{"id":1093,"date":"2017-05-22T11:36:15","date_gmt":"2017-05-22T15:36:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/?p=1093"},"modified":"2017-05-22T11:37:05","modified_gmt":"2017-05-22T15:37:05","slug":"helping-them-get-started","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/2017\/05\/helping-them-get-started.html","title":{"rendered":"Helping Them Get Started"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A friend of mine in grad school, a cellist, was close to graduation when his teacher suddenly died.\u00a0 \u201cWhat am I going to do?\u201d he asked me. \u201cThere is nobody to help me get started in my career!\u201d<\/p>\n

I remember being shocked at his selfishness, seeing someone else\u2019s death only as an impediment to his own success.\u00a0 I mentally chided him for ignoring the man who had died, and his family.<\/p>\n

Two years later, my teacher Vincent Persichetti died.\u00a0 I was not one of the students who was closest to him \u2013 I was egotistical enough to think I didn\u2019t have much need for a teacher \u2013 but I mourned his passing on its own terms.\u00a0 I remember he used to say he didn\u2019t believe in death; he liked to deny its existence, using a slippery slope between humor and seriousness that marked much of his communication.\u00a0 I missed that slope, which seemed rich in retrospect.<\/p>\n

I suppose it was partly my ego that didn\u2019t allow me to see his death as having an impact on my career: I wanted to be the sole author of my success, and I didn\u2019t like to think I depended on anyone else.\u00a0 It\u2019s only in recent years that I\u2019ve begun to see that his passing had a very powerful impact on my trajectory.\u00a0 His recommendation had led to my first recording release. \u00a0He spoke\u00a0with Jacob Druckman at the NY Philharmonic about getting\u00a0my music\u00a0premiered by the orchestra (I foolishly didn\u2019t follow up, feeling the piece wasn\u2019t ready, and when Persichetti died the connection was lost).\u00a0 Everything that came after I had to make happen myself \u2013 which suited my self-image.<\/p>\n

In my early years of teaching, I assumed my students would want the same measure of independence I had needed at their age, and I let them find their own career paths accordingly.\u00a0 Over the last few years, though, I have been increasingly concerned with being a force for their benefit in the years after they complete their degrees.\u00a0 The majority of it is up to them, but I\u2019m no longer ignoring my role.\u00a0 I question whether that\u2019s the right thing to do, because I question everything, but it\u2019s the path I\u2019m on at this point.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that I regret the road my life has taken \u2013 things have worked out very well for me \u2013 I just see things differently from this angle than the one I had thirty years ago.\u00a0 And that\u2019s the way it should be: if thirty years makes no difference in your outlook, you haven\u2019t been paying attention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A friend of mine in grad school, a cellist, was close to graduation when his teacher suddenly died.\u00a0 \u201cWhat am I going to do?\u201d he asked me. \u201cThere is nobody to help me get started in my career!\u201d I remember being shocked at his selfishness, seeing someone else\u2019s death only as an impediment to his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1094,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1093","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1093"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1095,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093\/revisions\/1095"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}