ADVENTURES WITH BARBARA

It has come to my attention that my colleague, Barbara Hesser, at New York University before I retired, is retiring. This a monumental moment in the history of an institution and of our shared time. When Barbara Hesser came to NYU to run a music therapy program formed by Dr. Jerrold Ross, who serving as chair, brought brought me to NYU to implement innovative programs that would change the face of music at NYU.

I remember meeting Barbara at the September Steinhardt Faculty Meeting in 1970 held in what is now the Frederick Loewe Theatre. The name Steinhardt was not present, we were still a school of diverse practices gathered under the banner of School of Education, which quickly became the School of Education, Nursing, and Arts Professions, or SEHNAP.  Finally, a trustee of NYU and hedgefund billionaire, Michael Steinhardt, chose to help navigate the school through the many challenges facing the institution, and the School formally took on his name.  The saga of the School of Ed identity continues. Originally the School of Pedagogy in 1890, it became the School of Education in the early 1900s, and in the 1960s erupted into a multifaceted, diverse areas of expertise.

It was sad to see Arts Professions dropped from the name and identity of the School of Education, a betrayal of an agreement forged when the NYU College of Music merged with Music Education to become the conservatory of NYU.  Dean Mary Brabeck was the Dean who obscured the Arts Professions identity in the school by substituting Human Development for Arts Professions, relegating the functions of the NYU Art school, the Music Conservatory, and Theatre Production to the outskirts of Human Development.

This was the stormy context of Barbara Hesser's coming to the School to head a music therapy program geared to the creative music making and improvisation as advocated by the Nordoff-Robbins approach. Barbara had studied with Clive Robbins, and invited him to teach workshops in the summers. At that particular time, Dr, Ross had moved into the office of Dean of Education, and I became formally the Chair of what was becoming the most diverse music department in the country, consisting of music technology, music business, music education, music performance, and arts administration, and now, music therapy.

In England, Nordoff-Robbins music therapy was supported my the music industry, with major funding from the highly-profitable music industry of England. Readers of that program flew to the United States and confronted Ahmet Etergun, the highly successful music producer and songwriter, that the American Music Producers needed to bring Clive Robbins, who was teaching in Australia, to the United States. Ahmet Etegun agreed to enlist the aid of the US music industry in bringing Dr. Robbins to America.

Barbara came to me and told me of this initiative and that Ahmet Ertegun had been persuaded by the music industry in England to set up Dr. Robbins in New York City with a place to conduct his music therapy, from buying a building where he could live and also conduct his therapy, to funds for staffing and living.

I was livid. I said starting from scratch was such an impractical vision. I reminded her that she had been his advocate in this country, She had given him a university platform for teaching in the summer. Barbara and I agreed that "If Clive Robbins belongs anywhere in this country, it is NYU."

The evening we were to meet Ahmet Ertegun had the aura of a fairy-tale. Ahmet Ertegun was a legend in the world of popular music and recording stars. His office was at Rockefeller Center on a Wednesday evening in early Spring. Barbara and I took a taxi around 5:00 p.m. from NYU to 30 Rockefeller Plaza. As we were riding uptown, I reflected on my first time at Rockefeller Center when I worked in the newsroom of NBC while a student at Columbia University. I worked in the newsroom for more than a year and had to deliver an invitation to Russia's Premiere, Nikita Krushchev, who was visiting New York City to address the United Nations.

When we arrived at Ahmet's office in Rockefeller Center, we were told he was in conference and we should go down to the bar and they would let us know when he was available. It was nearer to n=9 p.m. when we finally sat down in Ahmet's office. It was a little awkward. Barbara broke the ice by saying how much we appreciated his interest in Clive Robbins and bringing him to NYU.

Mr. Ertegun was interested in the bottom line, and I replied that sometimes such arrangements are made through endowments that are in the range of a million dollars or more. Ahmet , however, had a plan based on the model that the music industry in England developed. So the Silver Clef Award fund raiser was developed for Clive Robbins, and we agreed that NYU would provide the appropriate space for a clinic, even though space in those days was not easily available.

SILVER CLEF AWARDS

The design was simple. A performer or composer was awarded the Silver Clef Award to individuals related to the music industry for their activities in helping others. The idea was to identify a same and throw a fundraising event at the Rose Garden. Seats at tables were $5000 to $10,000, so the event was designed to fund the clinic for the year. There was usually also an auction at the event of music memorabilia.  Outstanding Music Stars were awarded the Silver Clef Awards including such notables as Neil Young, The Who, Jon Bon Jovi, and David Foster. Perhaps the most famous visitor to the clinic was Princess Dianna.

The original space for the clinic was in the Press Annex, and in those days of severe demands for space, this proved to be workable space to provide the clinic with facilities for treatment and research.

 WORLD SYMPOSIUM

The World Symposium was an initiative Now Lorin Hollander's musicality and spirituality are inextricably linked, and his music connects with the world. Hollander's interests and commitments take him continually to new regions of experience which he shares at many levels through many venues.

At this particular symposium, the full group split into working groups to explore the state of music therapy and to make recommendations that would affect the profession and the public. The culmination of the Symposium was to be a press conference and Lorin Hollander agreed to a brief performance as part of the activities of the day. It was a day of excitement and high energy, with the promise of excellent and challenging outcomes from the interdisciplinary deliberations that had taken place over the week.

After the announcements and discussion, Lorin Hollander took his place at the piano and explained that he wanted to play the first movement of the Schubert Posthumous Sonata in B-Flat. As he took command of the piano and adjusted his seat, he tested the pedal. There was a squeak that came from the pedal, a slow, almost rhythmical sound as he pressed the sustain pedal. He tried the pedal a few times and the sound persisted. Instead of being annoyed, he looked at the audience and remarked "Oh, well...we'll just pretend we are on a cruise..."

After a silence, he began playing the first movement. He was fully engrossed in the music and I was struck by the sense of quiet celebration punctuated by mysterious, ominous interruptions in the lower register from time to time. His performance emerged as a journey, a personal reflection that took us with him through an extraordinary perception and realization of the work. He had somehow managed to transcend the piano's limitations and find the voice and spirit of Schubert as an ally. Schubert's genius flowed through the room, an inexhaustible imagination of musical ideas imbued with feeling and emotion.

As the first movement came to an end, Hollander paused and then began the second movement, even though he had intended to limit his performance to the single movement. Even now I can hear that silent pause and the opening figures of the second movement. As fine and inspired as the first movement was, Hollander's performance entered a new realm, a spiritual sensibility pervaded the room, an ineffable eloquence unlike anything I have ever experienced, sad and joyful, full of regret and hope, resigned and invincible. The journey had become a spiritual quest, a presencing of the human spirit that encompassed the room and united everyone in the moment. The first movement's ominous interruptions in the bass had been transformed into an underlying and reassuring presence. When the closing passages echoed and encapsulated the beauty and expressive power of the entire work, a fading musical farewell reverberated into silence so slowly that the sound seemed to linger and echo in the room even though it was absolutely silent.

No one moved. There was no applause. Everyone, including Lorin Hollander, was captured in that moment, that magical moment in time, when silent awe was the only appropriate response to an experience that transcended time and left us suspended in the ecstasy of a fulfilled inspiration. That was long ago, but that performance still resonates in the silence of my memory as vividly now as it did at that symposium in that remote and distant past.

 

PHONECIA

 During my tenure as Chair, Barbara Hesser, our new Music Therapy Program Director initiated retreats in the Catskill Mountains on Panther Mountain near Phonecia, New York. My first experience with the retreat in 2008 was so memorable that I composed an interactive ensemble piece based on the happening of that week together with so many creative artists.

I travelled to the retreat with colleague and philosopher, David Burrows, whose book Time and the Warm Body, remains one of the most original treatments of Time that I have encountered. I remember him saying, "John, these people know something about making music that most of us do not know or understand."

The Panther mountain facility was beautifully designed and we lived in dorm style rooms. We could make our own meals or purchase simply-prepared snacks or meals. We had to clean up after ourselves, and there were many rooms where we could separate in various configurations as needed and congregate together as a group. There was no set agenda, except to share and to have conversations and mini-sessions that were like informal workshops.

Deep in the forest was a Sanctuary shaped somewhat like a teepee. A large circular building narrowed like a funnel as you looked upward, culminating in an opening at the top where you could see the sky, or stars at night.

On the first night we gathered in the sanctuary. Those of us that had instruments brought them and put them in the center. We gathered into a large circle so that everyone could see each other and the instruments in front of us.

In the sanctuary, in the middle of the forest, underneath a starry sky, we sat in deep silence. After a while, Time became irrelevant. We no longer sat in silence... we communed in silence and communed with silence. I became deeply aware of our breathing. It was almost as though we were all drawing the same breath. After more than an hour I could hear a low voice intoning a sound as though breath had discovered tone. Gradually everyone joined.  Toning began to follow contours, and then melody emerged, almost as though this communion had summoned the power of music. For the next two hours there wonderful textures, melodies, emotions created as an ensemble, but punctuated with solos, duos, trios, and other configurations expressing full joy and utter despair, pain and gladness, anguish, and delight. The improvisation created its own form and after about two hours, it returned to silence. We sat again in the circle, silent, but somehow wholly fulfilled. After a few moments we began to talk and share our experience.

The retreat was all about making music together spontaneously and then sharing our work from the past year.  Everyone was exhausted from the demands of rigorous programs in the different parts of the world, so as we shared and interacted, we found that the process we were undergoing Became a profound healing experience.