WEBVTT

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Well, in thinking about that that summer

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my dad said well let’s look

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at maybe some other things.

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And one of those other things was

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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

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but some time in that summer of 1968 came

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and came upstairs for our meeting

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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,

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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

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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

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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

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as a Boston Technical High School.

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

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And I think my next four years,

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because that summer we decided

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that I should go here,

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

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Well, I wound up spending four years at Sudbury,

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graduating in ‘72.

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So I guess you could say that I was

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in the first four-year class

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of a high school graduating class

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– I guess I was in that class.

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So I presented my thesis

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in front of the School Meeting

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that I believe it was April or May

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and it was successfully . . .

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I guess I successfully defended my thesis

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that I would be responsible in the community

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for my life and for my career

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and I hopefully showed that

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

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That spring I auditioned

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for the New England Conservatory of Music

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and got accepted as a Freshman French horn player.

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Throughout my years at Sudbury

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I was diligently practising the French Horn

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and also on Saturday mornings

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going to the New England Conservatory Prep Division

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taking lessons not only in French horn

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but also in additional music theory

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and I had ensembles – wind ensembles,

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and I don’t think I had orchestra back then

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– but it was some wind ensemble experience

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in the community.

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We didn’t have a band or orchestra

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here at Sudbury Valley

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but we did have a staff member or two

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who were musicians and developed

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and fostered my education here as a musician

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and I played small ensembles with them

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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

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

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So I spent a lot of time here pursuing that dream

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and I’ve been lucky enough

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to be in the music profession

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as a performing musician

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now for some twenty-seven years,

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making my living at that

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and it’s not an easy profession to be in

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and many of my teachers have said

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you know Mark it’s really a business

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because these organizations have to make ends meet.

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And nowadays, there are many creative ways

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that ensembles have to do that

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but so many of them have tremendous deficits

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if they don’t have endowments and

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

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Anyway, to get back – I graduated from SVS

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and went on to the New England Conservatory.

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After my Freshman year there

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I did some soul searching,

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I had some physical problems with braces

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and I took a year off trying to figure out

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what my next move would be.

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Would I come back to New England Conservatory

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having gotten braces and having some problems

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actually playing the French horn.

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In an attempt to make myself play better,

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I got braces and it was a kind of mixed result.

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And I had high standards for what I wanted to do

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so I took the year off.

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Eventually, I wound up having roots in Minnesota

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at the University of Minnesota and that’s a...

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getting there is a whole other story in itself

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because I didn’t have traditional transcripts.

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And so they wanted to know what the heck

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I was doing with my four years of high school.

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Well, I had taken the SAT test my senior year here

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– or my fourth year here –

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and they were respectable

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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

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so I think me just presenting

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my thesis of responsibility

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at Sudbury Valley to graduate

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helped me when I got out into the world

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and they were saying

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we don’t know what you’ve done here,

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except for your credits

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from the New England Conservatory

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which did transfer over to Minnesota.

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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.

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You’ve got some music credits here

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and history and theory of music

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but we need to figure out

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how to get you into this institution

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if we are ever even going to accept you.

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So I wrote a fifteen page essay

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and luckily got accepted

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and four years and a summer later

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I wound up with a degree in music

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– a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree –

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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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can talk to me afterwards of how that exactly happened

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but four years at Minnesota,

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wound up with a degree.

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I then applied to Northwestern University in Chicago

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and I got in

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as one of the two graduate students majoring in oboe.

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And I got to study with the principal oboist

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at the Chicago Symphony.

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I was his graduate teaching assistant

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and had a great couple of years there

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– really, really wonderful years.

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I got to play extra in the Chicago Symphony with him.

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And it was hard, it was very hard

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because I had taken up the oboe rather late in life

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although I had a real background in music

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from a young kid and it was in my heart,

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it was in my blood, that I needed to be a musician.

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And the year that I took off

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between New England and getting into Minnesota,

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I did some soul searching and thinking

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I’m going to go off in a different path

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but I just couldn’t do it.

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I had to stay with my music and take that chance

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so I went to Northwestern,

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spent an extra year in Chicago after I graduated

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– freelancing and learning a little bit more

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about the trade of being a professional musician.

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As a freelancer and hitting the audition circuit

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and being a professional musician is

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as Nikole and I have talked about

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is really putting your life on the line

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for what you love to do.

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And I took a chance that I would do this

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because I had to do this.

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I felt that I had to be a musician because

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it was really everything I had done in my life.

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I didn’t want to do anything else.

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As quite a few of my music teachers have told me,

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don’t do music unless you have to.

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And that is kind of a two-sided coin meaning yeah,

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it’s a tough business

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– it’s like being an actor in Hollywood

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where you go to LA and you wait tables

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and you hope for a lucky break.

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And if you’re good, that helps a lot.

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But there’s no guarantees.

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But then again there’s no guarantees in life either.

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There’s some perhaps more...

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how can I put it...

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more ways that are easier

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– that if you follow a prescribed course,

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more than likely you’ll

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get to a place that you’ve tried to get to

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but after I graduated from Northwestern

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and spent that year in Chicago,

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I got my first professional job in a symphony orchestra

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and I knew that I would probably

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have to travel...