Mark Likes Music

On his own blog, my colleague Nate Zeisler describes two models for musical careers . In the first model, musicians are mechanics, creating within "a very narrow, accepted window of performance practice which has been dictated by your teacher, conductor and the music written on a page." In the second model, musicians act more like designers, and come up with "new ways of thinking about the art form" by drawing on new genres of music and artistic disciplines. For Nate, the path toward a successful career is to fuse the two: In the field of classical music, there is very little room for people who can’t infuse qualities from both sides of the aisle into their career. Great designers in music will have little to say and won’t have credibility in the field if they aren’t great mechanics. Great mechanics, for the most part, won’t have a sustainable career if they’re not thinking as designers. I agree that the most successful musicians will be able to be both mechanic...

Last week, the Houston Symphony announced that it has hired four new string players as it first group of "community embedded musicians" who will perform, teach, and otherwise use their talents throughout the city. Violinist Jenna Barghouti, bassist David D. Connor, violist Anthony Parce, and cellist and Hellen Weberpal will perform 25 concerts a year with the orchestra, but will spend most of their time outside the concert hall. The orchestra has a plan, for example, to create a music therapy program for these musicians (a "music and wellness program aimed at increasing the quality of health care through music," as the press release says). The Community Embedded Musician program  starts this season, and only time will tell how far it will go beyond the traditional outreach model, but making a real investment in talented musicians who can apply their talents in new ways shows that the Houston Symphony gets it. They get that orchestras they have to go out and...