Nick Kendall on The Struggles of 'Classical Music' and Empowering Musicians to Carve Their Own Path

Welcome back from summer vacation! Well, if your school changed names and had a big makeover, that is...ViolaCentric is now MusicianCentric. We've rebranded our podcast to create more inclusive conversations that resonate with all musicians. With a fresh line of merchandise and a revamped Patreon, we're thrilled to be joining you for a fourth Season!

What better way to get into it than by talking to our first guest, violinist Nick Kendall. We discuss his career journey, both as a solo artist and as part of the Grammy Award-winning ensemble, Time for Three. We look at the orchestral industry's struggles, the impact of digital media on our brains, and the power of improvisation. Our field is rapidly evolving and there are countless ways musicians can forge their paths, break away from traditional beliefs, and create something beautiful that resonates with audiences. Tune in for a candid, inspiring, and musical conversation!

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Mentioned in this episode:

Nick Kendall’s website

Time for Three

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Our website: www.musiciancentric.com, for merch, joining our email list, and contacting us with stories and feedback!

Episode edited by: Emily MacMahon and Liz O’Hara

ViolaCentric Theme by: JP Wogaman, www.wogamusic.com

Additional music by: Freddy Hall with www.musicforpodcasts.com

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Transcript

Steph: 0:00

Well, hello Hi. Oh, my gosh Rusty Rusty over here.

Liz: 0:06

It's been a minute.

Steph: 0:07

Summer has come and gone and here we are, back in our little caves.

Liz: 0:11

It does officially feel like fall too in this first recording we're doing, which is like finally.

Steph: 0:17

I'm so over summertime. I'm just over the temperature, being humid and gross.

Liz: 0:23

How was your summer?

Steph: 0:24

So we went on a couple of vacations, but I think I need to tell you about the road trip that we took. So during the pandemic, our family watched this show on I think it was like Nat Geo, called Secrets of the Zoo, so let me know if you've watched this. But basically it follows documentary style the vets and the zoo techs and all the people behind the scenes of the zoo that care for the animals, et cetera. And this particular one that we watched was about the Cincinnati Zoo. So we told the kids, after the pandemic's over, we'll take a road trip and we'll go to the Cincinnati Zoo and we'll check this out. I love it, okay.

Steph: 1:01

So finally we blocked off five days to go and we drove to Cincinnati. We got there, we toured around Cincinnati. It's a lovely city, it's really cute. There's the Ohio River goes right by it, it's on the water. We had excellent weather, it was beautiful. We did all kinds of really cool things in Cincinnati, anyway. So we get back to the hotel that first night in Cincinnati and my husband Aaron is looking at his phone and he's pulled up images from the TV show and on one of the images is one of the workers who we I can't remember her name but who. We followed as part of the show and he zooms in on her shirt because she's wearing like a logo shirt that belongs to the zoo and he calls me over and he's like take a look at this. And her shirt said Columbus.

Liz: 1:48

Zoo no, there are too many cities in Ohio that start with the letter C.

Steph: 1:54

He's like should we tell the kids that we're in the wrong city? But I think for our purposes Cincinnati was a better choice as far as the city to visit. And it was great. We even asked like servers we're like which is the better city? The consensus was we were in the better city. We were in the better city of Cincinnati and the zoo was excellent. So it was still great. We've had a great time, but we drove eight hours to the wrong city in Ohio.

Liz: 2:21

I love that so much, it's so great. What about you? Well, it was your summer. It was a strange summer because I personally had a lot of change going on and a lot of things to sort of process and handle and go through and a lot of like moving parts, and so personally it was a very hard summer. I'm not going to lie, as you know. But I also got the opportunity to do some really cool things and I just always forget well, professionally anyway, I always forget that summertime offers this opportunity to like educate in a way that feels so much more enriching than during school year. So I had the chance to go do one week with a camp in Maryland. That was a day camp at a winery and farm and it was all outdoors and it was this summer camp for you or for like children.

Steph: 3:16

I wish it was a summer camp.

Liz: 3:18

But what's amazing about having it there is like the parents of these kids would just sit and have wine and cheese and like hang out while the kids are getting educated.

Steph: 3:27

Sell.

Liz: 3:27

Yes, it was really cool and I got to meet a lot of great people on the faculty there and coach chamber music and mostly just do some master class type stuff, and so that was really fun and also just a reminder to be outside. We didn't have our phones on us, it was hot, it was very sticky. I needed a shower pretty much every day I was there, but it was really cool. And then for the last few years I've done something called Viala Boot Camp, which is like a spinoff of something that was already created for violin. I've talked about this before, but it was really funny because this time we were all at the same week on the main campus of George Mason, and so we were like coming into contact with Violin Boot Camp at the same time and it was just so funny to like watch the difference in personality of what was happening over there.

Steph: 4:15

And then we'd check on them, be like are you guys all right? There was a little boot camp. We know what boot camps like for violinists, exactly. How are you doing?

Liz: 4:22

Oh, so that was really fun too, and I played a music festival, an orchestra festival, in Pennsylvania very rural part of Pennsylvania for several years before the pandemic, and then it had not happened until this year, since 2020. So it was like a family reunion. It was just so great to come back and I played Jurassic Park and Concert which was like a dream.

Steph: 4:45

That sounds like fun. You know what? I would much rather play that one than.

Liz: 4:49

Star Wars? Oh, 100%, hot take. Yes, I don't ever want to play a Star Wars or a Harry Potter in concert, ever again.

Steph: 4:56

I've done both. It is.

Liz: 4:57

Yeah, they're brutal, they're brutal, it's brutal. So things like that, a few vacations, you know. But, as I mentioned, there's been a lot of change in my personal life. So this year is going to be an interesting year A lot of discovery, a lot of exploring new things. So we'll see.

Steph: 5:15

Welcome to the Musician Centric podcast. We are two freelance violists living and laughing our way through conversations that explore what it means to be a professional musician in today's world. I'm Steph and I'm Liz.

Liz: 5:28

And we're so glad you joined us. Let's dive in. She's talking about the elephant. Look at you.

Steph: 5:39

Back with the segue she's got it, she's got it. So if you downloaded this episode, you kind of already know this that we are rebranding this podcast used to be known as the Viola Centric podcast. We're both violists, but our conversations have always been ones that anybody, any type of musician, could benefit from. So we decided it was just time to rebrand and call ourselves the Musician Centric podcast, because that's really. I mean, we're for musicians, our conversations are for musicians, so we're glad you're here.

Liz: 6:11

Yeah, absolutely. It was a big decision for us because we hatched this idea together on a porch during the pandemic. For those of you who don't know our origin story and the name Viola Centric came very naturally to us. It just kind of like rolled out and we were attached to it. It's been an interesting exercise in like releasing an attachment in a way, to be willing to take the risk to change things up and see if they can benefit our mission, which is really to inspire the people who do the type of work that we do and share the perspectives of so many other inspiring individuals who we just have learned so much, and the information we receive, the perspectives we hear and share, absolutely translate to any instrumentalist out there and even people who are just musician admirers. So I think it just broadens the possibilities and hopefully, from a perspective of our musician friends who maybe have been reticent to listen because they thought it was a Viola podcast, can listen now and say oh hey, these Violists are cool and they're talking about something I understand.

Steph: 7:21

And you could talk about it Now. It doesn't have to be a guilty pleasure.

Liz: 7:23

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you don't have to be like. I admit that I listen to the ViolaCentric podcast!

Liz: 7:27

Such a fact, like I admit that I was a big in sync fan in the early 2000s- but it should also be said for our friends that have been part of our community for the last few years, and one of the reasons that it was very hard for us to make the decision to change our name was actually because of the little community of followers, friends we've gained over the last few years. We did not want anyone to feel like we were sort of abandoning our roots, and so the podcast is going to be. You're going to notice, it's exactly the same. We're not doing anything different in terms of the content. We just wanted a name that would be a little bit more inviting to someone who felt like it wasn't for them. So we hope you'll stick with us in this transition.

Steph: 8:08

Yeah, so inside the box, same product outside of the box, that's right, just new packaging, that's right, you know when, like how Pepsi does that every 10 years or so.

Liz: 8:18

And we will still very proudly feature Violist guests throughout the season. So you know, because it still is an unsung hero of the orchestra family.

Steph: 8:29

Yeah.

Liz: 8:29

And it deserves its own mention. Yeah, but just because it's a Violist guest doesn't mean they don't have something to say for all musicians.

Steph: 8:36

Yeah, so don't like not download those episodes, you guys. This isn't licensed to discriminate.

Liz: 8:43

Yeah, that's right.

Steph: 8:45

So what has changed the name? Obviously, now we are MusicianCentric, we have a new Instagram channel at MusicianCentric. It's actually our old account, just we're going to rename it.

Liz: 8:57

So if you already followed, you don't have to do anything. You don't have to do anything, yeah.

Steph: 9:00

So same thing with our Facebook page MusicianCentric and our website MusicianCentric. com. If you have us, like, bookmarked as a ViolaCentric, it'll scoot you on over there and you can just update your bookmark.

Liz: 9:13

Yes, we also have some new merch, so that's very exciting New merch.

Steph: 9:17

This is what we're really excited about. So we have a new logo, yeah.

Liz: 9:21

We spent a lot of time working with someone very brilliant on a new logo and some new art for the podcast, and so that's very exciting. So we're going to feature that on some new merch. You can still get ViolaCentric merch if you'd like Vintage Viola-centric merch.

Steph: 9:36

You know hot sales, New vintage. Maybe it'll be worth something on eBay.

Liz: 9:40

I hope so, but you can find that on. We're still working with our good friend, lisa Divek, who has Alto Clef gifts, if you've been following us, but she now has a website called Ensemble Outfitters, so we'll keep that information on our website in the notes, but you can visit her website Ensemble Outfitters and find MusicianCentric merch, which is good.

Steph: 10:02

Another way you can support us is by joining our Patreon. We're going to have ad-free episodes there, we're going to have extra bonus content there, and then in the future this season we'll be doing something again with our Joy Loves Company group, our community. So that's where you will get access to all of that really fun and amazing stuff that we do with that group.

Liz: 10:23

Yeah, we'll release more information about that coming up, but that group has grown over the last two years that it's been in existence and it's been a really big part of our lives for the last couple of seasons, right.

Steph: 10:34

Yeah, it's a really special, special group, really special part of what we do.

Liz: 10:37

You can also support us simply by sharing with your musician friends, whoever you talk to, about the conversations you hear already on the podcast. If you enjoy what you're hearing right now and this is your first time tell people about it. It's so helpful to us to spread the word, and our goal is to really reach as many listeners as we can, particularly with our new name. So please share away.

Steph: 11:01

Yes, is there anything else? Oh, write us a review. Yeah, if you love this.

Liz: 11:05

Reviews really help us. They work with the elusive algorithms.

Steph: 11:10

Yeah, so rate us five stars and write us a review and help us connect with more people and these conversations. They can be enjoyed by even more people with your help and your support. So thank you in advance for that.

Liz: 11:23

Yeah, absolutely. I think this is going to be a good year, season four.

Steph: 11:27

I'm excited. I'm excited. So our guest today, as you saw in the title, is violinist Nick Kendall, and if you don't know this guy, do a quick Google, look him up, watch some videos. He's amazing. He's a Grammy Award-winning artist with his Time for Three trio. He's so charismatic and you'll hear that in our conversation as he talks about how important it is for him to connect, and he's definitely one of those people that uses music as a way to connect to an audience.

Liz: 11:58

Yeah, yeah, I found this conversation to be, so, you know, glimmery, like it just lit so many things up for me, and he really has that concept of what our purpose is, so down and it's interesting too to think about.

Liz: 12:12

He comes from a pretty significant pedigree.

Liz: 12:15

His grandfather, John Kendall, was like one of the forefathers of Suzuki tradition here in the States, and so it's interesting to hear him talk about how he came to his own understanding of why playing violin was a passion for him in his life and it did require him sort of coming around to like, ok, this is what I thought everyone expected of me, and kind of rebelling against that and coming to the conclusion that it was actually the feeling of what it was like to perform and what it was like to do that thing in front of a group of people. And he talks about finding their audience, and I love that a lot too. It really sparked for me this idea of just internal creative expression for every individual, and I think the way to create the most amount of fulfillment out of this career is to figure out for each individual, like what it is that you would like to be doing or saying with your music, and in his case, it's the feeling. Did you capture that feeling in what you were playing? I loved that so much.

Steph: 13:15

So relatable. Yeah. So if you're anything like us, you're going to love this. But let us know. Email us, dm us on our Instagram, message us on Facebook. Let us know what you thought and enjoy this episode featuring violinist Nick Kendall.

Liz: 13:31

It's that time of year we're back to school and we are back to gigging. Even if you're not mentally ready for the season, you can count on our season sponsor, Potter Violins, to get your equipment ready. When's the last time you've reared your bow?

Steph: 13:45

stuff. Oh, I feel like it was recently, but I bet it's been over six months. So I got to get over there and get it freshened up. Oh, and I need new backup strings and an instrument adjustments.

Liz: 13:58

Sounds like it might be about time. Yeah, I do love to get in there for a visit to our favorite technicians as we approach the change of season. Hmm, maybe I need a new case too.

Steph: 14:09

And, as we've said before, if you need a rental instrument, they're the place to go. My daughter and many of my students rent from Potters and the instruments are really fantastic, even the smaller violas.

Liz: 14:20

Yes, get back to your music this season with confidence by visiting Potter Violins. So your equipment will be ready, even if you might need a bit more of a warm-up.

Steph: 14:34

Today we are joined by violinist Nick Kendall. Described as a poster child for a new breed of super musicians by the Washington Post, he is literally foraging his own path, making his career, performing around the world as a soloist and with his Grammy Award-winning trio Time for Three. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Amplomatic of Nick's diverse artistic expressions are special projects that include composing the soundtrack for the feature film Land, releasing the Grammy Award-winning album Letters for the Future with Time for Three and performing with various recording artists. Nick is also an artist in residence at Lincoln Center in New York City and he's very involved in educational programs as well, and, honestly, this is a comically abridged version.

Nick: 15:20

Could have y'all have done that before I got on? I mean jeez.

Liz: 15:24

No, no this is the best part. We like to make every guest really uncomfortable with it. Yes, when put on you guys 100% success rate.

Nick: 15:31

Thank you so, Nick welcome.

Steph: 15:33

Welcome to the Musician-centric podcast. We are so excited to have you. This is the first episode of our new season and we're just super thrilled that you're here.

Nick: 15:42

Absolutely.

Steph: 15:43

So we were talking before we started recording that you're here in DC, yeah, and we were also talking about how people are annoyed if you say you're from DC and you're not actually living there.

Nick: 15:53

I actually now live in DC, but when I grew up here, I was living in Maryland. I was living in.

Liz: 15:58

Silver Spring I had a family in Tacoma Park.

Nick: 16:01

So actually I grew up in the area in Maryland, in Montgomery County.

Steph: 16:06

Montgomery County. I grew up in Gaithersburg.

Nick: 16:08

There you go. Yes, love it that.

Steph: 16:10

So we've played together. I've played in orchestras where you're soloing by yourself and with Time For Three, so it always feels like kind of a homecoming whenever you're in the area.

Nick: 16:20

Th at's it. It's so cool to have you here, thank you.

Steph: 16:22

But of course, as a graduate of Curtis, we feel like you probably could have started a career as a soloist just right from there, but you didn't choose to do that. Yeah, so tell us about the formation of Time For Three and how that came about and kind of like how you decided that maybe a full-on solo career wasn't really for you.

Nick: 16:43

I get this question a lot and it makes sense because, yeah, you're right, it's a huge deal, like it was an enormous game changer for me to get into Curtis and obviously at that point I was thinking of just the solo track, right, and I was with this incredibly famous teacher and of course at Curtis you sort of share teachers, at least very much.

Nick: 17:01

That was the case back when I was going to school and I got in in 1997.

Nick: 17:05

I'm aging myself but I was so focused on just my instrument and playing the great repertoire which I still love.

Nick: 17:14

I definitely feel like all of those masterworks and all those composers which I really had to study and practice and really get to know shaped me as a person but also as an artist, and probably a lot of the work that, when in pre-Curtis, was also part of what, even if I wasn't realizing the focus that I had and my parents made me and my teachers made me practice I hated practicing when I was young Were part of the substantive core of who I have become, the freedom that I have from that discipline and, yeah, I think when I was growing up here I was also really into other styles of music and so I brought all that desire to connect with people outside of like core classical music when I went to Curtis and Philadelphia has a super rich musical scene, the Philly Sound, which includes obviously the Philadelphia Orchestra but it also R&B, soul and jazz obviously some of the most famous jazz clubs and I was really attracted to that community while I was at Curtis and so kind of my activities in high school, playing in folk bands and I actually played in a bucket band here in Georgetown before they had sound ordinance laws.

Nick: 18:26

Oh my gosh.

Nick: 18:26

Like kind of like stomp Back. When stomp was starting, my friends, my high school friends and I were playing like trash can buckets upside down and paint buckets when we set up and play beats, hip hop beats and go-go beats here in DC. And so all of that fed into coming to Curtis and starting my own bands outside of playing Brahms and Beethoven and Mahler. And then, like my second year at Curtis, there were two other students Actually it was more than that, it was like three or four who used improvisation as a way to kind of like connect with each other. And you have to understand, the culture at Curtis is very small, it's a very small student body. But only a couple of decades before that, jazz music was forbidden to be played at Curtis. So you can understand the mentality when late 90s, early 2000s, the idea that classical musicians, especially at Curtis improvising have jam sessions was like whoa big deal, and that's what we did.

Nick: 19:22

I found two other guys like mine did. That was the founding members of Time for Three Back Then Zach DePue, who's no longer in the band, and Renan Meyer, and we were obviously not thinking of instrumentation at all, because it's two violins and double bass, but we were literally just connecting and we were using music that we just usually these jam sessions usually happen directly after orchestral rehearsals and back then we had the great maestro, who I miss dearly. He taught me so much and so many of us from that generation miss his presence Otto Wiener-Mueller, who was so strict and so old school but so awesome and made us concentrate. I remember when I was first joining the orchestra, I hated it because I just wanted to play. I just wanted to play, but no, he was so strict and so we needed to do something. That was the antithesis of that energy, which was, after everybody left Curtis Hall, we turned down the lights for vibes. It had a dimmer switch and we had just so very intimate space and we just jammed. That's awesome.

Steph: 20:17

That's amazing because it really feels like we've talked about this before, liz how improvisation was like a big thing back in the day of writing your own concertos and all that. And classical music got away from improvisation and it just seems like this is just a natural coming back together of the way that you are.

Nick: 20:36

It's so cool in my career now we're so lucky to be engaged by better and better, more famous orchestras right, but even not the top orchestras but the more I'm, first of all, I'm recognizing people in the orchestra, but it isn't so incredible anymore that the use of improvisation or the use of kind of extended technique is sort of like a norm now. And when we were actually just last week, we were in Gettysburg playing a show, our first show of the season, and we did a whole outreach with the Gettysburg College, the famous composer, avner Dormann, who has done a lot here in this community, and with Eschenbach when he was music director of National Symphony. He's a professor there and it's so cool that the student body like improvisation is part of the classical conservatory's language and it's not such a big deal and that's awesome. We always ask people raise your hands. Who's a little bit afraid of improvisation? And we get people looking around the room going like, well, not, I know, but that's not happening anymore. People are like, yeah, that's cool. Yeah, what key, let's go.

Liz: 21:38

Just so cool. Well, it's so fascinating because I think a lot of times the origin of this conversation for us starts with OK, improvisation was just such a huge part of the tradition and then became this let's emulate the masters. And so we were taught for a certain generation or two or three that we had to play everything a certain way, and it created this kind of box for us that I think we didn't necessarily know that we were being placed in that box.

Nick: 22:08

Exactly.

Liz: 22:08

Until you feel this restlessness, like for you, you're like okay, my orchestral training is amazing and all of us who had that experience are like yeah. I loved, loved my orchestral training in college. But there is this feeling of like don't do that, don't do that. Duh, duh, duh, duh. You're like letting yourself out of the box you had to.

Nick: 22:26

You like felt this need to do it yeah.

Liz: 22:28

Yeah, and I think that's maybe what's happening on a whole Is that musicians of any tradition are saying wait a second, I don't want to just have to do this thing, I want to learn how to improvise, I want to be a little bit more free with my music and composers now, or I don't know, maybe working with that a little bit. So like classical musician is kind of blending with other things too, which any of that new music today is very bold, completely, yeah, I mean it's such a.

Nick: 22:55

It's actually an incredibly disruptive time, but it's a very exciting time if one is taking the long view. We are in a time when how we communicate with each other is we're really aware of it. There's so many conflicts in the world and we feel divided, but yet we feel like somebody else is telling us we're divided but yet we're really connected. And what does that mean? And what does that mean to connect person to person or using our phones and completely seeing society just wrapped up in a screen and the internet? So all of these things are, I feel, helping a lot of really important conversations to be had that maybe wouldn't have had and which is making people really question their activities and I don't think this is only in our space and music.

Nick: 23:43

I think this is all across the board and so long as AI doesn't take over and become self-aware and start killing everybody which is scary and it's a completely off topic, but you know what I'm saying.

Nick: 23:55

If we continue asking these questions and understanding what rules mean or what tradition means. And it doesn't have to be binding, but it can be a guide to navigate a point of destination on the horizon, which sometimes is a great constraint, which otherwise you're just kind of blindly in the thing, doing the thing. And just what does it all mean? And that's definitely been a wonderful ingredient for our industry. This questioning and this almost turnaround and I also want to say improvisation I feel like it's also changing from being like just a thing to being a tool, just like vibrato is or low speed is.

Nick: 24:34

Improvisation is literally a way of listening. It's your technique, following your musicality, rather than a lot of times in classical music it ends with your technique, because you're trying to be perfect but then you're not actually listening and adjusting. So it's interpretation as well. I think improvisation means interpretation, which is exciting thing. It's an exciting thing, that's awesome.

Steph: 24:57

I always admired you and other people who, like yo-yo-mah, just seems like the technique is no limitation at all and it just allows your improvisation to be a direct line from your brain to what comes out of your instrument. Whereas I think a lot of people, me included I feel like sometimes my technique is like that limiting factor. I kind of know what I would want. But then it's like but how do I make that?

Nick: 25:19

happen.

Steph: 25:19

I wonder if a lot of us classical musicians probably feel inhibited in that way.

Nick: 25:23

If you know how to communicate with another person and you're able to have a reciprocal energy, meaning that if there's an understanding and you're kind of going down a path of communication right, that doesn't necessarily mean language, it can mean a feel, a vibe in a relationship or whatever. Back to classical musicians or classically trained musicians you are absolutely capable of harnessing that vibe. You just have to practice it. It's really as simple as that. You have to put yourself in circumstances that make you flex around what you're feeling, and you could probably make up exercises yourself and it's going to be uncomfortable at first, but so is like learning a new language.

Nick: 26:01

But you take small steps and, especially if you've been in the world for a while at our age, you sort of self-learn and apply those feelings because it's that X factor you can't describe and you apply those to other things in the music making process and we do that a lot. We have these jam sessions like improv sessions, but I also have exercises that kind of force you to behave with it when you're with your instrument, force you to behave in a certain way that you have to completely lock into your feelings and your impulses, and the process kind of helps break down a lot of walls and a lot of times you get out of these exercises and people feel like, wow, I didn't realize I could do that. I didn't realize I could feel this way while playing the instrument, and that's cool.

Steph: 26:45

That's such. The key, isn't it? It's tapping into what's real within your feeling and not what someone's expecting.

Nick: 26:52

You know, I'll have one story to that because it applies to this area. So I did the National Symphony Young Artist Competition, when you get to play a piece with the National Symphony on stage. So I did that when I was in high school and I somehow got in and I was scared. So I practiced a lot more, which was great, and I ended up winning Okay, but that's not what hooked me. What hooked me to finally the violin being not something that my grandfather or my parents wanted me to do and said that I have something special, but I want to be on the basketball team and I want to go play out on the streets.

Nick: 27:26

To me, feeling the power was I had practiced so much and this was Lalo Sinfini, espanol, and I played in the concert hall with my teacher's sister, vera Denchenko, who's still in this area.

Nick: 27:36

She is an amazing pianist and artist and so she was accompanying me, she was playing the orchestral part and I just remember, literally during the performance you know that scene in the first matrix where at the end, all physical things become digital and you just sort of see the way forward. I was so zoned in to the piece and putting my heart on the line. After I played, I came off stage and I felt this exhaustion, but not physical exhaustion. I had just laid out my heart on that stage, like I had just done a thing, and that feeling was like dude, I want that all the time. And so for me it was just about like man, that's a simple formula, work harder, and it was also I figured out the goal. So practicing wasn't this blind forward motion. It was like okay, if I know my stuff, then when I get to the thing and I'm the pressure's high, I can just go for it. So, going to how one feels, that was the game changer for me of owning it.

Liz: 28:32

Yeah, it just makes so much sense. It probably has to do with internal motivation, depending on who you are, but it resonates very deeply with me because if you think about the preparation for something and usually for me it's ensemble-based I have a quartet and so I do a lot of chamber music and when something is really hard in my part, I'm not that concerned for myself.

Liz: 28:53

I want to do it right for them, but at the same time, when I'm able to play something really challenging and we're all doing it together and I did it successfully with them the feeling is the thing that makes it so much better.

Nick: 29:08

It's what makes it worth it, it's not that we oh wow, we lined up perfectly. It was like we said a thing yeah, we said a thing exactly.

Liz: 29:15

It's really good and it's a nice reframe, I think, especially for a younger musician who's in the mode of just trying to play things right Totally. Yeah, just like I got to get everything right. Well, what's the goal of getting it right?

Steph: 29:27

Well, so short of a National Symphony concerto competition, what would motivate your average student to get in that place and have that epiphany moment?

Nick: 29:36

Well, my whole thing with young kids and I incorporate this into anything I'm doing where I have the honor of having kids listening to me is obviously I'm going to be doing my thing, I'm playing, and when I play, I just naturally am. So I'm doing my thing. So the kids are already like whoa, that looks like a lot of fun, that looks awesome. And then I have the opportunity to say listen, I got here not just by like watching a YouTube video. This did not come in a TikTok format. This is literally a process, but always understanding and being in touch with the fact that I loved it. But the love part if I had 100% of the pie, the love part was maybe 6% of it. The rest of it, the 94%, was applying my practice time to the stuff that didn't come easy, stuff. To answer your question, it was that duality of you master good intonation, good bow speed, good posture, and then, after you master that, then I'm going to unleash you and, oh boy, that was a goal for me.

Liz: 30:37

It's like the discipline element of it. That's a challenging thing to teach to kids but I think that that process of making it fun even in the discipline area that part of it is the thing I think I've really tried to implement my own teaching in the last few years is just like I get it. But this is a problem that needs to be solved. So let's figure out how to solve the problem and then you just work to find the solution.

Nick: 31:02

I feel like teachers are so underappreciated and the nurturers of the world and mothers are so underappreciated. I have so much respect for teachers now and I look at my sister, who's an incredible teacher. She's amazing. Yumi Kendall, shout out right now, snap, snap, snap. And shout out Yumi, go check out her podcast with her and I'm just dropping all the things. Go check out, that's right, go check out with Joe Conyers.

Nick: 31:26

Hey, a rising tide, Teachers I can't you guys have like, teachers out there have such a tough time right now because kids are seeing what's cool out there, but what's cool can take two seconds, but there's no longevity to that and teachers and parents have this task. But that's, I mean, that's also a good challenge to figure out how to counter that with nurturing, which means that working on the stuff that isn't cool, that is boring. But my God, if you don't do it, you're not going to be great, and great meaning reach your full potential and have this freedom to do what you want on your own terms in the future. If anytime I have a chance, teachers in the area, through this wonderful opportunity to speak to you guys, just understand that it's so important what that community is doing and it's so hard. It's so hard, but don't give up, please.

Steph: 32:16

We need it. Well, you know, I really do feel like as a teacher myself and as a mom, that this generation and I don't want to talk trash on this generation at all, because we all have challenges and tendencies or whatever from when we grew up but it's a very short attention span Generation and I think that it may take time, but I think that these kids are going to realize that, okay, I'm not going to have longevity or acquire any long-term skills by 30 seconds of investment of my time and I think it's going to come back around to people realizing that that's not the way to build a skill, like you're not going to learn how to play the violin or the piano from a 90 second TikTok video, but it might take a little while, but I think it's going to have to come around. What are we going to keep doing? Shortening these TikTok?

Steph: 33:02

videos and now. Your attention span is five seconds. The limit is five seconds.

Liz: 33:06

You know what I mean. I'd stuff your comment about attention span. It's so interesting because I'm witnessing something. I have a very small studio, that's awesome though I'm witnessing something really interesting with my kids where at the end of last year we had done one of those 100-day practice challenges, you know Awesome. And so we'd built up and we didn't actually do a recital, we just did this class together, group gathering and whoever wanted to play could play.

Liz: 33:27

It was really low-key and it was so fascinating because even my youngest kids at the end of that were really able to formulate opinions about the challenges they had practiced. They were making progress. It was like really tangible. And then we started this year and this year we've talked about this stuff. I've been having our own challenges with getting things off the ground and it just been a weird fall.

Liz: 33:46

There's this cultural societal cultural frenzy right now, and those same kids are incapable, right now, of giving me the same amount of focus that they were giving me.

Nick: 33:57

six months ago.

Liz: 33:58

And I'm working at it. It's my job now to redirect. It's my job now to be like okay, I get it, there's a zillion things pulling your attention right now. If you want to get this goal accomplished, you have to do this work. But there's a lot working against us and there's a lot working against the kids, I think, in terms of this 90-second sound bite, their brains are being wired to feel like that's how life is. That's what's happening to them when you're successful, they are able to reposition the way they feel about these things and they're able to give their attention and they're able to give their focus. And some of these kids that are graduating now have really great vision for what they want the world to look like and if we're able to be, a part of that.

Steph: 34:41

That's amazing and our industry Liz and I do a lot of orchestral work and we're seeing a lot of the organizations that we're working with really struggling right now.

Nick: 34:52

Oh yeah.

Steph: 34:52

Do you see that in your line of going around the country?

Nick: 34:54

No, we actually we had some bad news just coming into the season where we had a date with the New Jersey Symphony playing our new concerto that was composed for us by Ken Butts, which we love, and oh, yeah, yeah, totally. But Shian, who is the grand maestro who actually recorded with us with the Philadelphia Orchestra she's the music director of New Jersey Symphony and they had to lay off 15% of their staff not orchestra, thank God, but the staff and then they had to cut like three classical weeks, and one of those weeks was ours. You know, we have struggles right now happening between management and orchestra, the unions the tale of the pandemic is still there and also addressing some of these other concerns you know, like how orchestras promote themselves and the meaning of a symphony orchestra within a community. It's all these things are still happening and, yeah, it is unfortunately prevalent around.

Steph: 35:46

So what part does programming and all that play into making sure that people want to come to orchestra concerts?

Nick: 35:54

Yeah, tough, I there's a lot to talk about. I mean, yeah, first of all. First of all, in my opinion, the music is not broken. The delivery systems often are, for me, the ones to first address.

Liz: 36:11

And like.

Nick: 36:13

I don't think Beethoven symphony is broken. I don't think you need to be. I mean, maybe I'm an idiot, but I don't think you need to be educated in classical music to totally be moved by Beethoven Symphony If it's in the hands of artists who take the time and care and love to communicate that energy. And so I think that's for me, that's the answer to that, because you can program cooler music. You can bring time for three, all you want, but that's just really awesome icing but it's a lot of icing and you don't get good cake that sucks, you get a stomach ache. You know what I'm saying? It has to be the love and the craft have to be.

Nick: 36:56

When that's there, then people feel the music. And what happens when people feel the music? They want more of that feeling and they'll come to find that moment of when, that X factor that happens between humans, indoor, outdoor, wherever. I mean it's a magical thing, but it can only happen if it's a truly reciprocal conversation, meaning that everybody shows up because they want to be there to do the thing. Do the thing is our thing, is our word. Today.

Liz: 37:26

And it's not like, yeah, I mean you can program some light music.

Nick: 37:30

If we're talking orchestra music, you can program amplified music all you want, but people will get tired of that, and you also. You just don't detect the gravitas. So this, what I'm saying, obviously is complex. It's a very complex issue and topic because the way our industry, the way the professional classical music world is set up, and the way it has been for years and years, there is a format and there is a respected way of doing things, and it's not a quick and easy fix. It too will have to go through a pendulum swing.

Liz: 38:03

I just want to circle back to you saying delivery system, because I don't think we've heard it referred to this way, but the concept that the music itself is worse. Anyone's investment 100%.

Nick: 38:15

A million percent.

Liz: 38:16

But the delivery system is so multifaceted. As soon as you said that, I was like ping, ping, this, this, this. There's so many different elements to that, but I think and I'll kind of go there, I'll go there a little bit. Go there Because we freelance and we play an orchestra.

Liz: 38:29

You alluded a little bit to the investment of the musicians on stage and I would imagine I mean we have this experience In fact I think we've talked about this on other episodes where in some groups, everyone is engaged and invested and there are situations and circumstances that have been created in order for those musicians to feel that way.

Nick: 38:47

Exactly.

Liz: 38:48

And then there are groups where the musicians do not have that engagement. Exactly, and when they don't 100%, they are just pulling up, parking the car, walking in getting their instrument out playing the job. Absolutely and they don't necessarily even think about the 100, 200, 500 people sitting in the audience. Yes, that is a massive problem.

Nick: 39:07

They have a million things going on in society, in our culture. This is a job, this is a way of life, when people are pulling up and doing their job and trying but then they have to go up 95 to another one and then go home and teach a studio and then raise five kids. That's the way that they understood the market was and is and they're able to support themselves that way. So there's no shade on the current, the individuals in this situation. It's everything that is set up and propped up to support that.

Nick: 39:41

My sister and I talk about this all the time. It's the pipeline, it's a culture, but it's not. I believe you just can't fix the problem by just looking at the current situation and blaming the people who show up and look exhausted and then saying you guys are the problems. No, it's not only that, it's the whole thing. But we as a culture, we as a community, and the business has to understand that and has to look at that and has to address it. And it's again, it's not easy, but there are ways of addressing that through a lot of questions and dialogue. But yes, that is. I didn't want to say it, but yeah, that's what it is.

Liz: 40:15

Well, I think any freelancer and that's what we do, that's the majority of people, I think, that listen to us are freelancers, and so we're all in that same boat together and we know what it feels like to just be at a job. That's a job and that is a challenging thing as a musician because what is the goal of being a musician? It's not to just sit down and be thinking in your head the whole time like I wish this was over.

Steph: 40:42

None of us are doing this to get rich. No, we would have a nine to five job, I don't know, banking or doing something else. That was definitely steady, it was definitely predictable. But we do this because we have that. Why we were chasing that feeling that you're talking about Nick, where you feel that feeling of this is why. This is why and I have to have that feeling again. So I'm going to do it again. But it's really hard to get bogged down day to day.

Nick: 41:13

No, we so my band. We're always talking about our career trajectory and it's very complex because you can't really pin us in one area. It was a huge honor to be able to receive the accolades that we did for this body of work that we just put out.

Steph: 41:27

You mean the Grammy?

Nick: 41:27

Yes, and it was huge because for a group like us that is so hard to define and out of the box and weird, and you definitely cannot understand it through the internet. You have to be there and be there yeah.

Nick: 41:40

But the Grammys have and to be able to do it. And for the album, which was a combination of Jennifer Higdon and Kevin Putz both pull a surprise, winning, so that's a name people know. And then with the Philadelphia Orchestra, my God. And then with one of the most old, old and respected and culture shaping record labels of all time, Deutsche Grammophone, the Axis Point really made for. And then the Grammys on top of that really defined who we are. So that's been huge for us being associated as like artists who are damn serious about our craft but we work hard to have a lot of fun doing it.

Nick: 42:15

And what does that mean in our space? And so playing the orchestral market has been so wonderful because we love the experience. We know the onstage chemistry and just the chamber music thing and like all that vibe. We know it so well. But we also are striving to reach our audiences. A lot of times in our world people are coming because of subscription. I mean now more they're coming because of us. But you know, our solo shows have been going so well, and that's without having to be booked with an orchestra. That's just us and our audience. And so we're trying to figure that out too. How do we get to our people? And we're also still in the process of defining what our market is. And it's amazing, after Charles Yang joined we really took the time. Eight years ago now, we really took the time to figure out who we are, and so we're a good start on a journey, but still trying to figure it out, that's awesome.

Steph: 43:04

That's what we're all doing as freelancers, especially right now, is figuring out what the future of our industry is going to look like. It's unfortunate, but there's a lot of orchestras that are not around anymore especially our regional orchestras, and that's real sad. It's forcing us all to kind of examine where is my career going to go in the future? What does my 10 years look like? It's just a really challenging time to find out where you fit in, where you will be.

Nick: 43:33

But it's awesome to hear you both of you speak about your intentionality in the music being still the flag post in your life, like how you want to exist. If, like you, didn't have that, it almost sounds like life would be just almost meaningless. I mean, it's so important. So it's really great that people are still like professionals like yourself, still a restless and not comfortable, and I think that's really important. And I also say that that's the ingredient to creating your own thing that is successful. And in our world, success is being able to live in this world, which means you got to be able to have some sort of income. But if you're a restless artist, you've been in the industry, you feel like there's more. You just haven't untapped it. That's awesome and that's unfortunately it's rare. But when you have it, I think more and more people are feeling that now, but that's great. So keep going at that.

Liz: 44:20

It might be out of necessity, right.

Nick: 44:21

Yeah.

Liz: 44:22

I mean for us to have these conversations out loud.

Liz: 44:25

It took having all of our work taken away in order to do that and have all the space to even just consider, like, the whys of what we're still doing. And I think for many of us it's created a sense of agency that we didn't have before, but we're still certainly in the minority. I think most musicians who have to carve out this, living in the orchestral realm particularly I have a lot of limiting beliefs around what is available to them. There's that whole scarcity thing and what's interesting is to consider the idea that it's the only field where we just put it in the hands of someone else to hire us. Every other musician out there is just trying to create something with their own voice.

Nick: 45:04

Amen.

Liz: 45:04

Either with a band or on their own, with their own singing and songwriting or whatever.

Nick: 45:08

This is part of the culture I was talking about at Music Institutions, like when I was at school. The kind of thing was, if you get management, you're set. And that was before the internet. I went to Curtis like 97 to 2001. So it's like the internet was not where it is now the accessibility to making your own marketing stuff, and that was not forget about it. But even then managers were saying managers don't have time to create something for scratch. So the key is the people who are successful are the ones who have bootstrapped it and who have completely done it on their own, organized on their own and figured out what works, what makes them happy. But then have some business acumen that says okay, people like that and we'll pay money or I'll do things.

Nick: 45:51

And in classical music we have this conundrum because there's like 1% of the 1% of the 1% who says this is good and if you don't do that activity, if you've gone to conservatory study music, then you're nothing. And I say that's BS. And it also plays into what I said about the music isn't broken. I'm not saying that everybody who's classically trained should feel that, unless they're playing Beethoven and Brahms incredibly convincing, that they have failed. No, that's just to address marketing of organizations. I feel like there needs to be more classical musicians who want to just do their own thing, that don't play just necessarily core repertoire, that can play other stuff that audiences want to hear. And then I feel like in this country especially, people are more and more aware of what string instruments are and are much more accepting of them. And if they play music that the artists and the musicians are just having a great time, they want to be around that. So I think there's a lot of low hanging fruit for up and coming instrumentalists A lot.

Liz: 46:43

Maybe that's one of the positives of the whole social media world.

Steph: 46:48

Well, I think it's getting back into the culture not being so removed like this.

Nick: 46:53

Listen to concert hall.

Steph: 46:54

You can only perform it if you're a member of a symphony orchestra. But yeah, breaking it down and making it so that individual musicians can create their own thing will kind of let it by. As osmosis get into the culture, more and more people will be exposed.

Nick: 47:08

Play music that works for you and that when you experience it's not like sometimes I see it, but then it's a missed opportunity because they're trying to get through a bar, talk, shrink or Ted out in a community center when they just need to play. Maybe they just play beautiful chords and then share a show with a singer, songwriter, but then talk to an arranger friend of theirs or a young composer to write something and then share the cost on the back end and do something that everybody feels feel, feel, feel, feel. That's the most. And it's not how many notes you play, it's the notes that you play. That's the joint. That's the thing.

Steph: 47:45

All the yes.

Nick: 47:46

So good.

Steph: 47:48

So, speaking of the future, what all is coming up for you, nick? What's on the music stand?

Nick: 47:54

We have a great season coming up. The Grammys were a huge thing for us. The schedule is crazy. I'm a little terrified of it because of how little I will be home starting in the new year, but it's all where. This is the life we chose. And Marina, my wife, who is the goat. She's just so powerful and so amazing and understood what we're getting into early on. It's hard. It's hard, but we're working it out together. But I couldn't do this without her for sure.

Nick: 48:18

It's fantastic Love you guys, thanks so much for your time today.

Liz: 48:22

Thank you so much, Nick.

Nick: 48:23

It's been amazing, absolutely. Thanks for being so open with us and being willing to. Well, I appreciate you guys having this series and I think it's a great opportunity to bring in somebody like me who is out in the world, and if I can bring some perspective and hopefully enthusiasm, then I take time for that. I love that, so I really appreciate the invite.

Liz: 48:47

Thank you so much for listening today. If you loved this episode, consider writing us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, amazon Music, spotify or wherever you listen.

Steph: 48:57

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Liz: 49:00

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Steph: 49:06

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Liz: 49:14

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Steph: 49:19

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Liz: 49:23

Thanks again for listening. Let's talk soon.