The founder and first violinist of the Juilliard String Quartet for over fifty years, Mann has been a driving force in the world of music for more than seven decades. He is on the faculty at Manhattan School of Music and has been president of the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation since 1971. He received the Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award in 2011.

Today's event was part of the first Robert Mann String Quartet Institute at the Manhattan School of Music. There are six string quartets participating: Aeolus Quartet, Amphion String Quartet, Ars Nova Quartet, PUBLICQuartet, The Old City Quartet and Voxare String Quartet with repertoire ranging from Bartók and Beethoven to Mendelssohn and Mozart.

To say the least, this must have been quite a week for them. There have been daily coaching sessions with some of the finest chamber musicians in the country and the Institute will end with a public concert on Friday evening.

Mann's comments were at times specific, rigorous and, at other points, suggestive and open-ended.

"The end of the note is just as important as its beginning."

"The vibrato on your first finger sounds different than on your third."

"Make the sforzando's longer"

"That note is too beautiful. You need to understand the meaning of this music. This moment isn't about beauty."

"This whole passage is the experience of reaching out and failing to connect. Then, when it repeats, it is as if you have to try again, but harder this time."

"Think about the difference between a comma, a period, an exclamation point and a question mark. Each musical phrase is working the same way. You have to have intentionality in your playing. What do you mean to say?"

I can't speak for anyone else, but to me, this was the kind of afternoon you remember for a lifetime. I looked around the room and wished the whole world could be there. Then I remembered that these master classes are being streamed live on the Internet. There will be another live streaming master class tomorrow. Friday, January 6 at 2 pm EST.

Go to http://www.dl.msmnyc.edu/live.

How was anyone to get timely and accurate feedback? How could you initiate a conversation if no one would talk BACK to you?

I thought for a moment and came up with an inexpensive, low-tech idea. Later, I found out that ten orchestras in the US and Canada used the suggestion to great success.

Here it is. You might want to pass this on to someone who wants to answer the "What are they thinking?" question. Tell them they might want to give this a try.

1. Put a Post-it® note on your program page.
2. When each audience member wants to see what's on the program, that Post-it® note will be in the way.
3. At the beginning of the concert, tell your audience that you want to know what they think and that you want them to write their thoughts on that yellow piece of paper.
4. They can tell you anything. It's anonymous. They can encourage, inform, complain, or suggest. They can sign it if they want, or even give you their email address to start a longer conversation.
5. Tell them where they can place the notes during intermission or after the concert is over. Leave pens near the posting place so that, even if the audience members don't have something to write with, they can still offer their thoughts.

Yes, it's informal and unscientific, but it reminds your audience that you WANT to hear from them. It's so easy that you'll be surprised at how many participate.

The Adrian Symphony did this in October. We filled two boards with audience comments. When entered into the computer, they filled 9½ pages.

No one complained about ticket price. Most didn't complain about anything. The overwhelming majority was happy with our programming, performance quality, choice of guest artists, and level of customer service. Some informed us of a few things that we decided to immediately change. The comments taught us, raised our spirits, and reminded us of just how much goodwill there is for the orchestra within the community. All the feedback was shared with the Board of Directors.

And, in addition we received a wealth of supportive phrases that just might reappear on a future marketing piece, development letter, grant evaluation, or foundation request.

Long live the Post-it® note survey.

I met Julia Kurtyka in winter.

She had worked to invite me to guest conduct an orchestra that she was involved with, the Birmingham Bloomfield Symphony Orchestra, just outside of Detroit, in a special concert that would feature her protégé, violinist Caroline Goulding, in a performance of Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5.

Julia had been the concertmaster of the Adrian Symphony Orchestra long before I became its music director. Since then she had moved on to other projects, but we shared mutual friends and that led to the invitation to guest conduct the orchestra she was deeply involved in.

When I finally met Julia she was suffering from cancer, but you would have never known it. She was feisty, strong, opinionated and still full of life. She was quick to smile, held people accountable for their actions, honest in her assessment of others, unusually gracious. Tough, soft: opposites you could respect.

A few months after that concert, Julia was honored by the BBSO for her many years of dedicated service. By then, she was in a wheelchair, but when we spoke together at intermission, she retained that radiant sense of joy that I had already come to treasure. Clearly her health was failing, and, as I left the hall, I already sensed that it would be the last time I would see her.

So, when I was asked to speak at this year's Lexington Bach Festival north of Detroit, Michigan, I knew I would accept because I knew that this project was Julia's "other love". A dozen years old, the festival brings together some of the region's very finest musicians to perform all kinds of music, always including a connection to Johann Sebastian Bach. Lexington is a small town that looks out on Lake Huron, and the intimacy of the church locales renders a kind of familiarity that is truly rare among such festivals. People know each other in Lexington.

They knew Julia. They remembered her, and they felt a sense of loss.

The 2011 Lexington Bach Festival felt like a joyous funeral, an elegy with surprisingly few tears. Julia was nowhere to be found, but her spirit pervaded every moment. She was every second sentence.

Her brother was there, and as we chatted together our voices would quiver with a sense of loss, or rise up in strength as we talked about this extraordinary woman and the life she had led as a teacher, performer, administrator, and friend.

During one of the festival's programs, there was a beautiful, quite poignant work performed. It was written by a very fine musician, a conductor/bass player/composer named Clark Suttle Over a meal before the concert, he displayed a wry sense of humor, telling me that Julia was a very forgiving person. "I was once 45 seconds late to a rehearsal," he told me. "Three years later she forgave me."

Clark's memorial to Julia was a composition called The Last Kiss, a reference to a practice in Julia's spiritual tradition in which the mourners kiss the forehead of the deceased as they pay their final respects.

Julia's brother gave her The Last Kiss.

As I drove away from Lexington after the last notes had faded away, I thought about what remains of our lives after we are gone. Is it the protégé we nurtured? The memory of the music we made? The friendships we formed? The family members we helped along the way?

Or is it the mantle that others choose to take up?

One of the highest compliments to any endeavor, large or small, is that it can outlive those who helped form it. Without Julia's presence this year, others had to step in to fill the void. It was hard work, and I imagine that several times they must have wondered how it was that Julia had been able to get everything done while making it all look so easy.

You may have never heard of Julia Kurtyka, but I wish you had known her. And even if you don't know of this particular series of concerts in a small town in Michigan, you can take it from me that the Lexington Bach Festival is still making beautiful music.

And that is a testament to all of those people like Julia who labor behind the scenes. It makes you realize that every institution we revere probably began as a conversation across a cup of coffee, and that perhaps the ones who sat there dreaming have already been long forgotten.

Many of them who may have worked the hardest never once took a bow.

"What are you doing?" he asked one man with a chisel and hammer in his hand.

"I'm cutting this stone down to a particular size," he answered.

The little boy walked over to another man and asked the same question, but he received a completely different response:

"I'm building a cathedral."

Sometimes I don't think we have any idea what we're actually doing. We only see the stone in our hands, not the grand design of which we're a part.

This is the final day of Conciertos de la Villa de Santo Domingo. This evening the "grand concert" takes place. It is called The Splendor of the Baroque, in which Camerata Colonial, a chamber orchestra comprised of remarkable musicians from the United States and members of the National Symphony Orchestra of the Dominican Republic, will perform music by Bach, Handel, Purcell and Boyce - all in a convent whose roots date back to 1530.

But, in these last hours before that final event, as I think about what will have been left behind by this project, it will be the memories of a side-by-side with the National Youth Orchestra, master classes at the National Conservatory, and an education concert called A Journey to the Baroque for 400 school children bused in from here in Santo Domingo and from both ends of the country.
And that leads me to contemplate what we do - what we REALLY do. 

This project was envisioned as a way to celebrate the riches of Santo Domingo's Colonial City, and of strengthening its future by drawing attention to its incredible resources. Partnerships were made to draw attention to what is here, and what can be lost if it isn't protected.

Every one of our events here includes a discovery experience of the space in which it is held. Buildings dating back to the 16th Century have great history in them - moments in his country's unique history as the Western capital of the Spanish Empire: Stories of Columbus sailing into the river next to the Colonial City, of the first sermon on human rights in the New World given by a very courageous Dominican friar near the convent five centuries ago, of the building of the first cathedral; stories of the first university, the first palace, and as I wrote about in the previous blog entry, a recent addition decades after the days of the Trujillo regime - a museum honoring the Dominican Resistance and other resistance movements around the world.

Now, as this project comes to an end, there are new stories: The concertmaster who donated his strings, the trumpet player who is sending mutes and mouthpieces to the bands here, the bass player/composer whose music was heard in recital in the Dominican Republic for the first time. There are stories of master classes that left new musical knowledge behind, of school children who heard an orchestra for the first time and who learned old, traditional songs to sing en mass with Camerata Colonial during the orchestra's educational concert yesterday.

For the participating musicians there were conscious efforts to build community as well: delicious dinners together made possible through the generosity of the restaurant owners living in the Colonial City, a schedule that allowed the musicians time to both work and to form new bonds of friendship -a trip to a resort to enjoy the beach, time to see the sunset. Things we never have time to do under the stresses of the "normal" life of a professional musician.

Of course, this is just a project, and soon we'll all go back to our "regular" lives. Surely, though, there is something to learn here - something to take back. We are more than just a concert. Actually, that may be the least important thing we do.

This morning a musician said to me, "As a business model, there isn't a worse investment than a symphony orchestra. Try to imagine saying something like 'Let's put 80 musicians together and create something that will disappear the moment after the final note is played.' That's CRAZY!"

But, as a way to do the most important things - to make of ourselves something higher, to raise ourselves up and form lasting bonds - there really isn't a better investment."

Tonight we will play Bach, Handel, Purcell, and Boyce, but we will leave something even more important behind, long after the last note has sounded.

We are making more than just a concert, we're builders of a new community.

Inside there is an electronic visual enactment of the three Mirabal sisters who tell their own story made famous in the historical novel, In the Time of the Butterflies. Yesterday, which happened to be the International Day of the Disappeared, local school children had posted notes in the entry way to the museum with phrases like "Donde está..." followed by the name of a person from someplace in the world who was taken away by the police, never to be seen again.

Upstairs there are huge, haunting photographs, some of them taken during interrogations of political prisoners strapped to wooden chairs, wide-eyed as they faced their own certain death. The interrogator is never shown; only the face of terrible fear or of ultimate defiance.

When you return to the plaza, you can open a door and descend the stairs into a dank, musky basement. There you will find a mock torture chamber, containing objects that look like they should belong in an auto body repair shop. Those were some of the instruments of torture utilized by the Trujillo regime. These remnants were among his many tools to remain in power.

I serve as Artistic Director of a new project, Conciertos de la Villa de Santo Domingo, and this whole endeavor has been framed around the idea of creating a musical community around a series of events featuring a very high level of participating artists, and drawing upon the collaboration of many different organizations, ancient sites and historic resources within the Colonial City.

Our first public activity took place last night. In a lovely air conditioned room, directly above that torture chamber, about 75 people listened to Catana Pérez de Cuello, a well-respected cultural leader here, give a presentation on the Baroque era culminating with a discussion of music by Boyce, Handel, Purcell and Bach. Those composers' music will be played next week by Camerata Colonial, a chamber orchestra of musicians from the United States and the Dominican Republic, in the Iglesia del Convento de los Dominicos, a building whose roots date back to 1530. While the visiting musicians are here they will also offer master classes to the conservatory students, work with the youth orchestra, perform a concert for 400 young children brought here from across the country, and perform in recital at Capilla de los Remedios, the personal chapel of Francisco Davila, the richest man on the island during the Colonial Era days of the sixteenth century.

At each of these events, there is a discovery experience: a time to learn about the building, its history, the story of this island - the very place Columbus found when he thought he was in India - and to have a new appreciation of the riches that are already here, but have been neglected in the astonishing growth of this city and the relentless onslaught of the modern world.

And that brings us to back to last night. The idea for this introductory event was to collaborate in the Colonial City in an unexpected way - to bring people with differing interests together to learn more about their own resources, broaden their experiences, and, hopefully, entice them to attend something new. Last night there were people present for various reasons: the draw of the speaker, the curiosity about the museum, the support of the revival of the Colonial City and the love of music. By the end of the night, there was a NEW community, a group of people who would return to hear the music again live, but this time in the old, historic Convent in the same neighborhood within the Colonial City.

You build a community from the intersection of non-concentric circles. Competing interests become strengths, forces of growth, and means of magnetizing disparate organizations around a single idea. Last night, that idea was the opportunity to hear Baroque music of a very high quality performed in Colonial sites rich with 500 years of history.

Underneath us, in the shadows of the basement was another, much darker and more recent history, one that is still raw and having its effects among the living. As we left the building last night, I met an old man who is mentioned in the book In the Time of the Butterflies. He knew the Mirabal sisters, and was, himself, once imprisoned. He spoke of going to visit one of them one day, only to find the authorities at her home. When she saw him coming, she waved him off, wanting to keep him from getting arrested. He understood her message and drove away, and he can't forget her hand fluttering in the air - a small gesture intended to save his life.

As I walked out into the street the old quote came back: Art is long and life is short. And, I thought, if the stories are told over and over again, the memories will remain.

What became interesting to me was that, at the moment that the ushers and the audience members interacted, all of that stopped. Professional training and habitual behavior kicked in while the authentic relating to each other I had just seen in each person was replaced by the expectations inherent in the roles each person played.

So, when I came across a passage in Eckhart Tolle's book, Stillness Speaks, it had a special resonance to me. I'll let his words serve as the rest of this entry:

Whenever you meet anyone, no matter how briefly, do you acknowledge their being by giving them your full attention? Or are you reducing them to a means to an end, a mere function or role?

What is the quality of your relationship with the cashier at the supermarket, the parking attendant, the repairman, the "customer"?

A moment of attention is enough. As you look at them or listen to them, there is an alert stillness - perhaps only two or three seconds, perhaps longer. That is enough for something more real to emerge than the roles we usually play and identify with. All roles are part of the conditioned consciousness that is the human mind. That which emerges through the act of attention is the unconditioned - who you are in your essence, underneath your name and form. You are no longer acting out a script; you become real. When that dimension emerges from within you, it also draws it forth from within the other person.

Ultimately, of course, there is no other, and you are always meeting yourself.

I really WANT to spend time on this blog about music and about building arts communities. You can't build a community around the arts, though, if you don't have any left.

So, I find myself making a detour for a moment because the issues of the day demand comment.

There are two governmental issues confronting non-profit organizations and the arts. Both threaten this part of our civic life in ways that dramatically alter the landscape for all of us.

The first issue is regarding a proposal to consider reducing the tax deduction for charitable giving, under the premise that people who support the arts and other nonprofit endeavors do so without regard to their own personal tax implications.

Let's think about that for a moment.

I have often thought that the genius of the American system is that it rewards donors for finding an issue they care about and choosing to make a difference in their larger society by supporting it financially. This approach encourages people to think in terms of the broader community, to pool individual resources together to make things possible that simply couldn't exist without many, many donors. True, it appeals to pocketbooks by offering the tax deduction, but the trade off is that, rather than having much higher taxes than we do, this deduction leverages societal interests. As a potential donor I know that I don't HAVE to give, but if I choose to do so, I can take a small portion off my taxes. I donate to a cause that matters to me, and I have a little tax relief while making a big difference in the larger picture. Instead of having the government RUN the charitable organizations, they are more responsive to their own communities. It's a very efficient system.

Compare that with systems that have no deduction. How many individuals choose to GIVE money to support charitable organizations in the rest of the world when they have no tax relief associated with the gift? I often discuss this subject while I'm in other countries, and the absence of a deduction in those places is perceived as a major barrier to the effort to broaden support for charitable causes.

While it is true that people support charities because they CARE about them, they also do so partly because of the tax code. In other words, while the place they give is connected to their heart, the amount they give is connected to the tax deduction. If charitable deductions decline, many of the quality of life issues we rely upon in society will go with them. It will take time, but I see it as being inevitable.

The second issue is a proposal to cut the NEA THIS year, even though the withdrawal of the promised funding is to be matched, dollar for dollar with private funds. Once you understand this factor, the proposed cuts are, in practical terms, doubled. Say that the XYZ Museum has made a commitment to offer a certain show this Spring, having applied and been awarded a grant to help support it. There is an active plan to leverage that grant to double the dollar support from the private sector. Suddenly, the grant is gone. What is the lever now for the matching money? But the show is committed. Contracts are signed. The show WILL go on, but the unsupported expenses will now pose a tremendous burden to the museum with very little time to find replacement support.

These issues appear in context of a wide variety of troubles confronting arts organizations. In this economic environment arts organizations face reduced contributions, lower ticket sales, cuts in business support, drops in state funding, and other ancillary issues that combine to threaten the very existence of these institutions in the long term.

I have posted unedited the comments from my entry on the secondary cut to the National Endowment for the Arts slated for THIS fiscal year offered by my congressman, Tim Walberg. As I see the various responses, both for and against his amendment, it is clear to me that some of you feel powerless; some enraged. Some think that, by valuing the arts, we feel entitled to it, when we are actually trying to discuss the fact that our tax dollars SHOULD go to what we value. Voicing those issues is exactly what this moment is about.

Now that there is a window for negotiations between the House and Senate, I want to offer a path for what you might do if these issues and this legislation are important to you.

Democracy has means for citizens to be heard, but we rarely use them.

You CAN speak to power. You need not shout. Actually, it is important that you DON'T shout. Your Representative and your Senator cannot hear you when you are screaming. They cannot listen when you disrespect their office, and when anyone acts without respect we damage the genius of democratic debate. Instead make it clear that you vote, that this matters to you, and that you'll remember.

We must remind ourselves that these representatives were voted in. They have a right to legislate - even a responsibility to do so. Fair enough. Elections matter. The last one did, and the next one will too. These are the individual representatives of our collective values. That is why it is important for you to be heard now. They need to know your values!

Test your legislators. Did they do their research first? Is this thoughtful legislation? Prepare yourself beforehand. It is not a time to be clever, but to get to the crux of the issues you care about. Perhaps you have suggestions for other cuts that could be made to reduce the deficit. That can be a shared goal, even if you disagree on the means to achieve it.

You may not change your legislator's mind, but thoughtful questions can change voters' minds, and that is, after all, what democracy is all about. History is filled with people whose opinions were gradually transformed by asking better questions.

Try to quell your emotions. It is, of course, natural to feel strongly about the things you love, but expressing yourself in anger does damage to everyone. Instead, speak calmly from your heart. Express your own values and your views on the value of the arts to the entirety of the community.

But DO speak. Send an email or a letter. Make a phone call. Be respectful and be heard. Each one of us can speak in our own way.

Your personal vision of the way forward can seem so small. One small voice can seem so impotent.

Both have great power.

Think these issues through, find your courage and act.

As we all know, this has been a period in which the Detroit Symphony Orchestra canceled the remainder of its season due to the impasse between musicians and management, and in which the House of Representatives gutted the National Endowment for the Arts as part of its version of the continuing resolution legislation necessary to avoid a government shutdown in early March.

Such moments are disconcerting, because we look for meaning as we try to frame our response. It is too big for any single one of us to handle. There is a feeling of losing direction and momentum; an interruption of life as it had been.

Perhaps that is why the quotes in this book were so powerful to me. I have been trying to make sense of these days. Why does this moment seem so threatening?

The first passage is Hyde's own quoting of Joseph Conrad, who, in writing about the role of the artist, says:

He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain: to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation - to the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts, to the solidarity . . . which binds together all humanity - the dead to the living and the living to the unborn.

As a musician, I stopped and reflected. Those of us living today, creating at this moment, are part of the long conversation that has occupied mankind from the very beginning. Yet the events of the past week threaten that conversation in some way, and it has taken a toll on many of us who sense that this is beyond our capacity to hold back the tide. It is as if there is a fever that has to rise, to break, and, only then subside - but at what price to all of us? What will be left after this fever has passed?

I returned to the book and, a few pages later, was stunned to read this passage written by Hyde himself:

In first introducing these two Greek terms, I said that it is bios-life - individual and embodied - that dies, while zoë-life is the unbroken thread, the spirit that survives the destruction of its vessels. But here we must add that zoë-life may be lost as well when there is wholesale destruction of its vehicles. The spirit of a community or collective can be wiped out; tradition can be destroyed. We tend to think of genocide as the physical destruction of a race or group, but the term may be aptly expanded to include the obliteration of the genius of a group, the killing of its creative spirit through the destruction, debasement, or silencing of its art.... Those parts of our being that extend beyond the individual ego cannot survive unless they can be constantly articulated. And there are individuals - all of us, I would say, but men and women of spiritual and artistic temperament in particular - who cannot survive, either, unless the symbols of zoë-life circulate among us as a commonwealth.

This is the significance of this time in our lives. The fever of the moment has the capacity to destroy, debase and silence us. The vehicles of the long conversation, what Hyde calls zoë-life, are threatened. The unbroken line can be severed in the fever of fiscal "responsibility."

Unlike the purges of 1937 in the Soviet Union, this killing of the creative spirit is not driven by a Stalinesque need to instill fear in the hearts of his people. Instead, this genocide of our genius is justified by abstract numbers.

We are the victims, not of a dictator, but of arithmetic.

Such a moment demands imagination, a willingness to think anew, and the determination necessary to continue the work in the face of seemingly intractable forces.

We must steel ourselves to express what we value as a society. This moment is an aberration, and it can abate, but not if we are all silent. We must quiet our anger, but articulate our values.

There is an old saying that "Truth is the last guest that comes to the table," but, if properly invited, it does arrive at last.

Dear Congressman Walberg,

As you are aware, we know each other.

You are my congressman; we live in the same county, eat in the same restaurants, shop in the same stores and know the same friends. I have enjoyed having you among the members of the audience in the orchestra where I serve as Music Director. You've attended symphony fund raising events. I know your wife, and I like her. I know and admire people who supported you in your effort to get re-elected. One family, whom I dearly love, even traveled to your swearing-in ceremony.

We are not enemies, but I cannot remain silent on your recent action.

Most probably we don't share the same views on a number of subjects, but I've always thought, and I continue to think, that the primary challenge of being human is to hold to your values while not serving up disrespect to those who don't share them. Most probably you think something similar.

And so, while my letter might seem like an attack, it is not. Instead it is a letter of the strongest possible disagreement. I doubt this letter will affect your thinking. Rather, most probably it will mean that people whom I love will become silent toward me. That is the price I pay for telling you my perception of the truth.

But I can't be silent, because I believe you are wrong, and your thinking can potentially impact the whole country.

You have proposed that the National Endowment for the Arts be drastically cut. Your proposal is intended to be a part of a larger effort to slash the size of the Federal government. This comes in context of an election that brought great gains to the Republican Party. You benefited from that wave of voter discontent, and I believe you are responding to it. Showing in a tangible way that you think government is too large will surely play well to an electorate that is rattled by an economy that continues to deteriorate.

You lost your seat once, and I am sure you don't want to lose it again. You've chosen the NEA as a reasonable target. It is probably not the most important federal agency to this district, and yet, that agency has served us locally. Last year, the orchestra here received $10,000 from the NEA in support of a concert that concluded a two-year composer-in-residence project that resulted in five world premieres.That same music will soon be recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra. That project couldn't have happened without funding from a variety of sources, and the National Endowment for the Arts was one of them.

But, in truth that is not the reason to write this letter. I could not argue that the whole country should be taxed just so that our little county could benefit. Because, to do so would not adequately value what the NEA does.

The NATIONAL Endowment for the Arts is about all of us. It takes a very small token from each person and rewards the whole country with a wealth of art. It encourages small places throughout the United States, places like Lenawee County - your county - to raise their sites toward greater things. It changes the landscape of the nation in its appreciation for beauty and meaning. It is a statement of community rather than of individualism. It is a benefit to the whole.

The National Endowment for the Arts is one of the best-run agencies of the federal government. I have sat on NEA granting committees in the past and was so impressed with the professionalism of the staff, the disciplined thinking in the deliberation process, and the strict following of guidelines leading to the awarding of the grants. I was genuinely proud to serve in its behalf. I felt I had done something truly good for this country, and I left with a new appreciation of what it means to be awarded a grant by the whole nation through the agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.

I agree with you that the deficit has grown. It worries me too. There are things in this government I would choose to cut, but the NEA isn't one of them. Cutting the NEA is a statement of values, and, in my opinion, you're simply wrong on this issue.

I honestly don't know how you can sit in a concert hall full of people of such diverse backgrounds and not understand the value of the arts to a community as a whole. I can't grasp that you could not see that the entire nation is just like this county, and that it NEEDS the joy that the arts bring to all of us. Those arts have collective value. They are worthy of a very small portion of national expenditures. I'm disappointed in you, Tim.

I am sad to say that your proposal to double the proposed amount of money to be cut from the NEA in this budget is a colossal failure of vision. It does damage to all of us, and you do not represent my views as a citizen of this county, state and nation.

Sincerely,

John Thomas Dodson

John Thomas Dodson: Rick, in addition to your life as a professional orchestral musician, you compose, create opportunities for amateur musicians to experience music together, and even run small chamber ensembles. Why? What drives you?

Rick Robinson: What drives me is a burning desire to be of practical use while I'm alive. Life is short, especially when it has been as blessed as mine! Classical music is clearly very empowering for us who love it. I recognize and struggle with the idea that the vast majority in America don't recognize any VALUE to hearing classical music (clam). If we could reduce that alienation, I would be very happy serving that mission! If life tells you to be a bridge, be a bridge!

By and large, besides the reduction of music education in public schools, I attribute this alienation to the counter-cultural revolution of the 1960s, in which clam was closely associated with the ruling classes and conservative figures. The counter-culture, by definition, rejected everything traditional and thankfully developed many wildly imaginative new art forms and freedom of self-expression. Of course the explosion of technology also enabled a growing rift between cultures and art forms. Clam was stigmatized as cold, inflexible and "old school".

JTD: You've taken music to all kinds of unusual settings. Why?

RR: As black man I believe I'm in a unique position to make a case FOR clam as universal, relevant and HUMBLE. We shouldn't be afraid to be populist, playing in nightclubs, cafes and restaurants... places where people feel relaxed, can talk, drink, eat and laugh. The law of averages tells me that HALF will tune us out if we're there... but the other half will LISTEN and perhaps become more OPEN to clam's value in the future. We can STILL put it on a pedestal at Orchestra Hall. But we need to have FUN with it too, around people who didn't realize it COULD be fun or personal! What a difference we can make!

JTD: I know that you've recently begun creating opportunities for amateur musicians to experience music together. What are you learning?

RR: Offering classical music as a fun and FREE experience is a revolutionary idea... one that many clammers might embrace now. Playing with amateurs too places the newcomer SQUARELY onstage with us. Hence I started the Detroit chapter of Classical Revolution with impromptu music sight-reading sessions while DSO has become dysfunctional. The impact is IMMEDIATE. Many newbies thanked me for bringing music "that wasn't crap" - muisc that they just don't hear anywhere else for whatever reason. They began to see why people would PAY for it! We shouldn't keep saying "classical is the BEST" as that smacks of arrogance. Let's put it out there, show respect for other music and let people come to their own conclusions. Oh, and let's shorten those long words too!

JTD: Putting music in different contexts and venues is, of course, a really interesting idea. I often wish the concert hall experience would be completely re-imagined. And the idea of making music participatory again - opening it up to amateurs in your Orchestra Revolution project in Detroit - seems like a way to break down more barriers, albeit with people who at least can read music. The push/pull here is choosing WHAT to change and what to keep in any live-music setting. Obviously there's a lot of room for different approaches here, and it seems that different organizations are exploring many different answers, but if you could tell someone what YOU see as some potential solutions, what would YOU suggest? Is it programming? format? talking/explaining? We all know that something isn't working. What are we missing here?

RR: I think what is missing is simply a COMFORTABILITY with classical music. Clearly music education is part of making us comfortable with clam. But without a recurring experience of this music in relaxed settings that our family and friends are ALSO positive about, there're declining chances to maintain that valuable relationship with the music. Clam must become an old friend who comforts and emboldens us.

My short answer is that we must do BOTH, ANY and EVERY-thing because no one or two ways will speak to everyone. So maintain the high-quality formal(ish) concerts where almost NOBODY speaks AND develop informal concert formats with both the orchestra and chamber groups. Also cultivate those amateurs to show their stuff because they prove that many are proud to play classical. This also demonstrates the differences between skill levels.

Talking gives us a chance to make people relax with a joke or a personal story that illustrates the emotional or applied power of this music. I often talk about how the next piece makes my toes tingle at the big climax when Bach shows all three themes fit perfectly together. Or how classical music builds dramatic tension and releases it in a series of waves that peak towards the end of the movement. I talk about how instrumental music developed quickly in opera as a way to describe actions even without words. How a musical gesture is every bit as suggestive as a physical one. I will even suggest a scenario to fit the START of some music and encourage the audience to imagine the rest.

Experimentation based on observation is essential moving forward. I go out to hear jazz a lot and can't help notice the sharp, steady beat of a drummer or bassist making everyone FEEL together. Perhaps it would behoove clam to point out the "obvious" to an audience. That WITHOUT a drummer, we INTERNALIZE the beat and enjoy the liberty to stretch, compress or simply PLAY with time itself! I liken a slow and sad movement to the blues. "If this movement were a movie, Hero A meets Hero B and they get in a car chase..." Perhaps I wouldn't say this to a sophisticated audience but certainly to a young or isolated audience (my favorite).

My major overhaul suggestion is to make this music part of a FULL EVENING of music... like a party. I like what The Cleveland Orchestra is doing with its popular Fridays at 7 series. Strolling dinner and cocktails, pre-concert chamber music, orchestra concert, then contrasting jazz, rock or crossover band in a standing room only space so young people will mingle and enjoy. Or continue the party at a nightclub. Just keep it going until midnight, amplify the chamber groups a little, and don't worry if things don't go perfectly! Video clips projected on a side wall will help keep things lively at the after-party. It sounds like a lot to coordinate, but with the right committed people, it should be do-able twice a month.

JTD: Thanks, Rick. Fascinating ideas, and I love that you just go out there and TRY something, rather than just commenting from the sidelines. Any last thoughts?

RR: I think we should remember that what makes it classical music is that Voltaire and the Age of Enlightenment thinkers who brought us modern day democracy 300 years ago were reawakening observations of the ancient GREEKS - that music shouldn't be just ornamental but reflect the natural ebb and flow of human thoughts and feelings. By taking on a contrasting second melodic theme, music acquired the ambivalence and dilemma with which we constantly wrestle. Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven turned this into the monumental art form that speaks to us still so well today. It says a lot that we keep finding new ways to re-freshen this form of music, even while enjoying many others. Life is beautiful!

It's Monday morning at 7:30, and I'm arriving in the parking lot of the local high school. Today my role isn't to conduct. I'll be hosting an educational concert and trying to create an atmosphere that encourages everyone to be open to new things.

Instead of the full orchestra, today's program features a seventeen-piece swing band made up of some of the best jazz musicians from Michigan and Ohio. The concert begins with Harry James's Lush Life, followed by a brief introduction of singer Michael Lackey, who is currently appearing in the Vegas production of Phantom of the Opera at the Venetian. Then we roll the dice to find out how the students will react to the rest of the program. We're in luck: An hour after we began, the hall is filled with whistles, applause and a standing ovation to the last notes of New York, New York.

At such a moment the future looks brighter. Something good just happened because we cared enough to risk engagement.

I write this entry because it takes courage to commit your organization to stick with educational concerts beyond the youngest audiences. From my perspective there isn't much riskier than to program an educational concert for an adolescent. It seems tantamount to poking a fire-breathing dragon just to find out how hot his torch of a breath might be.

For years I have struggled with this axiom: "Educational concerts work well for young children, but older students won't give you a chance." It's an easy narrative, and it's a lie. The problem is that, if you relinquish your organization to that storyline, you don't get a chance to follow up on the first introduction you made to the elementary grades. In essence you say, "After Peter and the Wolf we'll see you at the Mahler concert in a few decades. Bye for now!"

You only create an arts community through a broad effort extended across the whole age spectrum. It takes a commitment of time, resources, and multiple exposures to the art form. Rather than seeing the educational mission as an event, it's an ongoing process that involves faith in the long-term and risk in the moment.

Could it be that, too often, we're doing educational concerts without much thought and with even less preparation? It would be good to ask ourselves if we are making a single concert or an ongoing relationship?

A thrown-together educational concert should be thrown out.

Even a dragon will give you a chance to prove yourself.

Once.

Imagine that you were born in a little village in the English countryside, spent your twenties farming the land, joined a local choir - although you don't really read music, and, years later, found yourself singing on the stages of the great opera houses of the world.

Imagine you lived a life full of memories and then, with Alzheimer's Disease, began to forget it all.

What was left behind, the rest of us won't soon forget.

Goodbye, Anthony Rolfe Johnson, and thank you.

To hear a rare and sensitive musician, click here.

Beforehand, there was a pre-concert presentation given by a faculty member who taught music theory at a nearby university.

"The form of the first movement is a hybrid between sonata and ritornello," he said. And he went on to explain the movement's key relationships, pointing out many of the unusual structural elements in the work. He had graphs and charts, with colored pencil markings and really interesting shapes which we watched while he played excerpts on the sound-system. It was all nicely organized in a Power-Point presentation. There were pictures of composers, music notated in Finale, and references to other works by the same composer and his contemporaries.

As we exited the room and entered the concert hall, I listened carefully to the comments around me. They were brutally honest. "I didn't get it," one said. "I thought I knew something about music, but I guess I'm wrong. That was a waste of time," sighed a quiet, disappointed voice.

What had just happened that had failed their hopes and expectations so miserably?

Sometimes I challenge young musicians to try to discuss music without using the terminology they have learned. I'll tell them they can use metaphor, but they have to avoid the words they have come to rely upon. They can't use exposition, recapitulation, da capo, modulation, or sequence. No sonata, no ternary, no rondo. They immediately freeze, because, without a shared vocabulary there isn't a way forward. They become mute. After a few moments, they laugh - followed by, "This is hard!"

As field, we either talk down to audiences, or we assume they have the same knowledge base as we do. There's a good rule to live by here. The moment someone feels stupid, they check out. It's over. Think "audience churn" - and you haven't even played the first note!

You would think that a pre-concert talk would always help us build and retain audiences. But we should HEAR that talk as if we were attending for the first time. What if, in our good intentions, we've inadvertently convinced new audiences that they can't possibly enjoy the evening's music?

Imagine you buy a ticket to hear a concert. You arrive early to learn whatever you can to help you really, intensely benefit from the performance. Now, try to really HEAR this sentence, "The form of the first movement is a hybrid between sonata and ritornello."

What do you actually have to KNOW to enjoy the scent of a rose?

This isn't to say we shouldn't teach, but it might serve to remind ourselves who is listening.

What if we first gave a pre-concert talk to some non-musicians and had them keep notes on the points in our presentation where we had lost them? I've done that. It's humbling, to say the least. You learn a lot about what doesn't work.

And figuring out what isn't working is already a good start.

Oh, and by the way, it isn't really a hybrid between sonata and ritornello. Actually, its a typical double exposition you would expect in any classical concerto of the late 18th Century, except that the second theme modulates even in the first, orchestral exposition. THAT's rare, although it is surely due to the fact that this concerto is in the minor mode. You would think that instead of modulating from the minor tonic to the major mediant for the second subject, he would choose to use the parallel tonic and simply present the second theme in the major mode, reserving the actual modulation to the mediant for the second, soloist exposition. And that makes you wonder what he might do in the recapitulation: modulate again, or present everything in tonic - first theme in minor, and the second one in the parallel major? After all, he HAS to end in the home tonic, right? So I don't really buy the "hybrid between sonata and ritornello" argument anyway.

I hope you're laughing right now.

Last week, I gave a version of this entry at a fundraising event, and later found myself thinking that its underlying message applies to many arts communities. Perhaps it will remind all of us that the structures of support are now communal. The vision that could be accomplished by one powerful man from over two hundred and fifty years ago, must now belong to the community as a whole.

Imagine it is 1766, and you are a prince. You have built a palace in rural Hungary, and you love music. Five years ago, in 1761, your brother had discovered a young, very talented musician and hired him to become Vice-Kapellmeister. Now, in your reign, when the elder Kapellmeister dies, you ensure that the young man assumes the top musical position at the palace.

You have an orchestra, and an opera stage, and you invite musicians from near and far to stop by and visit you, each time telling your Kapellmeister that he should take note of them. He is a composer, this Kapellmeister, and he writes music for you every week. He writes symphonies, operas, and string quartets, and even music for your own favorite instrument, the baryton. He brings glory to your palace because his commitment to music mirrors your own. Having his music in this special place says as much about you and what you value as the beautiful gardens and grand architecture surrounding you.

The symphonies are so incredible that they are published and performed around Europe, and the Kapellmeister's fame grows, along with your palace's reputation.

Because of this remarkable musical community, many now know your name, Nikolaus Esterházy, as well as the grand palace you built: Eszterháza. Over the next three decades, your composer-Kapellmeister, Joseph Haydn, will preside over the music in this remarkable place. Since Eszterháza is isolated from Vienna, Haydn will often be lonely for the companionship of other musicians from that city. But, when the palace is closed up at the end of each season, Haydn, like many of the others in your retinue, will return to Vienna, where he lives during the rest of the year. He has friends there, including a young, immensely gifted composer named Mozart. Through their friendship they challenge each other to grow.

Years go by, and you, as the prince, become old and pass away. Your son takes the reins. He cares much less about music, and money is tight. He cuts his expenditures dramatically, and it doesn't take long for Haydn to realize that the magic of Eszterháza has passed on along with you. The entire musical enterprise is closed, and Haydn, released from the terms of his long, exclusive contract, writes music for Paris, and for London, and Vienna too. Later he'll even teach a young, promising composer named Beethoven.

During his lifetime, Haydn will compose over 100 symphonies, develop the new genre of the string quartet, and set the standard against which Mozart will be measured. He'll be the most famous musician of his age, and all of this because of you.

And that leads me to think of ripples.

Each one of us lives a life based on our values. We gradually form them, nurture them, and ultimately, become them. Behind us, we leave ripples of our having been here. Behind us, things happen: Some, because we decide to make a difference; others, the unanticipated results of the things we choose to do.

Because Prince Nikolaus recognized talent and nurtured it, Haydn found his way out of anonymity and into History. The story of music changed. Because of his stature, Haydn would find Mozart, and Beethoven would seek out Haydn. But Prince Esterházy could see none of that. He simply saw that around him he wanted music of the highest order.

We all know that there are no more Eszterháza Palaces and no more people like Prince Nikolaus Esterházy. Well, actually they remain, but in other forms and other roles. The palaces are now tourist spots, and today we have concert halls and auditoriums. There are orchestras in many cities, supported not by princes, but by people like us.

And there are still ripples. Because of the actions behind us, we are here today, and beyond today, our ripples will continue to work their way forward. It seems to be time to throw a stone into the water, believing that you'll leave something behind. We're only part of the story, but we're an essential part. This can't be done by one of us alone. We don't need Prince Nikolaus Esterházy. We need a community of like-minded stone-throwers instead.