Remember (The Fiery Furnaces album)

Transcription

This is wonderful because for me, it’s coming home. So it was almost 50 years ago that I was sitting in a seat not unlike where you are, having arrived with visions of sugarplums dancing in my head, much like you. And so I come today first of all because for me it’s coming home. Because this is the place that grew me up; that enabled me to grow up; this Eastman School of Music. I grew up here. This is the place that let me fall down and make mistakes and scratch my knee and put Vaseline on it. This is the place where the faculty grabbed me by the nape of the neck and made me get up again. This is the place where the conductor of the Philharmonia pointed at me and said, “Let me hear it from letter B, Burgett.” If you haven’t had that happen, you will. But this is the place that grew me up, and while I haven’t been here the entire half century – almost – I’ve been here for most of it. Because I was a student for 10 years and I’ve been a dean and professor and vice president for 31. So coming here is coming home. And when I look first at all of you, the first thing that I must do is pay my respects to you. And I pay my respects to you quite seriously. I always, with students, and especially with my Eastman students, is pay my respects. Because you, all of you, are going to be in positions at some point that are going to be like mine. I wasn’t the sharpest pencil in the box and I wasn’t the greatest violinist. Oh I’ve got to tell you that story. So I arrive in Rochester at the Eastman School this regional treasure from St. Louis, Missouri. Any St. Louisians? You go girl. Where’d you go to high school? Oh two hours out, okay, that’s close enough though. So that makes us family, right? Okay. So this regional treasure arrives from St. Louis, Missouri, and I’ll never forget my arrival. We still have an orientation committee, do we Dr. Bush? E.O.C- Eastman Orientation Committee. So the orientation committee was welcoming us and the first words out of my mouth were, “Well, would you point me to the practice rooms please?” And they did. Because you see, I was coming to the Eastman School and Rochester, NY was a detour for me. I had visions of violinistic sugarplums dancing in my head because Rochester was a detour on the way to New York and the capitals of the world where I would metamorphose from a national into an even international treasure. I was already a regional treasure, just like all of you. So I went up to the practice rooms – I’ve never seen a building like that - and I went into one of them. And it was just us freshmen that were here, just like you. And I went into the practice room, took my fiddle out, tuned it up, put my music on the stand, began to play: The Vitali Chaconne. Anybody know the tune of the Vitali Chaconne? You know the Vitali? Beautiful big piece, right? I mean, it’s a muscular piece isn’t it? It’s really grand. I mean, it makes you sound like a million dollars, doesn’t it? Yeah. So I used that for my audition. So I start playing, not really practicing, the first day there; just this freshman. And I leave the practice room door open just a little bit. I wanted all in the earshot to appreciate this regional treasure that has just arrived. That lasted until the sophomores, juniors, seniors, graduate students, and faculty arrived, at which point I have a moment of epiphany. My whole notion of talent gets radically redefined. I pulled that practice room door shut, pushed that handle down - you all know – put a piece of paper over the window and put a bag over my head so nobody could see who was making all that noise. And then I huddled in the Student Living Center, which was not this building but another someplace else, waiting for the second letter from the admissions office, the one in the thin envelope. The one telling me that a terrible mistake had been made. That the Paul Burgett they really intended to admit could play the violin and the Vitali Chaconne and asking me if I might leave in the cover of darkness to spare us all the embarrassment. And thus did my arrival begin. And thus did I have that moment of epiphany. And in years subsequent, my years as dean here, oh how much fun I had with students as we talked about “The Moment”. The moment when despite our tremendous experiences beforehand – all of which you’ve had, you know, Interlochen and… the countless experiences… Tanglewood, all that stuff. You’ve done all that stuff and I had done it too. But suddenly I had entered Yankee Stadium, a musical Yankee Stadium, where everybody was good and many, if not most, were better than I. And so I huddled, fearfully, in those early days, because I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. Suddenly, my whole notion that, “Hmm, becoming the concert master of Philadelphia, hell’s bells, becoming last stand at Philadelphia might not be in the future for me… Might not.” So I began to think in bigger ways. I had come to a place that was bigger than I. I was certainly this regional treasure in St. Louis, just like all of you were regional treasures from wherever. You, what town? Cape Gerardo. So yeah, south right? And you were a regional treasure in Cape Gerardo, weren’t you? Yes you were. You were hot stuff, weren’t you? And when you got admitted into the Eastman School of Music it was lots of celebration, right? Yeah, I know, I know. And the expectation as a whole community is sending you off is because you are indeed the regional treasure that you had become through lots of hard work and opportunity. My sister followed me to the University of Rochester- not here, but to the River Campus. She was pre-med. She had visions of medical sugarplums dancing in her head. Now, I’ll never forget when I went over to have dinner with her over at the River Campus. If you have not made it to the River Campus yet, because it’s still fairly early in your time here, eventually you must. And I went to visit her. She’s one of the smartest people I know. My sister is truly brilliant. And she was pre-med, biology. And so I went over and I’m having dinner with her and she’s really glum. And I’m her older brother so I look over to her and I said, “What’s the problem? What’s the matter?” She said, “Well, I’m taking the hardest course that I’ve ever taken in my life.” I’ve never heard her say that. She was so smart. And I thought, “What could that possibly be?” She’s the sort of person who could learn by osmosis. You could just hold the book up to her – I’m exaggerating, of course – but you could hold the book up to her and she would sort of *sound effect* it would get there. So you know there are people like that. So I said, “What in the world could it possibly be?” She said, “This is the hardest course I have ever taken in my life. I have no idea what the professor is talking about.” So I said, “What is it?” “Organic Chemistry.” That was her moment of epiphany. That was her ‘practice room’ moment. That was the moment that she began to understand that the world was a whole lot larger than the regional treasure-dom that each of us, in our own ways, had occupied prior to coming here. But I stayed at Eastman; I stayed here; So why did I stay? And she stayed as the biology major, she stayed there. And eventually she went on to become a physician. She’s been a doctor for years. So I decided to stay at Eastman. Why did I decide to stay? Why did I stay here? Why did I stay here? I stayed for one… two reasons. I stayed for two reasons and so will you. Almost all of you. One, because I’m a musician. I love music. I adore it. Yes, I’m a vice president and yes I’m a dean, but I love music. The lens that I chose to grind for myself through which I would look at the world, the way that I would understand myself and the way that I would understand my world was through the lens of music. I loved it. I was passionate about it. I loved talking about it. I love being with people who… I got to this place and I found that I didn’t have to explain myself to anybody. I didn’t. It was just simply understood. Music was the totem that to which all of us were drawn. So, I loved being with fellow musicians, I loved talking about music, I loved playing, I hated practicing. [laughter] You know, you know. But I couldn’t think of anything that I would rather do that to be in this environment. Number one, because I was passionate about it and two, I was good at it. I knew that I wasn’t going to be the best in the world. I knew that fairly quickly from that practice room experience that I had just described for you. I knew that wasn’t going to happen but I also knew that it was going to happen for some of my friends and colleagues who were surrounding me. But I got here, I gotten into this wonderful place. And so passion and ability are fundamental principles about the decision to be where you are. I, on the River Campus, as a faculty member, I advise freshmen and sophomores. And what they hear from me, and these are not music majors, these are... they’re not majors of anything yet. But what they hear from me again and again is “Passion and ability drive ambition”. “Passion and ability drive ambition”. “Passion and ability drive ambition”. I still give pizza parties in the dorms on the River Campus and I always choose one of the freshmen and I lay out that liturgy and then I get the entire floor because we’re eating pizzas and drinking coke. “Passion and ability drive ambition”. “Passion and ability drive ambition”. Say! “Passion and ability drive ambition”. “Passion and ability drive ambition”. And, “Passion and ability drive ambition”. And, “Passion and ability drive ambition”. And, “Passion and ability drive ambition”. Whoo! I love to do that with Eastman students [laughter]. Love it, love it, love it. And we could probably do some polyphonic, probably do some counter-point with it, but I’ll demur, we won’t do that. “Passion and ability drive ambition”. So I stayed. I stayed not being terribly sure what was going to happen. So then what happened? So I decided I was going to stay! They asked me to come, I came, made these early discoveries, and I decided that I was going to stay. So what do I knew about this experience? This quantum leap; This quantum, intellectual, and musical leap that I had made that you are in the process of making. So what happens in these four years that will go by quickly? Did high school go by quickly? Yeah. Not like grade school, right? Elementary school and middle school, it feels like it’s never going to end. Right? I give talks to 3rd and 4th and 5th graders and I always like to say to them, and they’re these little people, right? And so I like to say to them, “Does it feel like you’ve been at school forever?” and they go, “Yeah!” and so I say, “Do you ever feel like the 4th grade is never going to end?” and they say, “Yes!” and so then I say, “Don’t worry, it will.” And then you get to high school and boom, it goes by very quickly. This only gets faster. I mean, Einstein really was right about time. And it just goes and goes and goes. So what is it all about? What do I know? What can I tell you? I’ve told you that “Passion and ability drive ambition”, and by the way, when I say “Passion and ability drive ambition”, I really do think that your major doesn’t matter. Your major really doesn’t matter. “Passion and ability drive ambition”. “Passion and ability drive ambition”. Your major doesn’t matter. I mean, to be a great pianist, you don’t have to be a piano major. Now, it’s true in most instances that your major doesn’t matter. If you want to be an electrical engineer, you need to be and electrical engineering major, because there’re licensing issues associated with it. But for most of us, including you, the major matters less than the identification of what your passion is and ability which drives ambition. Those I think the most important first-order principles to contemplate and to consider. Well, what I’ve come to understand about this experience, this undergraduate experience, is that I think it is about the confrontation with ideas. Musical, in your case, musical and otherwise. Confrontation with ideas, that’s a big notion because the confrontation with ideas is a revolutionary idea. It’s a transformative idea. The confrontation with ideas is something that goes on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The confrontation with ideas is as interesting as looking at several editions of “Bach: Sonatas Partitas” and trying to understand and why and how one edition differs from one another and most importantly, why? I’ll never forget one of my lessons, one of my violin lessons, I was doing the Bach first sonata, the G minor, and my teacher, Miller Taylor, the late Miller Taylor, who was the chair of the string department he looked at me, and I had done something, and I don’t remember all the details, but he looked at me and said, “Why did you do that?” And I said, “I don’t know. I don’t know why I did it.” And he said, “You know, I think maybe you need to think about why you did that. You need to think more deeply about why you’re doing what you’re doing musically.” So it never occurred to me. I had simply played. But now you’re asking me to think also. Hm, okay. And it’s only as I took his message to heart that I began to understand that practicing… most of us practice dumb. We do. You know we practice dumb. I mean, to practice smart is really hard work. And once I started practicing smart, that was painful. Practicing smart meant getting done in an hour what I had spent three hours doing. That’s what practicing smart is, in part, about and understanding it. It’s an intellectual process, it’s a transformative, it’s a revolutionary process. So it can be as simple as being something like I just described or as difficult. It can be this confrontation with ideas may have something to do with what’s your political beliefs are, what’s your religious beliefs are, what’s your sexual orientation is. I’ve been a dean of students for 20 years and I had the great privilege of students inviting me into their lives in connection with their confrontation with ideas. Confrontation with ideas that take place at 2 o’clock in the morning and those of you living in the Student Living Center - which I helped designed, by the way when I was dean of students here, so I can take the credit, thank you very much – that those conversations that go on at 2 o’clock in the morning, and you’re already having them. “Gosh this is cool man. There ain’t no grown-ups around to tell me what I have to do, so let’s just keep talking.” So conversations that go on at 2 o’clock in the morning brought all manner of things at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. I had a student say to me once, he was going home for Thanksgiving, and I say, “Oh, you’re looking forward to going home for Thanksgiving?” and he said, “Well, I’m not so sure.” And this wasn’t here; this was the River Campus. And he said, “Well, I’m not so sure.” And I said, “Why?” and he says, “Well, we have conversations around the dinner table with my family.” He said, “I’ve been taking political science courses and you know, my father is really a dyed in the wool, deeply conservative Republican. And I’m not. So I can only imagine what those conversations are going to be like.” So this confrontation with ideas, this transformative experience is what this is about. And it won’t always be fun. It’s going to hurt. You’re going to suffer. There will be pain. What do you think about that? It’s like, “What are you talking about it’s going to be pain. I’ve been having fun up to this point!” I like to use the image of the fiery furnace and thus, as do my remarks today take the title “The Fiery Furnace”. It had a different title when I used to talk to freshmen when I was dean here. The students on the River Campus have given it the name “The Fiery Furnace” for the following reason. This revolutionary experience, this confrontation wuith ideas that takes place, it occurred to me one day as I was thinking about it, the image of the biblical fiery furnace suddenly appeared in my imagination. This huge rectangular thing that was blazing hot, that was white hot. And, tell me your name. “Bailey”. Bailey standing in front of this fiery furnace and the door flies open, and it’s so hot that it’s just pulsing. And the flames lick out of this furnace and singe your eyebrows, your lovely eyebrow hairs, it just burns them right off. And you look over your shoulder and you say to Dr. Bush - who’s your teacher? “Wait, which teacher?” What’s your instrument? “Trumpet. Thompson.” Okay, Thompson. You look at him and you say, “It’s… it’s hot in there.” You know, when your embouchure is just messing up, it just ain’t working. And you say, “It’s hot in there.” And you say to Dr. Bush, “Something’s gone wrong.” And you say to me, you call me up, “Well, I now know the vice president of the University of Rochester, and he’s one of us. He told us he was.” So you say, “Such and such and so and so, the fiery furnace is open and it’s hot!” And we will say to you, Baily, “Great, step right in.” And you will. You will step right in and we’ll close that door behind you. And that fiery furnace will be any of a number of things. It will be a trumpet. Let me see an oboist. Those reeds, those reed – “I don’t have a reed!” Right? “I don’t have a reed, I’m going to shoot myself!” Right? I feel your pain. I really do. “I don’t have a reed.” Or “Oh my God, the muscles in my hand hurt. The muscles in my hand are hurting. What’s going on? What’s going on there?” Well, you have tendonitis. “Oh… I’m tilted off, I’m tilted off balance. How I understand myself has changed because ‘I don’t have a reed’ or ‘God! Gosh darn it, I’ve got a split lip!’” It’s no fun, is it? And all the Blistex in the world doesn’t heal it fast enough, done it? No. So you will be in that fiery furnace, or “You know what, I thought I was going to be the world’s next greatest flutist, but now I’m not so sure that that’s what I’m going to do because I love English literature. I really love English literature a lot. And I find myself drawn to English literature. As a student said to me last year, who actually transferred from the Eastman School to the English department in the College of Arts and Science. We had a fantastic conversation about the tensions, the intellectual and emotional tensions associated with her looking at the larger landscape and opportunities of options and where passion and ability were coinciding, were coming together. So standing in that fiery furnace, Bailey, with that door closed, I can promise you one thing – you will not die; you will not burn up. And eventually, you’ll open the door, and you will step out of the furnace, strong. You will step out of the furnace tempered, like steel, with whatever the challenge might have been. When I was a student in my junior year here, I took a course, part of the Humanities, you know, we all have to have our humanities requirement. Oboists, we have our humanities requirements. So I saw a course that was entitled “Existentialism”. I thought, “Oh man, what a cool word that is. That is really a cool word. I have no idea what it means.” So I thought, I’ll take the course. Now, I needed it, it’s part of my humanities requirement, so I’ll take it. So I took this course in existentialism. Now, born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, same state as Cape Gerardo over here, as a devout Roman Catholic. Catholic educated all the way until I got to Rochester. And I took this course in existential thought. This course completely turned me inside out. It did things to me intellectually; it forced me to contemplate who I was in this world and what my beliefs were. My entire being was challenged in ways that it had never been challenged before. And it was based on one short story in that course. That course, we did a lot of reading for this course, and you know how that goes, all that reading that you have to do, it keeps you out of the practice room. I understand all of that, I do. But there was one short story in that course which presented me with a furnace, the fiery furnace, in a way that I couldn’t, that had never occurred to me. An idea that had simply never occurred to me that changed me for the rest of my life. That’s what you want to have happen. What’s going to happen here with the confrontation with ideas and the fiery furnace is you’re going to be exposed to ideas- musical and otherwise. That’s what needs to happen. I once got a phone call from a journalist in New York who was doing an article on student happiness, so she was going on a kind of silly way like, “Oh so you’re the dean and you’re interested in students and student happiness and etc, etc.” So I said to her, on the phone, I said, “No I’m not. I’m not interested in student happiness.” So long dead silence. And she said, “You’re not?” And I said, “Nope.” She said, “Well, I’m going to be in Rochester in a couple of weeks. Can I come talk to you?” and I said “Sure.” So she came and saw me. She said, “You said you’re not interested in student happiness.” And I said, “Look, are students happy? Of course they are. They’re among the happiest and healthiest and the smart people on the planet.” Consider this if you will. Of adult Americans over the age of 25 who hold a bachelor’s degree, the percentage is what, Bailey? Just give me a number, any number. You don’t know and that’s fine. Just give me a number. What would pop into your head? “80” 80 percent. 80 percent of adult Americans over the age of 25 hold a bachelor’s degree. Well, in fact, the number is 29.4, okay? 24.9 percent. You are the best and brightest, there’s no question about it. And of the 29.4% who hold a bachelor’s degree over the age of 25 who hold a bachelor’s degree, about 7%, slightly more than 7% hold an advanced degree, which all of you will, at some point. 7%, slightly more than 7%. And of that 7%, about 1.5% hold a degree beyond a master’s degree, which many of you will. You are amongst the brightest, the best equipped, the best prepared human beings on the planet. That’s the fact of the matter. In fact, somebody has to succeed me. Bailey, if not you, who? And students always laugh when I say that. You might someday be the Dean of Eastman School of Music. It might happen. If someone had said that to me as a freshman, I might’ve said, “You are crazy!” But that might happen. But one has to go into the furnace for that to happen. And you will go into the furnace. And you will not vaporize or burn up. And I promise you that we will never abandon you. As you become stronger, smarter, and more able; as you pursue your passion and ability which will drive your ambition; our responsibility to you, our successors, is never to abandon you. And you will step out of that furnace, as did I, as did Dean Lowry, as did President Seligman, stronger, smarter, and more ready to take on the responsibilities of whatever your passion and ability drive you to do. So what do you have to do to get out of this joint? Well you have to practice smart, right? You have to practice smart. I’ll never forget the freshman that came into my office – she was a flutist – she came into my office and she was really ticked off at having to take the freshman writing course. She said, “I didn’t know I was coming to the Eastman School of English”. I’ll never forget that. That’s what she said. “I didn’t know I was coming to the Eastman School of English.” And she said, “I’m not getting my 6 hours-a-day in.” So I said, “What are you up there doing in the practice room?” I said, “Don’t even answer that. I know what you’re up there doing.” And I told her what she was up there doing. And I said, “You have to figure out how to get those notes into your fingers in ways that enable you to do it efficiently and quickly. Because when you get into the world, the world’s not going to allow for that kind of… the luxury of that kind of time that we have here.” So the confrontation with ideas, in all manner, in all formats, is really what this is all about. And to get out of this joint, there are 3 things you have to do – I like to think in 3’s; trios. There are 3 things that you have to do. One, you have to learn how to access and apprehend data, and in some cases create the data which is what we call research. That is as true of musicians as it is of anybody else. I once had a freshman advisee who came into my office. He was very very upset –this was on the River Campus, it was not here at Eastman – he came into my office, he was very upset, he was a freshman, he’d been brilliant in school, in high school, he’d been the captain of his soccer team, he showed me his freshman writing paper and it was just all covered in red and said, “I thought I knew how to write. Look at this, this is a mess.” And he said, “I was captain of my high school soccer team and all my butt’s doing is warming the bench here.” He had in his hands a time magazine, and the time magazine had a review of a new biography of Scott Joplin. Who knows who Scott Joplin was? Oh good, okay. Scott Joplin for those of you, who don’t know, is who we refer to as the father of ragtime piano; a great ragtime composer in the late 19th and early 20th century, died in 1917. But very very important, Scott Joplin. So there was a new biography and this student said to me, “You know, I was reading this review of this biography and it looks really interesting. So I was talking to some students and they said that your area of work…” and what I teach on the River Campus is the history of jazz, imagine that. I teach the history of jazz. I have a class right now with 100 students. If you had said to me, Bailey, while I was here sawing away on the Vitali Chaconne that I would be teaching the history of jazz, I would’ve looked at you like you were crazy. So what drove my getting to that to teaching the history of jazz? Passion and ability drove the ambition. And I also teach a course called “The Music of Black Americans”, which was what I did my dissertation as a Ph.D. student, here at the Eastman School. So I teach those things on the River Campus in the Music Department. So this student said, “People told me that you’re the guy to talk to about Scott Joplin.” I said, “Yeah okay, sure.” And he said, “I want to know more about it.” So I gave him a reading list and I said, “You go read these books.” So he went off and I thought, “I wonder if I’ll ever see him again.” Well, he came back! He came back to my office; he had read them. Eventually – he was a freshman, by the way, he was a freshman student – so eventually he said to me, “You know Dean Burgett, I have an idea. I’m going to apply for the National Endowment of the Humanities Young Scholar’s Fellowship because I want to do research into Scott Joplin.” He was a freshman. I said, “Joel,” Joel Helfrich was his name, “Joel, you’re really not… this’ll be a real stretch.” I didn’t want to encourage him too much because it was a real stretch. These grants usually go to graduate students and seniors. They’re federal grants. And he said, “But I have an idea!” and I said, “What’s the idea?” He said, “I want to do research into Scott Joplin’s opera, ‘Treemonisha’, because I have an idea about the significance, the social significance – he was not a musician – the social significance that is embedded in the libretto of that opera.” And I thought, “Hm. Hadn’t thought about that.” So he composed the application form and he said to me, “Dean Burgett, you have to be my advisor. You have to write a letter of recommendation.” So I wrote a letter of recommendation and I said, “He doesn’t know very much yet, but he’s very interested and he’s got a really great idea.” So Joel put all of his material together and off he went and I remember saying to my secretary, “I wonder if we’ll ever see Joel again.” Two months later, three months later, he came running into my office with a letter from the director of the NEH; he had gotten the grant. He’d gotten the grant. And the grant was to do the student of the libretto of the opera “Treemonisha” under the supervision of Professor Burgett and it was really cool because they gave him, it was a summer grant, and he got $3000, which was really terrific. Boy, talk about an easy job. And you know what? His advisor did too, which made it really good for me. So he did a paper. And he worked and worked and got through the summer and the paper wasn’t done. And I beat on him and beat on him and beat on him and he looked at me said, “Will this never end?” and he continued to work on it. The paper that he produced was so good that the Scott Joplin Society invited him to Sedalia, Missouri and then to St. Louis, because that’s where Scott Joplin hailed from originally, to read his paper. And then next year to participate in the panel on the discussion of Scott Joplin. This was somebody who was a sophomore and a junior. Susan Curtis was the author of that biography whose review of which, appeared in the Time magazine. She wrote me a letter and she said, “Your student, Joel Helfrich, has added to our understanding about Scott Joplin.” That’s what you have to do here. And when I teach my “Music of Black Americans” course and I get to Scott Joplin, I do an analysis of “Treemonisha” that was provided by a freshman student. So accessing and apprehending data, in some cases creating the data, we call that research, that’s the first thing you’ve got to do here. You’ve got to do that. Two, you have to develop skills of analysis. You have to know how to take that thing apart and put it back together again. I know that theory class can be a pain in the butt, but you’ve got to do it. You’ve got to learn, you have to learn the mechanics of the art. You have to understand the mechanics of the art by taking it apart and putting it back together again. I look back, I don’t have any regrets. I don’t think of my life in terms of regret. I do, sometimes, think in terms of how I could have done things better if I had a chance to do it over, which I don’t. Developing skills of analysis are critically important. So that’s the second thing you got to do to get out of this joint. The third thing you have to do is learn to express yourself. You have to learn to express yourself. When you have accessed and apprehended data, and in some cases created it like I just described my Scott Joplin student, and then when you’ve done the technical process of analysis, it can be said that you know something. Knowing something is not trivial. Knowing something is really important. To say that you know something, that is really really important. “I know something”. And once you know something, 24.9% of the educated adult population, you have a responsibility to enunciate it. You have the responsibility to tell the world. You have a responsibility to report what you know. That’s what your faculty does here. Your faculty here reports what it knows. And what it knows comes from accessing and apprehending data, and in some cases creating that data, and then work work work work, intelligent work. And then they express what they know and you get to experience that every week when you go into your lesson or when you go into your theory class or when you go into your humanities courses or one of your music history courses. That’s what you have to do to get out of this joint. Access and apprehend data, and in some cases create it when the opportunity exists. Don’t miss that opportunity. Don’t miss, like my student Joel Helfrich, he got interested in something and it happened to be Scott Joplin. And he decided to pursue it. By the way, he looked at me at one point after all of this happened and he said, “You know, this has been such a rewarding experience. I think I want to continue to do historical scholarship.” And he now has a Ph.D. in American History. You never know where it’s going to lead. You never know where it’s going to lead. So those three things, as you think about what you’re doing here, I encourage you not to think about it mindlessly, but in the context of passion and ability driving ambition. Passion and ability driving ambition and then doing and focusing on those three ideas - accessing and apprehending ideas, and in some cases creating it, developing skills of analysis, which is really woodshedding, and then expressing what you know and expressing it verbally, expressing it musically, and expressing it graphically. That’s what you have to do. Well okay, you’ve done all of this. You’ve gone through all of this. You’ve gone through all of this. You’ve been in the furnace, the fiery furnace, and you’ve come out and you’ve gone back in, and you’ve come back out and you’ve gone back in and you’ve come back out a stronger educated person. So where does that lead? Where does that lead? I’m going to give you two heresies. I’m going to give you two heresies. And I believe these heresies are absolutely true and I think that the world at large struggles with accepting these heresies. But I believe it’s so important that I’m going to give you these heresies anyway and invite you to just tuck them into your back pocket and remind yourself of them. The first heresy I’ve sort of already given you by saying “your major doesn’t really matter”. Your major doesn’t matter. Passion and ability drive ambition. “Passion and ability drive ambition.” Bravo. The second; our hope for you, after all of this magnificent education, and don’t tell your parents this, our hope for you is that you never have a job. Crazy, huh? You know why I don’t want you to tell mom and dad, right? Because parents, understandably when all of this is over, after all of this investment, when you walk across that stage and have Dean Lowry hand you that diploma, your folks want to see J-O-B somewhere. J-O-B somewhere. I’m one of you. I’ve never had a job. Oh I’ve had a job, sure. But in the sense that I intended that you were so important into thinking only in terms of a job is not sufficient; it’s not enough. You owe it to yourself, you owe it to your community, you owe it to the nation, and you owe it to the world to think in terms of a life of work and service. And in that regard, I’m going to offer you three more thoughts. Careers evolve principally by three elements. The first, your capacity to invent; dreaming the thing up. Your capacity to invent is so important. Being imaginative and dreaming is absolutely important. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise and don’t let anybody let considerations of “the practical” mute or dull your ability to dream. Quick story. When I was an undergraduate, we had a terrible terrible war that was going on, the Vietnam War, and we had a military draft. The guys, the guys were all especially terrified that we would get drafted, because if you got drafted, you lost all control of what would happen to you. And Vietnam was not a place we wanted to go. We did not believe in the war. The war was incredibly unpopular, and history has proven that to have been true. So what were guys at Eastman doing? Guys at Eastman were getting into military bands. So the military bands were the best military bands there probably would’ve ever been thanks to the graduates of the Eastman school. Well, you know, I was feeling the hot breathe of the draft board on the back of my neck once I graduate and I’m thinking, “Oh my gosh, what am I going to do? What am I going to do? What am I going to do?” when I discover that there was an army band in Rochester, New York. So I went to the band headquarters. Well, there was a guy in that band who was in my class here who was a friend of mine, Gerry Niewood. A great alto saxophonist who had a beautiful career in New York as a jazz sideman, lots of albums. So Gerry was in the band. I said, Gerry, you’ve got to get me in the band because I’m about to get drafted. He looked at me and he said, “But Paul, you’re a violinist. This is a band.” And I said, “Yeah, but I played flute in high school.” He said, “Oh you did?” “Not very well, but I did.” He said, “I’ll see what I can do.” Now I don’t know what kind of lies he told or what arms he twisted or bribes he paid, but the next thing I knew, I was in this man’s army band; the 98th division army band of Rochester, New York. So I went to basic training in Fort Dix, New Jersey. And I went to Fort Meade, Maryland where I got my flute chops back while playing for the 1st Army Band because it had been a long time since I played flute. And I came back to Rochester to join the band and reported for duty. The commanding officer looked at me and he said, “Burgett, I know you’re really not a flute player.” I’m going, “Oh my God…” He said, “I need a tubaist.” Think of the ying-yang. He said, “I need a tuba player.” I said, “Sir, I don’t play the tuba.” I’ll never forget what he said to me. I’ll never forget what he said to me. He said, “Aren’t you a graduate of the Eastman School of Music?” I said, “Yes sir.” He said, “Well, there’s a tuba.” And then it hit me. This is a marching band. It’s not the world’s greatest band. It’s not one of the bands in D.C. This is a band in little Rochester, New York. It’s a marching band. I need two notes. I need two notes and a brass player to help me with my embouchure. And remember, I was violin and music education and I said, “Music education, don’t fail me now!” So I became a tuba player in the army band. He didn’t tell me he needed a F-16 fighter pilot. He needed a tuba player and he did not need the world’s greatest tuba player. So I played tuba. And I knew that I had developed some chops when one year, my second year, I guess, in the band, he called up, when we were in sort of a concert band format, he called up the First Whole Suite, for those of you who know it, it opens with this whole tuba lick. I said, “Damn, you know, I could’ve done this too.” Your capacity to invent is really really important. Your willingness to work is the second. Your willingness to work is absolutely important. And three, a little luck. Luck is not luck like winning the lottery. Luck is being in the right place at the right time and knowing it. That’s critically important. How did I become a vice president. I was the dean here and I was perfectly happy. I was a dean here at the Eastman school. I had been a product of the institution for 10 years through 3 degrees and one day the director said to me and said, “You know, you could be the dean of students at the Eastman school for the rest of your professional career.” And with those words, I decided to leave. I decided to leave because I knew the piece. If I use Vitali Chaconne as an analogy, I had it down. I really had it down. The president of the University learned I was thinking of leaving, he plucked me from my musical soil and asked me to reorchestrate my tune for a larger ensemble. As vice president and university dean of students in 1987, the job didn’t exist; there was no office; I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do, but I knew that I loved students, I knew that I could continue to teach in the music department there, I could continue to claim my identity as a musician, and I would be able to spend it, spend time with a huge array of students. After thinking about it for 2 days, I said yes. And then I spent the next 13 years figuring it out. I spent the next 13 years learning the notes and it’s been one of the most exciting things that ever happened to me. Your capacity to invent, your willingness to work, with a little luck. One of your number when I was a dean here, Joe Buonanno, and I’m going to end with this, because we’re almost at the end, aren’t we? One of your number, Joe Buonanno, when I was dean, Joe came to see me his sophomore year, he was a horn player, and he was a good horn player, he got a P.C. So Joe came to see me his sophomore year and he said, “You know, I love the horn. Dean Burgett, you always say, ‘Passion and ability drive ambition’. That’s why I’m here because I love the horn so much.” He said, “But I also like business. I like quantitative sorts of stuff. My father’s a business man. I work with him in the summer time. But I don’t know how to satisfy my interest for business.” I said, “Joe, look. You’re at a great university. Why don’t you got to the River Campus and as part of your humanities requirements for your B.M. degree, why don’t you take an economics course, take an accounting course, take a math course.” Joe did that and in his senior year, he came to see me and he said, “You know, I’m about to graduate and I think I’ve got 3 options that I could pursue. One, I could pursue a Masters in an M.M.P.R.L. – Masters in Music and Performance and Literature – which is essentially continuing doing, at a higher level, what I’m already doing. Two, I could audition for horn gigs. Or three, I could get an M.B.A.” He said, “ I think I want to get an M.B.A.” I said, “Okay Joe, where do you think you want to apply?” He said, “Harvard, Cornell, Penn, or the Wharton School at Penn, and University of Chicago.” I gasped. I said, “Those are only 4 of the highest ranked business schools in the country.” He said, “Yeah, but I only need to have one of them accept me. Will you write a letter of recommendation to help get me in?” I said, “Sure.” So I did. Cornell accepted him. So off he goes to Ithaca, New York and he called me up, “Dean Burgett, this is really great. Here I am, this guy, this horn player in a business school.” And what he said was, “I’m getting all the really good horn gigs in Ithaca.” I said, “Terrific Joe.” The next semester he calls me up and he says, “Hey, Dean Burgett, I’m taking this law course, I’m thinking this corporate law course and I really like it and Cornell has this program where, in 4 years if I can get into this law school, in 4 years, I could earn not only my M.B.A., but I could earn my J.D. as well. Will you write me a letter to get me into this law school? I said, “Sure! I’m happy to do that.” I did. After the admissions cycle is over, Joe calls me and he got into the law school. “This is really great!” He said, “I got one foot in the business school. I got one foot in the law school.” And he said, “Guess what the teaching assistanceship is to pay for all of this?” He said, “Giving horn lessons.” He graduated with a degree, a J.D. and an M.B.A. in 1989 and I then lost track of him. Prior to coming to see you today, I thought to myself, what’s become of Joe? Because I knew he graduated and I knew he went off to New York City as a banker. And I thought, “What has happened to Joe?” So, thanks to the internet, I was able to Google him. So I googled Joe. I haven’t talked to him in years. And sure enough, he pops up! He’s a senior partner with a major law firm in New York City and Charlotte, North Carolina and he does things like he focuses on asset securitization, derivatives, banking and finance – I don’t know what any of that stuff is, right? But you go through all of this and all of his honors and you get to the very bottom, his education- J.D. – Cornell University, M.B.A. – Cornell University, B.M. Horn – Eastman School of Music University of Rochester with a performance certificate. So I emailed him; I haven’t talked to him in years. I said, “Wow man, it’s fantastic.” I said, “I’m so proud of you. You really, you’re doing it.” He wrote me back. I said, “I’m going to talk to the freshman at Eastman.” He said, “You know what? Tell them that passion and ability drive ambition.” They can play the trumpet, and then be the president of the University of Rochester. You could be an oboist. You’ll have good reed days and not good reed days and you may be the principle with the St. Paul Orchestra and teach at the University of Minnesota. It’s going to happen for you. I’ve seen it happen again and again and again. I’ve seen it happen with Chuck Daellenbach, who is a classmate of mine, who is a tubaist with the Canadian Brass. Jeff Beal, who I was his Dean of Students, Emmy and Grammy award winning composer and arranger. Jon Sparrow, a bassoonist, I just pull these out of a hat just before coming over, Jon Sparrow, bassoonist with an M.B.A. is vice president and managing director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Mindy Kaufman, was a piccolo with the New York Phil. Maria Schneider, composer, arranger, multi Grammy award winner, for those of you in Jazz, you know who she is. Judy LeClair, principle bassoon in the New York Phil. Colleen Conway, professor of musical education and chair of the graduate program at the University of Michigan in music education. Ron Carter, arguably the greatest jazz bassist alive, who is one of us as an undergraduate and to whom we awarded an honorary doctorate last year. Charles Strouse, a composer and arranger for “Annie”, “Bye, Bye, Birdie”, Emmy award winner. And the list goes on. Renee Fleming. And on it goes. It is on their shoulders that you stand. It is on their shoulders that you stand. And we have such utter and complete confidence that this is the place for you. That the letter in the thin envelope that I still worry, sometimes, might come telling me that I’m not the Paul Burgett that they admitted, it hasn’t come, nor will it for you. Will you go into the fiery furnace? You will. Will you survive it? You will. And I promise you, Bailey, 25 years from now, you’ll be standing on this stage and you’ll be saying, “There was this guy, we called him Dean Burgett, and he said ‘Passion and ability drive ambition’” “Passion and ability drive ambition”. We’re so glad you’re here, and good luck for a wonderful 4 years. [Applause] Now off to the practice room and the classroom! A production of the University of Rochester. Please visit us online and subscribe to our channel for more videos.