When I Was Your Age...

As a young student still figuring out my place in the arts, commissioning a professional Composer and premiering a new work was by far the most impactful part of my education.

I was a pianist masquerading as a composer masquerading as a pianist masquerading as a poet, utterly obsessed with creativity and the joy, the sheer bliss of creating things from nothing. It was a high like nothing I’d ever experienced and I was hooked.

Full of energy and naïveté, a kind and sympathetic department chair in my graduate program took an interest in my desire to create a new music concert, shepherding me through a process that ultimately lead to commissioning a major composer and flying him out for a weeklong series of premiere related events. It was my first taste as an arts impresario and I couldn’t quite wrap my head around the good fortune I just stumbled upon. Here I was, a young 20-something with little to no experience thrust into a position of authority, interviewing my composer idols to bequeath upon them the honor (the honor!) of writing me a new work. It was heady stuff.

The week of the festival, we brought out composer Ingram Marshall, a wonderfully expressive and moody post-minimalist with a cult-like following.

Without exaggeration, the experience changed my life and set me on a path from which I have never looked back.

Fellow teachers, what we do is important but it can’t match those seminal points of contact that place, if only momentarily, emerging young artists on equal footing with respected professionals. Unlike the hierarchical teacher-student relationships found within all academic institutions, a visiting guest artist can bring a fresh, outsider’s perspective that can validate choices and change young lives. 

I know, because it changed mine. 

The Seventeen Minutes and Twenty-Two Seconds Consortium Project has this same potential.

Teacher friends, consider giving your students a similar experience by joining our consortium for your studio or institution.