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The Lives of Alumni (2 of 14), Mark Christianson, Part 2

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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...
Title:
The Lives of Alumni (2 of 14), Mark Christianson, Part 2
Description:

The life of Mark Christianson, '68-'72, professional musician with the President's Own Marine Band. Five alumni speak at the Sudbury Valley School, for the 40th anniversary.
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Video Language:
English
Duration:
09:59

English subtitles

Revisions

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