An Open Letter

Hey folks, this one's for all the teachers and band directors:

As an educator and as a musician, don't you wish that there were more opportunities for your students to hear people their age playing and listening and even perhaps writing classical music?

As artists, I think we have to be concerned that fewer and fewer young people are attending classical music concerts, and that the trend doesn't seem to be slowing.

Personally, I have a feeling that part of the solution to our problem lies in the answer to the question: Do your students ever feel like they are lacking a connection with the music? I know when I was in high school, history classes (I think my history teacher, Mr. May would say that musicians spend a lot of time in the research and analysis of "primary sources") often felt rather distant and foreign. I didn't know anything about the historical figures before I learned about them, and it was rare that I felt any kind of connection with them or to them afterward. Musical figures are often the same way, and dealing with the works of a someone foreign (in so many ways) can be daunting and intimidating to a student. Especially if the performer is young and hasn't discovered their own identity.

I have heard some youth directors and music teachers try to bridge the gap with anecdotes from the young lives of the great composers and performers, but I don't know how much connection is made. I think for high school students those stories are still seen through idolizing eyes—from the position of "this person is so great, but I'm just me." Students today want to know and hear of people alive today sharing the same world they live in. I know I do.

Honestly, it is really inspiring to know that Sergei Rachmaninoff went to school with Alexander Scriabin and Josef Lhevinne (see bottom) and that they weren't born full fledged geniuses but that they were students just like me once. But when you're slaving away in the practice room for the seventh hour of the day, tired, hungry and ready to faint, the vicarious memory of Rachmaninoff's verdant legacy as a student brings no great solace. Knowing that there is someone just like you doing the same thing that you are, whom you've seen and heard is the powerful thought you need.

You can get that on Introductions.

Haven't your students ever wondered why almost all the music they hear is either music they play or that which professionals play? Today, our students rarely get to hear other fledgling talents before they become serious musicians. We never get to hear performers and composers at the beginning of their careers. Wouldn't it be a terrific opportunity for them to get to know and hear other musicians in the exact same position as them?

Do we want this music to simply stay alive, in the form of a dying tradition?

Or do we want it to live, live in the hearts of new students?

Help them find their way. Together. Listen to Introductions.

Josef Lhevinne