, who can become the musical leaders for an astonishing future.
Consider some recent amazing developments in our art form which explode the parameters of orthodox musical structures like “orchestra” or “opera company.”
Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Project. By all conventional measures of success, Yo-Yo Ma has one of the most high-profile careers in music. Yet, he has moved into uncharted waters with his innovative Silk Road Project. Inspired by the interchange of culture, ideas, and innovations along the historic trade route, he created an arts and education organization that connects musicians, composers, artists, communities, and audiences from across the globe. And the world wants to be part of this vision.
Midori. One of the world’s greatest violinists, Midori has pioneered several projects that take her out of the big cities and concert halls into smaller communities. Her Orchestra Residencies Program arranges week-long coaching sessions for her with youth orchestras in outlying communities. Her Partners in Performance project uses money she received as an Avery Fisher grantee to stimulate interest in recitals and chamber music in small towns. Her Music Sharing program takes her on tour to Asia, where she and a small ensemble play in schools, orphanages, conservatories, and hospitals. One of NEC’s students accompanied her last year to Vietnam.
Opera. “An exotic and irrational entertainment,” according to Dr. Johnson, extravagantly expensive, complex, long considered fusty and accessible only to wealthy socialites, opera has had to innovate. And this is true even for the biggest, most unwieldy institutions like the Met. This was done with the introduction of one big idea, surtitles, which was totally disdained by the operatic cognoscenti—including my wife—but the result was that opera companies opened their doors to a new experience and accessibility. It means that audiences, many of them inexperienced, can enjoy the spectacle, the singing, the music—and understand the drama as well. Opera is cool. More recently, the Met’s video broadcasts in cinemas around the country have demonstrated huge demand and has helped reinstate opera as a destination in New York.
Orchestras. To illustrate the most exciting development in orchestras that I know about, I’d like to read you an excerpt from the blog being kept by one of our students, Josh Weilerstein. Josh is currently performing and touring with the Símon Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela—which NEC will present in a three-day residency here, November 7 through 9. The Bolívar orchestra is the flagship ensemble of a visionary program of musical education in Venezuela that provides instruction for more than 250,000 children. El Sistema, as the program is familiarly known, employs 15,000 music teachers, operates ninety music schools, and feeds into thirty professional symphony orchestras within Venezuela alone. The system has literally saved the lives of impoverished young people, and they play as if fully aware that music is their salvation. Their audiences know it too, and respond in kind.
The Orchestra is about to embark on its first North American tour, performing in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Boston. Then, it moves on to New York where it will do a residency with the Berlin Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall with Simon Rattle! Our Josh Weilerstein, a third-year violin student and son of distinguished faculty members Don and Vivian, was invited to play and tour with the orchestra. He has been in Venezuela since the middle of October, rehearsing and performing. Here he talks about a recent performance of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony:
I’m not a good enough writer to express my thoughts about what happened last night. Have you ever been part of a performance that transcended everything that you could ever imagine was possible in music? I can’t communicate this. It’s impossible. I refuse to get used to this sound. I’m terrified that somehow I will start taking it for granted. This is what music is and should be. Always. Todos!
This is about music being re-invented, and re-inventing a society.
The classical recording industry. Yes, the major label companies have become almost irrelevant. But that has opened the field to smaller, more nimble, independent companies. And then there’s Naxos Records. Created just twenty years ago, Naxos has revolutionized the business by capitalizing the long-tail model of e-merchandising. But the real future of recordings lies in downloads. If anyone doubts that, consider the experiment conducted in 2005 by the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester. They gave a series of broadcast concerts of all the Beethoven Symphonies. The orchestra offered the first five Beethoven Symphonies in a free download for a period of one week. An astonishing 1.2 million requests poured in. And on YouTube, you can see video footage of the greatest performers, from Heifetz to Toscanini, including films of Arnold Schoenberg, the composer of Erwartung, and the scourge of audiences worldwide, playing tennis. Does that sound like a world with no audience, with no curiosity?
The jazz recording business. Similar to the plight of classical music, the jazz recording industry has nearly withered away. Yet, musicians such as former NEC faculty Bob Brookmeyer, current faculty Danilo Pérez, and alumna Rachel Z are experimenting with a new model, ArtistShare. Taking advantage of the latest developments in technology, ArtistShare allows artists and fans from all over the world to connect with each other directly. Fans can subscribe at various levels to support new recording projects. They are involved from the beginning in the creative process, and are first to enjoy the finished project. The reward for artists is that they’re paid up front and allowed complete artistic freedom. So far, several new ArtistShare projects, like Brookmeyer’s Spirit Music, have received Grammy nominations.
Classical music in the media. It certainly is true that classical music coverage by the media has been evaporating. One has only to look at our own local newspapers and our radio and television stations. Yet, consider the success of “From the Top.” One of our partners, “From the Top” operates on the philosophy that young musicians should be lionized as much as young athletic stars. The show boasts over 700,000 listeners a week on 250 radio stations nationwide and now has its own TV show.
Becoming Innovators
There’s nothing wrong with the art form. No one is about to denounce the late Beethoven quartets or Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Their greatness is indisputable. It is the vehicle of presentation that is the problem. The potential audience is huge—some surveys estimate it at over 50 percent of the population in terms of interest and curiosity. However, this audience is essentially saying it doesn’t want to be spoken to in the conventional voice of the nineteenth-century concert format.
Not surprising, then, that wherever you see signs of rebirth, you find innovation and entrepreneurship—artists and managers thinking outside the box, reinventing the art form. Reinvention and entrepreneurship are absolutely essential if the music industry is to revive. Reinvention and entrepreneurship are crucial if musicians are to reach listeners throughout the community. Reinvention and entrepreneurship are essential if the students we train at NEC are to make a living in music and to live a life in music that gratifies their souls.
Already, some of our students and alumni are becoming such innovators. They understand entrepreneurship, marketing, programming, the new media, the value of taking music into the community.
Look at the Boston Opera Collaborative. An amazing cooperative comprising many NEC alums and some current staff members, it staged a production of Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites last summer, outside any of the formal parameters of NEC. The production did honor to Poulenc and the Carmelites. It satisfied the deepest expressive urges of the cast. And it profoundly touched the listener. I call that success.
Or take A Far Cry, the chamber orchestra created by NEC string players. This group has created its own concert season with performances in Brookline and Cambridge churches. Next week, they will perform a program that ranges from Handel and Quantz to Tchaikovsky and Arvo Pärt. They have a sophisticated Web site, illustrated with imaginative photos. And you can even order your tickets online.
Look at the Parker String Quartet. They perform at many unconventional locations and have a series at Barbès, a bar in New York’s Park Slope. They are reaching enthusiastic audiences and getting rave reviews.
Or consider jazz musicians like bassist Bridget Kearney, current student in the Tufts-NEC program, and vocalist Rachael Price, who graduated in May. They have created or worked with multiple bands. They play in every kind of venue. They enter competitions. They market themselves on Web sites, blogs, social networking sites. And they are getting gigs.
Then, there’s NEC’s Performance Outreach Department, directed by the effervescent Tanya Maggi. Last year, 185 students participated in this program, which reached thousands of people, including 7,000 public school children and 8,000 adults through 80 partnerships with schools, senior centers, community centers, hospitals, libraries, museums, and historic landmarks. All of the students are trained to create customized programs, to talk to audiences, and to play under all kinds of conditions.
Excellence Is the Baseline
We at NEC need to make sure all our young musicians are equipped to thrive in the challenging professional environment they will find after graduation. To that end, we must be educating complete musicians.
Of course, we have always emphasized excellence in our musical training and we produce extraordinarily accomplished artists. But excellence is taken for granted these days. It’s the baseline. Today, musicians must be more.
They must be well educated, versatile, able to cross over many boundaries, perform for many kinds of audiences, move comfortably within many historical styles, and express themselves with distinctive voices. They must have many performing opportunities, so that what they learn in the studio translates to the stage. They must know more than music. Their minds must be furnished with literature, history, philosophy, languages. They must be proficient, too, with technology, from the basics of Internet navigation to the creation of Web sites to the enormous possibilities offered by composing, recording, arranging, and distribution software. They must be able to explain themselves, to make programs, to talk to audiences, promoters, and the media so as to communicate the love they have for their art.
This, of course, will be an enormous and demanding task. However, as I take office at NEC, I meet that challenge with energy, hopefulness, and confidence. That optimism has to do with the wonderful artist faculty that already exists at NEC. Our studio teachers; our ensemble directors; our composition, theory, music history, and liberal arts teachers are doing superb work. Parenthetically, let me pay tribute here to Bruce McPherson, who recently retired, but who led our most important liberal arts department with distinction for almost twenty-five years and brought so much to the lives of thousands of young people. I also take heart in the staff, which is totally dedicated to the work of this institution. And I find constant encouragement from our friends and board members.
Most of all, though, I am daily inspired by our students—some of whom you have heard this afternoon. How could one listen to George Li or Melanie Campbell or that young jazz trio or the Parker String Quartet and not feel optimistic? How could one not want to nourish their artistry?
Our students are gifted. They are already extraordinarily savvy, worldly, and creative. I have spoken at length about readying them for the professional world, about the necessity for musical entrepreneurship. But I also would hope that NEC will help nurture their souls, challenge their minds, and extend their experience. That is our journey. Only then will our world and our communities be changed, be transformed by musicians, by our art form—potent in its scope, energized by its history, and galvanized by its future calling.
Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would never have taken the road.
But she has nothing more to give you.
And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not defrauded you.
With the great wisdom you have gained, with so much experience,
You must surely have understood by then what Ithacas mean.
Thank you.
(The lines cited at the beginning and end of President Woodcock's address are from the poem Ithaca, by Constantine P. Cavafy (1863–1933). The first version was probably written January 1894. The final version was written October 1910, and published November 1911.)
Find an English translation of Ithaca. | Find Greek text of Ιθάκη.
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updated 27 October 2007