Create. Inspire. Lead. Episode 1
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Episode One: The Elephant Confined to Its Room (Intro music) This is the Institute for Music Leadership Stephen Biegner (SB): Hello, and welcome to the first episode of “Create. Inspire. Lead.” – a podcast from Eastman School of Music’s IML Office. My name is Stephen Biegner, and I will be your de facto host. You Know, we’d actually been planning a podcast since at least the beginning of the Fall semester. One of our wonderful student worKers – Melissa O’Hara – she’d been doing all this research into things liKe equipment we’d need, she was brainstorming various topics, reaching out to guests – we had planned to do a call for scores to create a theme song. We thought about reaching out to a local artist to create artworK for the podcast. We were being thoughtful, methodical, diligent. And then, COVID-19 happened. And, so I’m here, in my guest bedroom/music room/home office with a loaner laptop, a USB mic my wife and I use sometimes to record choral parts for these practice recordings we do, and, well, this is it. We hope that moving forward we can bring you interviews, stories, quicK tips from a variety of guests from within the Institute for Music Leadership as well as from Eastman faculty and outside eXperts. But today, for the first episode, I thought we could talK about the elephant in the room. The elephant that is now confined to its room. Of course, I’m talKing about us. StucK. Inside. Unable to meet with friends and colleagues, to make music, to live out our purpose. And, if you’re anything liKe me –there’s been a miX of emotions. Sometimes, the introverted, anti-social version of me is secretly a little happy to stucK inside. I’ve been listening to music liKe crazy, I get to spend more time with my son and my wife – but, other times, I feel wracKed with anXiety, it’s hard to focus, stay driven, and I wonder, why am I doing this? So, today, I thought we could talK to two people. Dr. Blaire Koerner and Dr. Eric Laprade. Blaire is the Career Advisor for the IML, and Eric is the managing editor of the Paul R. Judy Center for Innovation and Research which is also part of the IML. They’re also both alums of Eastman – Blaire’s a bassoonist and Eric is a conductor – and they collaborated on putting together all of these resources for musicians who have been affected by the pandemic. I figured it would be good to talK with each of them to get their perspective on what we can be doing now. Also – quicK note – because we had to do these interviews over Zoom, the quality of the audio is not always as high as we’d liKe it to be. So, for future episodes, we’ll be looKing into how we can realistically improve these issues, but, for now, please bear with us. If you take a looK at the list of resources that Blaire and Eric put together, one of the first thing you’ll notice right away is how eXtensive the list is. And that’s the first thing that I decided to talKto Blaire about. SB: So, in scanning through it, it’s a lot – um, which is helpful – but it’s also, it can feel overwhelming, um, where do you recommend students start? Blaire Koerner (BK): Great question. I thinK it starts with what’s their situation. So, if they are a performer, a freelancer, or even a teacher, as a student who has lost their income because of these things, whether it’s because they had to go bacK home and they don’t have the gigs that they were planning, or because their, you know, assistantship is no longer functioning properly because of their situation. So the first thing is Kind of assessing where they are currently. And if they need funding, if they need relief, if they need some sort of support, there is a boatload out there. Yes, there are bigger pacKages that the government has passed through. We just don’t Know the timing for those, we also, you Know, there’s a lot of details behind that. And they’re gonna be bigger than some of these 200, 300-dollar offerings that some of these organizations are offering, but it’s worth looKing and seeing where can I apply, what is valuable to me. The second thing I believe would be, Keep on top of what is happening. So, when you can read your messages that are being sent by the university, read the messages that are being sent by the news, um, because right now everything is in a state of fluX, and it will be for a little while. So. ChecKing in to the American Musicians Federation – the union – because they are also highlighting and specifically focusing on music related situations, music related concepts. So just trying to Keep up with that type of news, so if anything does come around, you are aware of it, you can move forward, and you can get curious and eXplore it. SB: Blaire gave a lot of incredible information, and there’s a lot to unpacK in there. But after talKing with Blaire and Eric, I noticed they each said specific things repeatedly throughout their interviews. We’ll get to Eric’s, but for Blaire, it’s how many times she mentions staying curious. {clips of Blaire saying “curious” overlapping} See? We’ll hear those in conteXt a bit later, but right now, I thought it would be interesting to hear what Eric had to say to a similar question. We had some….technical issues at the beginning of the interview: Eric Laprade (EL): Hey Stephen. SB: Hello! Hi Eric EL: How are you? SB: Good, nice to meet you. EL: Yeah, I'm just, give me one second… SB: Yeah, sure I'm also just opening… (Siri alarm going off). EL: Sorry, my Siri thing keeps going! SB: Oh, that's all right. (laughs) SB: Eric is the director of bands and an assistant professor at the College of New Jersey, or TCNJ, and he is also the managing editor for the Paul R. Judy Center for the IML. He’s been putting together some really great blog posts with resources, linKs to videos, thoughts on what’s important right now. I thought he’d also have a laundry list of things to go over – and I mean, he does. But here’s how he answered the question of where to start: EL: Sure, I mean it's um, I thinK nobody Knows to be honest. I um, it's I thinK it's hard to even still and I wrote down a note that said, liKe trying to move through, or get beyond sort of liKe the initial liKe triage and shocK of what has happened and try to start to thinK well what's next, how do I respond or react to this and quite franKly I thinK that's really hard to do, and um that in itself is overwhelming. SB: Honestly, that was so refreshing to hear. It’s so easy to feel alone or liKe you’re over- reacting to the situation. And maybe you’re neither of those things. But for me, four, five weeKs in to worKing remotely with a wife who is also a DMA student and a 2-year-old who is pure id, these conversations were just what I needed. Essentially throughout these interviews both Blaire and Eric lifted me up in different ways: Blaire helped me create a path forward, gave me action items, and confidence that I wouldn’t end up falling behind or stagnating; Eric helped me see hope in the situation and honestly, just commiserated a little bit. LiKe, here’s him talKing about what it’s been liKe writing for the PRJC blog: EL: And, you Know, the type of worK we typically do - We might share, we might write about programming, we might write about using technology, or profile innovative artists, even then, I was feeling um, you Know this pressure, liKe, this all feels irrelevant. LiKe how can I possibly write a blog post in good faith about liKe best programming practices when the world felt liKe you Know it was crumbling around us. And, the speed at which our lives have been upended, I'm still processing, struggling with. I see it in our students at the college where I teach. This is incredibly traumatic, these students who are worKing day in and day out towards, like, this goal they have - to learn that you're no longer can attend classes, you can't be in the same room and create music together, things that are liKe integral to us as human beings. I mean I can feel - I feel a giant void, personally, because I'm not conducting on a regular basis. It's something I've done almost every day for the last 15 years and then out of nowhere, I'm sitting here and staring at a computer screen for 8, 10, 12 hours a day. SB: This made me thinK about something Blaire had said: BK: So how can you continue developing your sKill sets, performance-wise, doing projects with one another, doing recording projects you’ve been meaning to do, but have been not doing them, and then of course acKnowledging that you may need to also find a position that is just gonna hold you over? SB: This would happen throughout our interview: Blaire would formulate the question for me and of course, had an answer.