Iconoclastic Music Educator
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MONTAGE Phoebe Snow, and Bonnie Raitt ’72 (on her Iconoclastic Music Give It Up album), and appearing on NBC’s Tonight Show and Saturday Night Live, Payne re- alized that “Some of the greatest times I’ve Educator had came when I was no good at all”—like playing a small, plastic end-blown flute Rejecting the “tyranny of competence,” John Payne called a Tonette as a fourth-grader, where helps musicians bloom. “the level of musicianship of the group was very, very basic, to put it as delicately as by craig lambert possible.” He adds, “Enjoyment is not pro- portional to how good you are. The value n 1979, musician and educator John Payne himself. “To play in groups, you had to be of music comes in the joy you take from ’67 faced a problem. He’d been teaching a good. We needed a place where people could it, and give to others.” In an essay, “Re- lot of private students, who went home be bad together!” versing the Dwindling Spiral of Musical I to practice and then returned for the next The answer was to start a different kind Enjoyment” (see his entry under “Teach- lesson—fine. But a lifetime in music had also of music school, the John Payne Music ers” at www.jpmc.us), and at his school in taught Payne that playing with others not Center (JPMC), now a nonprofit. Operat- Brookline, Massachusetts, Payne rejects only increased enjoyment immensely, but ing at a limited skill level was, he knew, no what he calls “the tyranny of competence,” motivated people to learn music better and barrier to musical pleasure. Despite hav- noting that the first question people often to keep practicing and playing. “Where do ing played with Van Morrison (on the cel- ask when they learn that someone plays I send people to play in groups?” he asked ebrated Astral Weeks album, among others), an instrument is, “Is she any good?” Payne Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson, J.D.- Diego, probes (critically) M.P.A. ’85 (Spiegel and Grau, $28). Profes- the technological assump- sor of clinical law at New York University tions underlying online and and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, other learning systems. Stevenson litigates on behalf of poor de- fendants, prisoners locked up without pa- A Land of Aching role, and those facing capital punishment. Hearts: The Middle He draws on his cases, like that of Walter East in the Great War, McMillian, sentenced to death and finally by Leila Tarazi Fawaz, exonerated, to demand changes in an un- Ph.D. ’79 (Harvard, $35). equal criminal-justice system. The author, an historian at Tufts (and past president Island Naturalist, by Kathie Fiveash ’69 of the Board of Overseers) (Penobscot Bay Press, $27.95 paper). If tells the personal story of LIBRARY OF CONGRESS you are cross about having summer in the those in “Greater Syria” whose lives and The endless pain of the Middle East: rearview mirror, Fiveash’s collected news- national identities were changed by the woman and dead child near Aleppo, Syria (undated) paper columns, from Isle au Haut, six miles end of Ottoman rule. Slightly farther east, off the Maine coast, may take you back to physicist Jeremy Bernstein ’51, Ph.D. ’55, Rocket and Lightship, by Adam Kirsch the idle hours of looking for periwinkles, provides a succinct, lay explanation of one ’97 (W.W. Norton, $26.95). The latest being startled by a garter snake, or won- of the persisting points of intense friction collection of essays on literature and dering about dragonflies’ gossamer wings. in the region, in Nuclear Iran (Harvard, ideas, by the prolific critic and poet (this $18.95). is his seventh book), ranging widely from MOOCs, by Jonathan Haber ($13.95 Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin to paper), and The War on Learning, Disconnected: Youth, New Media, Proust, Darwin, and David Foster Wal- by Elizabeth Losh ’87 ($29.95; both MIT and the Ethics Gap, by Carrie James, lace. Kirsch is a Harvard Magazine con- Press). Haber, an education consultant, lecturer on education (MIT Press, $24.95). tributing editor. signed up for enough online courses, in- How do young people, surrounded by so- cluding several from HarvardX, to pur- cial media, learn to think about privacy Everything I Never Told You, by Ce- sue the equivalent of a four-year degree in and participation as they develop and leste Ng ’02 (Penguin, $26.95). “Lydia one year; he now concisely reflects on the evolve as ethical beings? James, of the is dead” is the first sentence of this ac- promises and limitations of this technolog- Graduate School of Education’s Project claimed debut novel, a portrait of a ical innovation in teaching. Losh, director Zero, who interviewed many youngsters, Chinese-American family in Ohio in the of the culture, art, and technology pro- finds a need for mentorship, guidance, and 1970s; as an undergraduate, the author gram at the University of California, San the attributes of citizenship online. was an intern at this magazine. Harvard Magazine 75 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 MONTAGE John Payne teaches came a musician. Why else would anyone a saxophone student at his music center do it?” in Brookline, A Thelonius Monk concert that Payne Massachusetts. attended as a teenage Dixieland clarinet player proved a watershed moment. Monk youth ensembles for “blew my mind—the depth of the music,” 10- to 18-year-olds. he recalls. Within months, he had pur- Six teachers lead the chased about 100 albums and taken up ten- nearly two dozen or sax. Immersed in music, he took time off current groups, each from college, edited math books at Hough- of which meets for 90 ton Mifflin, and eventually earned a degree minutes once a week. in philosophy. He had a successful pro- Several times a year, fessional career as a sideman, and formed they play at Ryles the John Payne Band, which released four Jazz Club in Cam- albums and performed for several years. bridge; some have During one road trip, a drummer emerged performed elsewhere, from a phone booth to announce that he’d even landing paid just become a dad. Payne, who was mar- TU ROSNER S gigs. Students thrive ried, wanted children (he now has four) suggests that “Is she having fun with it?” in the groups, which flourish as members and decided to leave the touring life be- might be more appropriate. play together for months, even years. In hind: “I didn’t want to be getting out of a The JPMC forms jazz, rock, and R&B another broadside, Payne asserts that phone booth at a truck stop in California ensembles of students (typically four to “the joy of group music making—wherein when my wife had a baby.” eight) playing at roughly the same levels, you are co-creating the music—has the Hence he settled in his hometown of and not necessarily very advanced ones. potential to far exceed the joy possible in Boston, founded the JPMC, and began There are adult students ranging in age just being the audience to others’ music. challenging orthodoxies of musical educa- from their twenties to their seventies, and In fact, this great joy is the reason I be- tion—among them, that students cannot © lizlinder.com PHOTO: WEDDING CELEBRATIONS • CORPORATE EVENTS • SOCIAL GATHERINGS Harvard Square . Cambridge, MA . 800.882.1818 . www.charleshotel.com 76 November - December 2014 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 MONTAGE (even should not) be taught to improvise. “No one was teaching improvisation,” he says, acknowledging the paradox: “How C hapter & Verse do you teach someone to be free?” The clue Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words emerged from his recognition that “mu- sic is a language. When toddlers learn to Carol Ochs seeks a citation for “All sci- More queries from the archives: speak English, they don’t read a script. In ence, all religion began with the innova- “Words are walls between us / Difficult some ways, that’s more difficult than im- tor, the nonconformist, the heretic.” She to scale— / Guardians of self / That make provising music!” writes, “In the 1950s, it was on the front a jail.” Payne has developed methods of teach- cover of the Sunday New York Times Book “Elephants coming two by two each as ing improv. Using a background track Review with a photo of a sculpture of a big as a launch in tow…” of a rhythm section—bass, drums, and hand reaching up.” “Memory is an old woman who saves piano—he’ll start by getting a student to dirty rags and throws away pearls and improvise by creating a melody from the Thomas Burrows hopes, after a half- diamonds.” notes of one scale, say F major. “Eighty to century of searching, that someone can 90 percent can do that right away,” he re- provide him with the source of the fol- “Admit impediments” (September- ports. Then he’ll get students to change lowing assertion, delivered by Professor October). Thomas Ehrlich was the first scales in the middle of the piece while im- Frank Moore Cross during an elementary to identify this quotation from the sonnet provising. With experience, the student Hebrew course: “It was a saying of the “Admit impediments” written by Norma starts to see and hear patterns (like chords) ancient rabbis that you may as well learn (Holzman) Farber, A.M. ’32, in response rather than single notes: “You intuitively Hebrew now because you will need it in to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116.