“EASTMAN TURNS UP THE HEAT”

Convocation Address, September 2007, Dean Douglas Lowry

Well, this is one terribly exciting moment for us all. Faculty and students have come back from active, productive summers: Europe, the Far East, other music schools, Aspen, festivals, retreats.

For the new students in the room trying to get their bearings at the Eastman School, I feel your pain. I’m new, too, trying to know where I’m headed if I’m on 395 as opposed to 495 as opposed to 595 (or whatever those numbers are).

But we have some very exciting things to look forward to, especially now that we’re known as the “hottest school for music” in the land.

There are a few among us who are not so sure about the adjective, about Eastman being called the “hottest” music school. I have to remind those that it could be worse, much worse. It could be “the most tepid” music school. One of my colleagues at another distinguished institution left a message on my phone that said, “Yeah, Lowry, you might think you guys are the hottest music school in America, but tell me that when you’re scrambling to find somebody to plow eight feet of snow off your driveway.” I’m an urban dude, and I have to protect my homies. So I called back at 3:00 a.m. and said, “Could be, pal. But we’re Eastman … and you’re not.” Haven’t heard back yet. By the way, he’s a friend. Or used to be.

I know we’re pumped up with a certain amount of civic pride. And justifiably so. We have banners and a ribbon on the web site. We’ve sent hundreds of letters to alums and supporters, and everyone in the Eastman family is justifiably proud.

The legacy of the Eastman experience is not only unique. It’s deep, it’s rich, it’s studded with graduates who have gone out into the world and fashioned ground-breaking performances, redefined music by carving new territory with their compositions, produced scholarship filled with penetrating insight about our music, transmitted their knowledge and excitement to legions of students hungry to learn how to play and hear and study and in turn transmit … music.

Our faculty is one of the most distinguished in the world. To be sure, their artistic and scholarly gifts and accomplishments are formidable. But they possess this extra dimension: an undying need to excel at that greatest of art forms, the art of teaching. To the students in the room, our faculty’s goal is to inform you, inspire you, cajole you, question you, and, sometimes, yes, yank your chain. But our faculty have entered into a compact: we will not allow ourselves to rest on our laurels. What distinguishes the Eastman faculty is its unsurpassed zeal for advancing our storied Eastman standards even higher. I think, frankly, this is central to the Eastman legacy, this passion to always get better, to get more vibrant, to instill in you, our students, an ethos of making your music matter, making your scholarship matter, making your teaching matter. This is so that we can ensure that our music has relevance and purpose, and a legitimate and worthwhile future.

This is a critical point. With initiatives like the Institute for Music Leadership, Eastman has staked a claim. We acknowledge that it’s not enough to simply learn our art. We – you – must learn how to tend the garden in which it lives.

Beyond the pronouncement, what does this mean? It means that in the next couple of months we will embark on an intense evaluation process in order to chart our future. In the institutional vernacular, this is called strategic planning. But this will not be an exercise intended to serve the whims of administrators or faculty. It will be driven by our desire to look into the future on behalf of you, our students, the only reason we are here.

We will use as a base our very strong platform: our program as it stands at Eastman. We will then delve into an exploration of not just what music is going to sound like in the future, but what it’s going to be like in the future. By this I mean the ways and means that we may experience music down the road, the way we may study and examine music in the future, the way we may teach music in the future. This is crucial because virtually every segment of our culture is redefining not only its message, but its medium.

Other art forms have endured and indeed prospered by this evolution. Great theatre, for example, did not die with the invention of TV and film. It just spun off some new versions of itself. Movies did not die with the invasion of the Internet, or the invention of YouTube. YouTube just evolved some new contexts within which film could be experienced. These kinds of changes will have a profound effect on the music we compose, how and where we perform and experience it, how we analyze it, and how we teach it.

We now live in a world whose narrative theater includes lots of other elements. This is a message-intense world stimulated by the computer screen. Every time we sit mesmerized in front of that very screen, we enter through a fantasy-rich portal into the most visited theatrical stage the world has ever known: the Internet. The Internet will not, I believe, replace live music. But it’s our job to learn how to use it to inspire an urgent need for live music.

This multi-media dimension is really not new at all. Stravinsky himself remarked that some of his most inspiring compositional moments occurred when his music was spun inside the rich cocoon of narrative. What resulted? Not just some great ballet music, but music in general; from Petrushka to The Firebird to The Rite of Spring. Wagner was the consummate multi-media artist, conceiving his own music dramas and writing his own libretti. Steve Reich has teamed up with his partner Beryl Korot to create a fusion of music and video experiences. Eastman grads themselves assemble creative teams of their fellow Eastman alums to design visual backdrops for music.

I would argue that throughout history, some of our finest music has come about because of synergies of visual, spiritual and intellectual stimuli. The massive and imposing music for the religious service is an example. I think we’re in a time when some genius will fuse these things together in new imaginative ways we never thought possible, maybe even an Eastman student. And, of course, music itself will cross-fertilize. Sometimes this happens in our own house. This fall, the Ying Quartet will team up with the Turtle Island Quartet to imagine yet another across-the-musical-border possibility.

I believe that reports of the demise of serious music are exaggerated. But we must create new engagement possibilities for music with those legions of intelligent, curious, informed people that are missing out, or going elsewhere for their aesthetic inspiration. We must figure out a way to captivate them in a way that is steeped in the fundamental essence of great music, yet urgently means something for future generations. To be blunt, it’s this urgency that I think has been lost. Something tells me that the “serious music” profession has been a little asleep at the wheel. Put another way, we have not been courageous and passionate public advocates for our art form.

Eastman will also be vigorously pursuing ways we can connect, not just within the walls of Eastman, but with our community here and elsewhere, such as our many colleagues at the University of Rochester. We already have a number of collaborative initiatives with the River Campus that have stimulated the minds and spirits of many of our faculty and students. There is a wealth of inspiration that you, our students, can gain from meaningful interactions with that community. I know for a fact that those students are dying to connect with you. And you will be the beneficiary – many already are – of vital intellectual and social contact. Last time I checked, the biology major, the philosophy major, the English major, the music major, are all human beings with brains and intellects and pent-up feelings and unexpressed emotional complexes, all trying to gain some sense of this poem we call life.

The direct message: Eastman is our medium. And we want Eastman the medium to be a place where what we do – composing music, probing music, inquiring of its history, teaching it, making music – matters. This is, indeed, the Eastman advantage.

Which is precisely why today, Eastman turns up the heat.

Thank you.