I take a broad, extensive, and expansive view of music. I'm much less concerned with defining what music is or isn't than I am making space for what it might be. Though I rethink them regularly, some of my more foundational artistic values are these; while the exercise of stating them plainly may strike you as naive, idealistic, or simple-minded, I feel that this is a better strategy than leaving them unexamined.
Black Lives Matter. An equivalent statement about my artform, something like “Black Music Matters” is woefully inadequate to account for the remarkably broad contributions of Afro-diasporic artists to various musical tradition, and the equally inexcusable attempted erasure of those contributions. (If you have any questions about the latter a good place to start is George E. Lewis’s Improvised Music after 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives.)
All art, whether it tries to be or not, is about life, the interpretation of the world and the self, history, human and natural systems, and what is unknown or unknowable about all of these things. It is, in short, partially a cultural artifact that connects us to our past and our present, and imagines possibilities for the future.
All art is political; but it is not politics as such. This formulation is frustrating, and creates a difficult place in which to work. It is limiting and arrogant and to ascribe to any artwork a precise political agenda, even if it attempts to present one; simultaneously, it is detrimental, violent, and dangerous to pretend that any art exists outside of politics, in a realm of the absolute, or that it is above or removed from culture.
As a performer, my goal is to help audiences, other performers, and composers interact with art in ways that change how they think, feel, and do. This change might exist on a wide continuum of possibilities. As George E. Lewis has written: “So when we want change, in the memorable phrase of the rap group Public Enemy, we ‘bring the noise’—in Egypt, Tunisia, Montreal, or elsewhere. The improvised, spontaneous, seemingly leaderless nature of these and other protests reminds us of the primary remit of new music and new noises: to declare that change is possible.”
Following Jacque Attali, it seems to me that music—especially—both resists and predicts appropriation by other cultural phenomena. It contains contradictory strains of simultaneous autonomy and subservience, and this is one of many reasons that its tensions elude resolution for us.
A performance of music is not merely a thing that happens on a stage for an audience: it is just as much the process of composition; the process of preparation and rehearsing; the in situ hearing; how all of this lives in the minds of audiences, musicians, and composers afterwards; and how culture construes this over long periods.
bell hooks’ analysis of culture via of the intersectional lens of what she calls the “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (which we might expand by as the “white supremacist neoliberal capitalist hetero-patriarchy”) is the richest way of understanding contemporary US culture that I know.
Practically speaking, it seems to me that we live in a deeply contradictory culture, musical and otherwise. The COVID-19 pandemic, the subsequent economic devastation, and the movement for racial justice that became mainstream following the murder of George Floyd have all only made those contradictions clearer and more inescapable.
I am humbled by the talent, commitment, and skill of artists working today in all media and genres. I am regularly amazed by the variety and diversity of the music being played and composed. I am inspired by the enthusiasm of people who love it and love to experience it. More music (and more different kinds of music) is being written and played in 2021 than at any other point in human history, and musicians have adapted to the radically changed circumstances of calendar year 2020 in remarkable ways.
However, our culture is in crisis on multiple fronts, and had been long before COVID. Arts organizations are so anxious about their relevance and fearful regarding their economic viability that it obscures their judgment—both aesthetic and ethical—and clouds their analysis of problems. I see audiences who are bored, confused, disengaged, or inattentive. I meet musicians who question the relevance of what they do in an increasingly hopeless world, or who view themselves as merely doing a job that has no relation either to their inner lives or to the society in which they live.
While we are capable of doing important work and being inspired artists, we are also dragged down by aspects of the thorny cultural landscape in which we live. For every uniquely courageous performer or composer, there is a correspondingly severe sense in which the various injustices—the racial, economic, political, and practical realities of our society—circumscribe our artistic (and other) choices.
The classical music field is at the beginning of a reckoning that is long overdue. It is heartening that we are starting important conversations regarding diversity, inclusion, and equity; but these conversations are at their very beginning. We must perform detailed excavations of the historical injustices of our field, and we must pursue uncompromising, possibly radical, solutions. I cannot help but think that we can all expect more of ourselves, more of our culture, and more our politics. For me, this expectation starts with myself.
My goal is to be a good citizen, artistically and otherwise. I will develop my thoughts about the future of the performance of music—new and old—in the United States and the world through my work as a conductor, interpreter, writer, thinker, and educator. Some of this you will see on this website. For other things, please consider attending my concerts or those of my colleagues when it is safe to do so.
I live in Chicago, the traditional homelands of the Council of the Three Fires: The Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi Nations. Many other Tribes like the Miami, Ho-Chunk, Sac and Fox also called this area home. Located at the intersection of several great waterways, the land naturally became a site of travel and healing for many Tribes. American Indians continue to call this area home and now Chicago is home to the third largest Urban American Indian community that still practices their heritage, traditions, and care for the land and waterways. Today, Chicago continues to be a place that calls many people from diverse backgrounds to live and gather here. This land acknowledgement, based on language from the American Indian Center of Chicago, is by no means remotely adequate to do justice to the centuries of violence, displacement, genocide, and disrespect to which Indigenous communities have been subjected. It is, however, to acknowledge that I live on this land, and to express my commitment to deepening my knowledge, understanding, and support of Indigenous people.