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Well, in thinking about that that summer

2
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my dad said well let’s look

3
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at maybe some other things.

4
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And one of those other things was

5
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let’s take a look at this Sudbury Valley School.

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And so that summer

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I’m not sure if it was June or July

8
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but some time in that summer of 1968 came

9
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and came upstairs for our meeting

10
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with Joan and my parents.

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And that was really quite a day in my life

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because Joan kind of acted as a therapist

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and also as a parent but she wasn’t my parent,

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but she was a parent to me,

15
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and she said well,

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what do you want to do with your life?

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Do you want to go to this technical high school?

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That could mean giving up your music

19
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because you’re going to be channeled into an MIT or

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– and maybe I would have been good enough

21
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or had the energy to do

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a couple of different things in my life

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such as a science background and music.

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But I didn’t think that I had it in me to do that

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so I said you know I’m not ready

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to give up the past few years

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of a burgeoning interest in music

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and instrumentalism for that.

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So she said you’re going be allowed to do...

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to pursue your dreams here at Sudbury Valley.

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And she said it may be a little bit scary at first

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because we don’t have quite the same structure

33
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as a Boston Technical High School.

34
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You’re going to have to create your own structure here.

35
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And I think my next four years,

36
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because that summer we decided

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that I should go here,

38
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I should give it a shot – just give it a shot.

39
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Well, I wound up spending four years at Sudbury,

40
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graduating in ‘72.

41
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So I guess you could say that I was

42
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in the first four-year class

43
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of a high school graduating class

44
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– I guess I was in that class.

45
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So I presented my thesis

46
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in front of the School Meeting

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that I believe it was April or May

48
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and it was successfully . . .

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I guess I successfully defended my thesis

50
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that I would be responsible in the community

51
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for my life and for my career

52
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and I hopefully showed that

53
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and I set forth on basically the rest of my life.

54
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That spring I auditioned

55
00:02:48,068 --> 00:02:50,937
for the New England Conservatory of Music

56
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and got accepted as a Freshman French horn player.

57
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Throughout my years at Sudbury

58
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I was diligently practising the French Horn

59
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and also on Saturday mornings

60
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going to the New England Conservatory Prep Division

61
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taking lessons not only in French horn

62
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but also in additional music theory

63
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and I had ensembles – wind ensembles,

64
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and I don’t think I had orchestra back then

65
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– but it was some wind ensemble experience

66
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in the community.

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We didn’t have a band or orchestra

68
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here at Sudbury Valley

69
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but we did have a staff member or two

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who were musicians and developed

71
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and fostered my education here as a musician

72
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and I played small ensembles with them

73
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and they also

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– to mention one in particular

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that was Jan McDaniel –

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really helped me a lot in my early days

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of deciding to become a musician

78
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and helping me to find my own way to do that.

79
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So I spent a lot of time here pursuing that dream

80
00:04:04,411 --> 00:04:07,714
and I’ve been lucky enough

81
00:04:07,714 --> 00:04:09,916
to be in the music profession

82
00:04:09,916 --> 00:04:12,604
as a performing musician

83
00:04:12,604 --> 00:04:14,506
now for some twenty-seven years,

84
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making my living at that

85
00:04:17,628 --> 00:04:20,833
and it’s not an easy profession to be in

86
00:04:20,833 --> 00:04:23,389
and many of my teachers have said

87
00:04:23,389 --> 00:04:26,333
you know Mark it’s really a business

88
00:04:26,333 --> 00:04:30,237
because these organizations have to make ends meet.

89
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And nowadays, there are many creative ways

90
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that ensembles have to do that

91
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but so many of them have tremendous deficits

92
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if they don’t have endowments and

93
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but that’s a whole other story so . . .

94
00:04:44,684 --> 00:04:48,188
Anyway, to get back – I graduated from SVS

95
00:04:48,188 --> 00:04:51,625
and went on to the New England Conservatory.

96
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After my Freshman year there

97
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I did some soul searching,

98
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I had some physical problems with braces

99
00:05:00,500 --> 00:05:04,739
and I took a year off trying to figure out

100
00:05:04,739 --> 00:05:06,907
what my next move would be.

101
00:05:06,907 --> 00:05:09,209
Would I come back to New England Conservatory

102
00:05:09,209 --> 00:05:12,249
having gotten braces and having some problems

103
00:05:12,249 --> 00:05:14,672
actually playing the French horn.

104
00:05:14,672 --> 00:05:17,217
In an attempt to make myself play better,

105
00:05:17,217 --> 00:05:20,253
I got braces and it was a kind of mixed result.

106
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And I had high standards for what I wanted to do

107
00:05:23,092 --> 00:05:25,225
so I took the year off.

108
00:05:25,225 --> 00:05:28,094
Eventually, I wound up having roots in Minnesota

109
00:05:28,094 --> 00:05:30,697
at the University of Minnesota and that’s a...

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00:05:30,697 --> 00:05:32,766
getting there is a whole other story in itself

111
00:05:32,766 --> 00:05:36,002
because I didn’t have traditional transcripts.

112
00:05:36,002 --> 00:05:38,222
And so they wanted to know what the heck

113
00:05:38,222 --> 00:05:40,540
I was doing with my four years of high school.

114
00:05:40,540 --> 00:05:44,411
Well, I had taken the SAT test my senior year here

115
00:05:44,411 --> 00:05:46,067
– or my fourth year here –

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and they were respectable

117
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as I told Danny earlier tonight.

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But they made me write a thesis – what have you done?

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They wanted something like 15 or 20 pages and

120
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so I think me just presenting

121
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my thesis of responsibility

122
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at Sudbury Valley to graduate

123
00:06:04,731 --> 00:06:07,334
helped me when I got out into the world

124
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and they were saying

125
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we don’t know what you’ve done here,

126
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except for your credits

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from the New England Conservatory

128
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which did transfer over to Minnesota.

129
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They said we don’t know what to call you

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if you’re not going to be majoring in the French horn.

131
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You’ve got some music credits here

132
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and history and theory of music

133
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but we need to figure out

134
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how to get you into this institution

135
00:06:33,293 --> 00:06:35,529
if we are ever even going to accept you.

136
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So I wrote a fifteen page essay

137
00:06:37,631 --> 00:06:39,833
and luckily got accepted

138
00:06:39,833 --> 00:06:42,903
and four years and a summer later

139
00:06:42,903 --> 00:06:46,256
I wound up with a degree in music

140
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– a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree –

141
00:06:48,541 --> 00:06:50,792
with a speciality in oboe.

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Now in my twentieth year of life I switched to the oboe

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and it was a very natural fit for me.

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Perhaps for those of you that want a little more detail

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00:06:59,179 --> 00:07:02,166
can talk to me afterwards of how that exactly happened

146
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but four years at Minnesota,

147
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wound up with a degree.

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I then applied to Northwestern University in Chicago

149
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and I got in

150
00:07:10,435 --> 00:07:14,167
as one of the two graduate students majoring in oboe.

151
00:07:14,167 --> 00:07:16,770
And I got to study with the principal oboist

152
00:07:16,770 --> 00:07:19,043
at the Chicago Symphony.

153
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I was his graduate teaching assistant

154
00:07:21,942 --> 00:07:25,320
and had a great couple of years there

155
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– really, really wonderful years.

156
00:07:28,014 --> 00:07:30,450
I got to play extra in the Chicago Symphony with him.

157
00:07:30,450 --> 00:07:34,888
And it was hard, it was very hard

158
00:07:34,888 --> 00:07:38,892
because I had taken up the oboe rather late in life

159
00:07:38,892 --> 00:07:43,762
although I had a real background in music

160
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from a young kid and it was in my heart,

161
00:07:47,942 --> 00:07:51,857
it was in my blood, that I needed to be a musician.

162
00:07:51,857 --> 00:07:54,196
And the year that I took off

163
00:07:54,196 --> 00:07:57,233
between New England and getting into Minnesota,

164
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I did some soul searching and thinking

165
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I’m going to go off in a different path

166
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but I just couldn’t do it.

167
00:08:03,871 --> 00:08:06,445
I had to stay with my music and take that chance

168
00:08:06,445 --> 00:08:08,473
so I went to Northwestern,

169
00:08:08,473 --> 00:08:11,024
spent an extra year in Chicago after I graduated

170
00:08:11,024 --> 00:08:13,226
– freelancing and learning a little bit more

171
00:08:13,226 --> 00:08:15,562
about the trade of being a professional musician.

172
00:08:15,562 --> 00:08:19,199
As a freelancer and hitting the audition circuit

173
00:08:19,199 --> 00:08:22,178
and being a professional musician is

174
00:08:22,178 --> 00:08:26,639
as Nikole and I have talked about

175
00:08:26,639 --> 00:08:30,744
is really putting your life on the line

176
00:08:30,744 --> 00:08:33,780
for what you love to do.

177
00:08:33,780 --> 00:08:38,651
And I took a chance that I would do this

178
00:08:38,651 --> 00:08:41,354
because I had to do this.

179
00:08:41,354 --> 00:08:43,323
I felt that I had to be a musician because

180
00:08:43,323 --> 00:08:47,761
it was really everything I had done in my life.

181
00:08:47,761 --> 00:08:50,463
I didn’t want to do anything else.

182
00:08:50,463 --> 00:08:54,523
As quite a few of my music teachers have told me,

183
00:08:54,523 --> 00:09:00,507
don’t do music unless you have to.

184
00:09:00,507 --> 00:09:04,177
And that is kind of a two-sided coin meaning yeah,

185
00:09:04,177 --> 00:09:06,212
it’s a tough business

186
00:09:06,212 --> 00:09:08,415
– it’s like being an actor in Hollywood

187
00:09:08,415 --> 00:09:11,384
where you go to LA and you wait tables

188
00:09:11,384 --> 00:09:13,686
and you hope for a lucky break.

189
00:09:13,686 --> 00:09:16,443
And if you’re good, that helps a lot.

190
00:09:16,443 --> 00:09:19,225
But there’s no guarantees.

191
00:09:19,225 --> 00:09:22,295
But then again there’s no guarantees in life either.

192
00:09:22,295 --> 00:09:27,635
There’s some perhaps more...

193
00:09:27,635 --> 00:09:32,020
how can I put it...

194
00:09:32,020 --> 00:09:34,862
more ways that are easier

195
00:09:34,862 --> 00:09:38,278
– that if you follow a prescribed course,

196
00:09:38,278 --> 00:09:40,947
more than likely you’ll

197
00:09:40,947 --> 00:09:43,383
get to a place that you’ve tried to get to

198
00:09:43,383 --> 00:09:47,639
but after I graduated from Northwestern

199
00:09:47,639 --> 00:09:50,356
and spent that year in Chicago,

200
00:09:50,356 --> 00:09:54,327
I got my first professional job in a symphony orchestra

201
00:09:54,327 --> 00:09:56,763
and I knew that I would probably

202
00:09:56,763 --> 99:59:59,999
have to travel...