The Arts Salon

Today’s Guest is Brian McWhorter. I first met Brian many years ago when he first made an appearance on the faculty at Chosen Vale International Trumpet Seminar. He made an impression then, and I was very taken by his thoughtful approach to art making and willingness to question the trajectory of the arts.

Brian has been an invaluable critic of music education and conservatory curricula. This discussion touches on many of these subjects, and while we may disagree on the degree to which the patriarchy is even real, we share a concern for the future of the arts, when its proponents seem to be so intent on removing all creativity from the equation in arts education. I hope this will be the first of many discussions with Brian, whose insights I value so greatly. I hope you enjoy this brief discussion in anticipation of more to come.

Today’s Guest is Ben Neill. I first met Ben when I got the opportunity to perform LaMonte Young’s The Melodic Version of The Second Dream of The High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer from The Four Dreams of China with the Los Angeles Philharmonic for their Fluxus Festival. Ben is a truly unique thinker, and I must admit this conversation is amongst my favorite not just on this podcast, but in my life in general.

As you will hear in this conversation, Ben and I both share a concern for some of the trends in arts and education, which are largely the product of a broad acceptance of Critical Theory and postmodern modes of thought in Western societies. Ben references many texts, but we share a love for Mario Vargas Llosa’s seminal essay Notes on the Death of Culture. For a comprehensive rundown on this why Critical Theory is so dangerous, I recommend you listen to my episode entitled The Case Against Latinx and Critical Theory. Critical Theory poses a real threat to civilization, but most humans continue to show their idiocy in believing that history is over, and that the Dark Ages have no way of returning, and their naïveté is evident in the assumption knowledge is safe from destruction thanks to Wikipedia.

Read More about Ben: https://benneill.com/

Further Reading: 

Vargas Llosa, Notes on the Death of Culture: https://www.amazon.com/Notes-Death-Culture-Spectacle-Society/dp/0374123047/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=mario+vargas+llosa+notes+towards&qid=1621321683&sr=8-1

T.S. Eliot, Notes Towards the Definition of Culture: https://www.amazon.com/Notes-Towards-Definition-Culture-Eliot/dp/0571063136/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=ts+eliot+notes&qid=1621321746&sr=8-2

Dreger, Galileo's Middle Finger: https://www.amazon.com/Galileos-Middle-Finger-Heretics-Activists/dp/0143108115/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3GLKCNA5UUFFS&dchild=1&keywords=galileos+middle+finger&qid=1621321777&sprefix=galileos+middel%2Caps%2C229&sr=8-1

Pluckrose, Lindsay, Cynical Theories: https://www.amazon.com/Cynical-Theories-Scholarship-Everything-Identity_and/dp/1634312023/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=cynical+theories&qid=1621321836&sr=8-1

1,956 Cases of Police Brutality, 313 victims of physical violence by the police, 40 victims of homicide (allegedly committed by the police), 1,003 arbitrary arrests, 418 violente interventions by the public force, 28 victims of injuries to their eyes, 129 cases of firearm shootings by the police, 12 cases of sexual assault by the public force.  

Just what IS and has been happening in Colombia?

1,956 Cases of Police Brutality, 313 victims of physical violence by the police, 40 victims of homicide (allegedly committed by the police), 1,003 arbitrary arrests, 418 violente interventions by the public force, 28 victims of injuries to their eyes, 129 cases of firearm shootings by the police, 12 cases of sexual assault by the public force.  

Just what IS and has been happening in Colombia?

1,956 Cases of Police Brutality, 313 victims of physical violence by the police, 40 victims of homicide (allegedly committed by the police), 1,003 arbitrary arrests, 418 violente interventions by the public force, 28 victims of injuries to their eyes, 129 cases of firearm shootings by the police, 12 cases of sexual assault by the public force.

Our conversation today is—if I may be immodest—an accurate display of David’s eclectic biography. We talk about neuroscience and music, artificial intelligence and the future role of the artist, and the creative logic of artists.

David has been fascinating to me since I met him at CalArts, where he was the Dean of the Herb Alpert School of Music and ushered in a particularly bright period at the institution whose graduates are important members of innovative music communities from Los Angeles to Cologne, New York, and Paris. My interest in David has a lot to do with his serendipitous presence and connection to many important musical moments of the Avant Garde of the 20th Century (as he mentions in our talk, he has a personal connection to the Rite of Spring, Cage’s 4’33, and Riley’s In C, and I hope all the listeners will look up Rosenboom’s appearance on Tv with John Lennon and Yoko Ono explaining biofeedback).

I want to thank David for his many years of service to education and his dedication to my alma mater, CalArts. I am also grateful for his involving me in projects performing his music at REDCAT, and helping me delve into his music with the Carillon Quartet. He will be missed and leaves large shoes to fill. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

Today’s guest is Russ Devuyst, former Associate Principal trumpet of the Montreal Symphony, and current head of brass as my alma mater, McGill University. Russ was my undergraduate teacher; he was also my first teacher of such a caliber. Before him, I had never really spent an extended period of time sitting next to someone who could make the trumpet sound that way. The reality is that no matter how many hours I had spent listening to recordings, nothing can prepare you for hearing the real deal next to you. Marco Blaauw once told me that sound memory is in our bones, and that if one spends enough time playing with someone their sound is forever imprinted in our skeletons. While it has been many years since I have had the pleasure of sitting next to Russ, his sound lives very much in me, an always elusive target.

His sound also was a true reflection of his personality for me. Russ was always unafraid, and taught be the value of having an opinion on and off the stage. During my interview with Dave Taylor he said he always told his students to remember “safety last!” Russ embodies this to me in both his playing and his personality. While this has gained him many faint-hearted critics, nobody could ever accuse him of being boring; and much to his critics’ mortification, instrument manufacturers have yet to engineer a personality for anyone with a good credit score.

I’m really excited for today’s guest because he represents the first departure from the small sphere of influence of the music industry. Jose Maria Barrero is currently Assistant Professor of Finance at the Instituto Tecnológico Autonomo de Mexico, in the business school. This is one of the leading higher-education institutions of Mexico. To read more about Jose Maria and discover his work, visit: https://www.jmbarrero.com/ 

Today’s guest is Mike Sachs, principal trumpet of the Cleveland Orchestra. I want to thank Mike for his generosity, and for sitting with me for over 3 hours, despite the fact that we had never met. Mike and I share a common hero, Thomas Stevens. As some recurring listeners may recall, I dedicated this podcast to Stevens when I launched it. I miss Tom, and what he represented. His death has left a void in the trumpet community, which has continued its forward push into a type of teaching that favors technical prowess over musical integrity.

Mike and I speak at length about a number of topics including the importance of leaving school and entering the professional world, the European diaspora and the rise of American orchestras, the importance of history as a catalyst for cultivating enduring musical legacies, and many more subjects.

Today’s guest is Grammy nominee, Kristen Klehr. Kristen has been a friend of mine for some times, as forms part of my monthly dinner party, which had become a recurring event in the months leading up to the pandemic. At these parties I would host a group of Los Angeles musicians to spend an evening socializing away from the gig-economy “hang.” She is one of the hardest working people I have ever met, and also a brilliant entrepreneur.

She hit the ground running when the pandemic first hit, starting the Den Collective’s online platform for musicians even before the official closure of the Los Angeles scene. With her hawk vision, she saw by late February what most musicians would only come to terms with by the summer of 2020. The result is that she has not simple “made the best” out of the pandemic. She has employed musicians, enabled their livelihoods, and built something meaningful and functional, when so many others with colossal credentials are still panicking and hoping people’s hard paid taxes will bail the AFM’s local 47’s insanely mismanaged pension fund.