The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 062 Howard Herring: The 21st Century Musician

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to the Mind Over Finger Podcast, episode number 62. Welcome to the Mind Over Finger Podcast, discussions on mindful music making, efficient practice, and building a purposeful career. And now, your host, Dr. Renée Paul Gaultier. Hi, everyone. I hope you're doing fantastic. I'm so incredibly happy to welcome someone I admire and respect profoundly to the show this week, Howard Herring, President and CEO of the New World Symphony. Howard is a pianist by training, and after his academic work at Southern Methodist University and the Manhattan School of Music, he was pianist of the Claremont Trio and an active musician and teacher in New York City.

Starting point is 00:01:01 In 1986, he became executive director of the Caramore Music Festival, leading the institution's development of many programs and establishing its first endowment. In 2001, Howard assumed leadership of the New World Symphony, America's Orchestral Academy, a three-year postgraduate fellowship program for aspiring classical musicians and leaders. He was given the charge of energizing the institution's national and international profile and developing a new building designed to explore its unique experiential curriculum and cutting-edge digital work. Adding to the orchestra's first-rate musical training, the New World Center designed by Frank Gehry enables New World Symphony to explore the global reach of broadband technology for education and digital capabilities for artistic expression. New World Fellows are exploring the establishment of an online music education community, integration of music and video, and engagement of new audiences through alternate performance formats. I've been wanting to have Howard on the show for a long time.

Starting point is 00:02:15 As a former fellow, I can speak of the incredible impact New World Symphony had on my life, And I've been watching the organization redefine not just the world of orchestras, but everything about how classical music is shared and can be used as a powerful catalyst of positive change in the community. In our conversation, Howard talks about the many aspects of New World Symphony and the incredible programs and initiatives that they have. And I hope you walk away inspired by our conversation and that maybe something you hear on the show sparks an idea for you to become an agent of change in your musical community. Let's go to the show. Howard Herring, it's so great to have you on the show today. It is wonderful to be here. Howard, you're a pianist by training, but you're now president and CEO of the New World Symphony. So I'm really curious, and I think that my listeners are also wondering, how does a journey like that look like?

Starting point is 00:03:28 So before we jump in our conversation, can you please tell us about you and how you got to where you are today? I grew up in a little town in Oklahoma, and I had wonderful teachers as a child. All of them encouraging me and explaining to me that if I really wanted to do this, if I wanted to become a musician, I would have to leave. I would have to leave Oklahoma and go somewhere else. New York was always the suggestion. And in fact, I managed to do that. I went to graduate school at Manhattan School of Music. But the path from musician to what I do now was one that was developed around the idea that I could find an audience.

Starting point is 00:04:18 So as a pianist, and especially as a chamber musician, I had a trio and then a second ensemble with five players. It fell to me to find the audiences and to find the concert series where we would play. and in the process of doing that it occurred to me that we could start our own festival this is the group of five players and so i began to uh investigate how that might happen and realized rather quickly that ticket sales would not satisfy the financial requirements of this festival we're talking about a little festival three concerts a week for two weeks but but still the costs were outstripping the ticket sales and i went to a friend of mine and ask him how this could become reality.

Starting point is 00:05:06 And he said, well, he said, Howard, he said, we'll just need to raise the money. And his name was Charlie Holler. He was a very important person in my life. I said, Charlie, how do we do that? And he said, it's pretty simple. He said, we're going to get the right people in the room, and you're going to spin the dream, and I'm going to explain their responsibilities. I was skeptical.

Starting point is 00:05:27 We did it. It worked. We funded that first little festival. And I realized in the process, we did that festival for five years, and I realized in the process that my job was not to play the piano. My job was to explain what, why, how music making comes to be and how much support it needs and then how you turn those support dollars into the concerts and the education.

Starting point is 00:05:54 so um i say that i fill the gap between between ticket revenue and total cost and i've been filling gaps ever since that first festival well that everything makes a lot of sense now you know i really see the seed of entrepreneurship and skillful art management in your journey sure howard i was myself a new world fellow and it's one of my favorite organizations i've wanted to have you on the show for a very long time and for a very specific reason and i think our conversation will bring a lot of value and i'm sure a ton of inspiration to my listeners there's a question i usually ask my guests and it's what skills do you think young musicians studying today should acquire in addition to learning to play their instruments i feel like that's what new world

Starting point is 00:06:48 does it teaches us to master our skills but it also provides us with the environment to be exposed to all of these other things because as you know very well there's so much more to growing as an artist than just practicing our instrument alone in a practice room there's a whole set of skills and life habits and culture and knowledge that we should be aware of and acquire and i know the huge impact the things i experienced that new world symphony had on my life and that's what makes new world symphony so special is it really provides like i said provides us with the the frame the environment the fully encompassing context that you know stimulate them and expose them to such a wide variety of experiences and training new world symphony does an incredible job at not only help

Starting point is 00:07:45 us refine our playing but at learning all of those other skills necessary to have a successful career in music and here i'm talking about entrepreneurship and outreach and concert creations and doing things that you were just talking about you know raising money marketing pedagogy mental toughness all of these wonderful things that we need but that we sometime lack in our conservatory or university training and not only that but new world symphony is in my opinion a trailblazer in the orchestra community by creating innovative projects um you know building audience and bringing so much value to the miami community and you know i hope many more orchestras would look into your model and follow in your footsteps so i want us to talk about all those wonderful

Starting point is 00:08:32 things about new world symphony and it really is my hope that our conversation will raise musicians awareness to this multitude of skills that should be explored and hopefully inspire them to maybe become opportunity creators in their musical community wherever they are but let's first begin with the basics which is the playing part sure would you please tell us about the many ways new world symphony fellows sharpen their saw playing wise we get lessons and coachings master classes workshops so many performance opportunities um so please let's hear about it sure um thank you very for the beautiful description of who we are um the the business of of great playing of of playing uh at a very high level i think starts inside each and every

Starting point is 00:09:26 musician. There's a very personal journey that each of us take. And it begins with the realization that this music is incredibly important to us. Very often a lightning strike, sometimes a period of months, weeks and months when you're sort of 13, 14, 15. All of a sudden you realize that that this is who you are and at that moment you turn inward and you that the turning inward increases in intensity as you move through your late teenage years and into into college then as you move out of college and as our players are everyone at least has an undergraduate here the majority have a master's degree so you're still inward facing at that point. You're still understanding yourself. And we often say that one of the beauties of New World

Starting point is 00:10:21 Symphony is that each one of our 87 players can find their own voice. You are all of a sudden without a teacher. We have coaches, of course. Coaches are coming to break down orchestral excerpts, to be in the rehearsals with the orchestra coaching and encouraging as the rehearsal proceeds. There's a lot of ways to make a lot of progress in a hurry. But my point is that you're still inward focused. And at a certain moment in time, you begin to understand that you must also turn outward, that you must embrace an audience, that you must engage with the community, and that your lifeline, your lifeblood, your ability to make both music and money has to do with how you understand your move into the larger world.

Starting point is 00:11:18 So what we do here is, first of all, give our players the chance to find their own voice, encourage them with the coaches, and give everyone as much chance as possible to perform. Because in the act of performing, you get better. You discover on stage in the heat of the moment, you begin to understand what your capabilities are, and you also begin to respond to what the audience is feeling, and it's critical that you know that. So playing better, sure. Get up every morning, play your scales. Use your most efficient practice techniques. Know yourself in that way, but also know that eventually this is going to be an outward-facing activity.

Starting point is 00:12:12 When you come to the specifics of engagement or looking beyond your own intense practice and performance, what you have to discover is where you fit. Do you fit in a second grade classroom? Do you fit in a lobby after a performance talking to the audience? Do you fit on social media like Rene Paul Gaultier, who is doing these incredible podcasts? What is the way you will move out? What's the best way? What's the most comfortable for you and where you can do the most good in a most efficient way? You have to try them all. And that's one of the things that's the structure of our program is to give our fellows a chance to try all these structures and initiatives. And by doing them, again, you discover what's right for you. not everybody is going to be able to start a podcast or a chamber music series or their own ensemble they're going to find their place but by having the chances that we provide they'll be they'll make quicker better decisions quicker and that we think is of tremendous importance i don't think there's any doubt that um the digital world has caused us to be

Starting point is 00:13:30 ever more or will cause us to be ever more attentive to the audience. There's just more connectivity. I am troubled often by the lack of the personal understanding of an artist by an audience or the audience by the artist, because digital can get in the way, But we'll get better at this. And whether it's digital engagement or whether it's just eye to eye in an orchestra hall, atrium or lobby, it is critical that we talk to our audience. The more we do, the more talking, the healthier we will be as an art form. I hope people are taking notes right now, because it's so important what you just said. You know, speaking about finding your own self, I think that's what New World Symphony does also. I know that for me, it was a really crucial time in my development. And I think in big part, it was because I had the time to do this introspection that you would just mention, because you provided us with housing. And when you're in this context there, you don't have to worry about the life's logistics. So you have, everything is simplified. You don't have to worry about turning in homework like you did in school. you have a stipend you don't have to worry about making rent so you are allowed the opportunity to maybe say no to gigs that might not contribute to your growth you don't have to worry about commute

Starting point is 00:15:08 i had time to practice i had time to refine things and and think and i had time for self-care this is where i was introduced to yoga which pretty much changed my life and i discovered alexander technique i went running on the beach before sunset every night i started eating healthfully you know i think not everyone can replicate this context in real life although there might be some ways to make that happen for yourself in your daily life but i think that it's really one of the thing that was so i use the word crucial i'll use it again it was so crucial for me to have this period of time at new world where i could do the introspection that you're talking about because you guys put so much effort and thoughtfulness in providing us with what

Starting point is 00:15:55 we needed to be able to do that frank burn who is the uh just retired uh president of the kansas city symphony has come to new world and spoken with our fellows and he always says um ladies and gentlemen please understand you live in the new world you don't live in the real world and he teases me about this but he's right um there this is an idyllic circumstance you get three years of fellowship and you can spread out and and begin to understand yourself in new and important ways deeper ways but i would say to your listeners that you don't have to have the new world symphony um yes perhaps it's to your advantage but but you have to find uh ways to carve out time in your schedule. It's very easy to just stay busy. And if you're going to be

Starting point is 00:16:50 smart about your practice, and if you're going to really get deep down into yourself and begin to bring yourself out through your music, it's going to take a certain amount of reflection and space, time and space. So I would just urge everybody to do that. There was a point in my playing days, this is after graduate school, and actually when I was having this festival uh the five years of the doing of the festival and i started to meditate and um i was i just read about it and said people said well this would help um i had no idea how to do it how to even begin and i sat down in the chair one day and closed my eyes and tried to relax my my body and it after two minutes which i thought was 20 minutes uh after two minutes i

Starting point is 00:17:39 opened my eyes and realized that I didn't know how to get quiet. Time passed on. I got better at it. It was an essential part of my life during my playing days. And everybody's going to find it. It could be yoga. It could be in other forms of those moments when you can reflect. But I think that it's easy when you're younger to think that you have to keep grinding away at the instrument. and that just reaches a certain point when it's not productive and that's when you have to walk away and and let yourself get quiet that is so true so true and there were so many opportunities at new world for me to be exposed to things like this to learn about don green's work when he came and gave us some workshop and i remember workshops of feldenkrais technique where professionals would

Starting point is 00:18:33 come to the hall and you know teach us about those important skills or also talk about meditation so i completely agree with you yes it's important howard new world is such an incredible and innovative concert programming and i hope everyone listening starts following you on instagram or facebook if they don't already do um what does this bring you think to the fellows in terms of knowledge and experience so experience leads to knowledge let's sort of backtrack for a minute the new world symphony musicians play 70 concerts per year now that's not all orchestra a lot of chamber music in there some solo recitals but the experience all of them coming to us from undergraduate or master's degree programs, they have not been performing at that pace.

Starting point is 00:19:32 And so the act of a new program every week, this week, next week, the week beyond, you begin to manage your time. You must manage your time. You begin to understand what the arc of a season feels like. There's a lot of really practical curricular activity. I call it an experiential curriculum that takes you to this new place. By doing it, you gain some knowledge about yourself and about the music as well. So that's something that is unique to New World. The only other circumstance is a professional orchestra. But we think that it helps, certainly with the audition process. If you have played a particular piece of music and an excerpt from that particular piece of music is on an audition list,

Starting point is 00:20:20 you're better off if you've actually played it in a performance setting so so we do our our best to get all of that to give our players those kinds of opportunities and you guys have so many really cool concepts for those concerts i think that it really shows to the fellows that we are not confined to the classical stage that we can really expand beyond that there's life there's music there's food the new audience initiative is something that is very important to me in 2008 the andrew w mellon foundation gave us the money to experiment we were still three years away from moving into the new world center where we where we work now we were in the in the proud but relatively small lincoln theater an old movie theater that was the original home

Starting point is 00:21:15 and the New World Symphony. Michael Tilson Thomas, who is our founding artistic director and who just received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2019, he calls it the one-room schoolhouse, and he was right. And you remember this, Renee Paul. You remember that space. But the chance to get out of that Lincoln Theater or to use that Lincoln Theater in inventive ways was ours,

Starting point is 00:21:44 and the Mellon Foundation funded us. So in those early days, we did 30-minute performances and we did one-hour performances. It was actually a one-hour informative performance followed by a party with the orchestra and the audience. And that led to, when we moved into this building, the late-night performances, which we continue. The other two performances have morphed.

Starting point is 00:22:10 The fellows take more control of those performances all the time. We have a really interesting format going now. We use the America's Got Talent format. We call it Face Off. And six sections of the orchestra compete against one another with the audience voting on their cell phones. And it sounds frivolous, but in the case of Face Off, everything that we do, all the excerpts that are played in this mock competition are straight out of the literature. and lead people, we then invite people to come back and hear those pieces of music later in the season. So you can link the short little experience of a passage from a major piece of

Starting point is 00:22:52 classical music to a full performance later on. But the overriding principle is that we identify an audience, we build an experience that is satisfying to that audience. We put classical music right in the middle of that experience. We sell the experience, not classical music, but the experience. We then execute, which is to say the audience arrives and we try this new format. And then we survey the audience and we are relentless about surveys. We use our intuition, the results of the survey, and we reimagine and repeat. In the creation of any old widget in the corporate world, they do this all the time. What we are discovering is that if you really do build the bridge, if the bridge is the experience, or if the experience is the bridge,

Starting point is 00:23:51 people will cross that bridge and they'll be with you in a comfortable way, and then you introduce the music. What we've also discovered is that you can bring people back. If they come to a traditional concert for their first experience, you can bring about 10% of those people back over a period of several years. But if they come to an alternate format, you can bring about 30% of those people back in the next couple of years. So not only are we engaging new people, but we're engaging people who are more likely to return. And I think it's because the experience is comfortable for them. And the social environment that we create by that experience feels good. And the next thing you know, you're starting to win new audience.

Starting point is 00:24:39 It's something that will take a very long time. And I think we're going to have to be flexible and agile as an art form. The two and a half hour, two hour and 20 minute performance that has two pieces on the first half and an intermission and a symphony on the second half, that was just right in 1950. It is not always just right today. We have to find ways to engage within a population that has digital as its basis and that has television, now decades of television, that has influenced the entertainment options or the artistic statements, and there are both still on television.

Starting point is 00:25:24 So it's a tricky thing, but we spend a lot of time thinking about it here. And when the fellows do it, when they make one of these experiences and they come out on the other side with an audience that's enthusiastic and that will come back it is a powerful tool to help our guys understand that you've got to always reimagine you're going to have to recreate this art form based on your understanding of the audience and the larger community that's really important what you just said there and i love the words that you use flexible and agile i think that what you just described is really full audience engagement you know i think that people throw around the word the word concert experience so much but that really

Starting point is 00:26:09 sounds like a concert experience and the fact that you are listening to the audience and really trying to creatively cater to those needs and those desires from them is really a model that like i said earlier i hope all orchestras would embrace a little bit more we have to do it and you know you mentioned michael tilson thomas and i didn't say it yet but that was definitely also one of the most amazing thing about being at new world and the chance to work with him as we lovingly call him mtt and you know the be exposed to his brilliance and i learned so much and in relations to what you were talking about earlier about learning so much repertoire quickly and getting a lesson in what real life looks like i will never forget one of the piece of advice he

Starting point is 00:27:03 gave us shortly after we arrived my my cohort and he was telling us to always be ahead of the repertoire to check the music out early and to learn it weeks in advance and kind of telling us that this way we would connect with it in a different way perform it differently and that would kind of transform our experience at new world symphony so i took that on and i've always tried to keep that in my professional life and it is the way to go to always be ahead of the repertoire bar a few weeks i think most orchestra musicians do this but to have the opportunity to learn this before you get in the real job and develop a system that works for you. I know that for me, it was very instrumental, no pun intended. I think you're absolutely right. And you learned

Starting point is 00:27:54 that in a hurry at the New World Symphony. If you don't stay ahead, you will be sorry. Absolutely. And we just talked about it a little bit about some of these initiatives, and I've used the word trailblazer, and I really mean that. Can you talk to us a little bit about the the outreach and the different community initiatives that you have um you and i had the chance to talk about some of those when you were last in chicago and i just i remember having my jaw almost dropping the floor with how many uh projects you have you were talking to me about how you help fellows create concert series and there is so much going on there and as i said And I really feel like you help create the leaders, the musical leaders of tomorrow.

Starting point is 00:28:45 So please tell us about these amazing projects that you guys have going on. For sure. I'll start with what we call the BLUE Projects. It's actually an acronym. It has to do with the acronym says Be Entrepreneurial. But we use blue because that's Michael's favorite color. So the Blue Projects, at the beginning of each year, all of the fellows are asked to think about how they would move out into the community. And instead of outreach, we call it engagement.

Starting point is 00:29:16 I think it's an important word to use because reaching out means that you're kind of from a point that's of greater importance. Engagement is much more egalitarian. In any event, all the fellows are alerted that they will, at least once in the coming season, play some music outside the confines or the building of the New World Center, our performance space. There are leaders who emerge. There are about 15 blue projects that are created. Those blue projects follow the interest and experience of specific players. One of our current musicians had cancer as a child, and so she is constantly in the pediatric cancer wards of Miami-Dade County. So often these are very personal statements, but the idea is that you find these new audiences, or you create a new audience by simply going out there and playing.

Starting point is 00:30:19 After a New World Symphony concert, when we do a wall cast, when we put the concert on the wall of the face of the building, the primary facade of the building, and we get about 2,000 people in the park, sometimes before, sometimes after, we go down on Lincoln Road. And they are buskers, and they do a 15- or 20-minute concert on Lincoln Road in order to tell people that by simply walking a half a block to the Soundscape Park, they can hear a full concert. So there are a number of ways to be in the community, and the Blue Projects, it's our formal structure, it's a formal way to say, okay, choose your audience, make your artistic content, and then move out there and engage. We give each of those 15 ensembles a coach, and we pick people from the staff. In fact, the staff loves to do this. So all of us become a coach for at least for one, sometimes two of these ensembles. And over the course of the year, we help them happen. It takes the year to do them.

Starting point is 00:31:27 They usually are out there and performing in March and April. And that's about right. So in terms of how you identify the audience you want and then set your dates and make your move. But that's one of the ways that we are working hard to get our players to think beyond the stage. And what's cool is that people they find out there on Lincoln Road, the pedestrian mall that's right by our building, or wherever it might be, those people then come to the New World Symphony and hear this music played in our hall. So we become proselytizers. We become people who offer our music. In return, we hope people will find their way to us here at the New World Center. I love this distinction you made between outreach and engagement, and I think you're right. I will start using that term myself now. We are not the center point of the universe.

Starting point is 00:32:24 yeah I really get the feeling that if the word that comes to me when I'm hearing you speak is that you guys are really nurturing meaningful music making so I'll give you I'll give you an example this tracks back to Michael again as we were getting closer and closer to to making the move from the Lincoln Theater to the building to the New World Center I kept bugging him and I said you know Michael we really should write a vision statement we had a mission statement the mission statement is we will train leaders for classical music, pure and simple. And you've experienced that. But the vision statement says, and Michael wrote this out one afternoon, just off the top of his head, but obviously after a lot of thought, that we see a strong and secure

Starting point is 00:33:08 future for classical music, and that we will reimagine, reaffirm, express, and share its traditions with as many people as possible. If you take that on, if you say with as many people as possible, you put yourself in a very different frame of mind and this whole outward facing, the outward facing approach to music making that I was describing before becomes real and important and sometimes immediate and certainly headed toward a better place in terms of more people understanding our music and and and being with us when we play it so it's um it's it's a very fill it's a philosophical statement and it's broad ranging but we get very specific in terms of blue projects and in terms of face off that i was describing before

Starting point is 00:34:03 all the fellow driven initiatives that uh that are headed that are pointed toward gaining new audience and so we believe it and we pursue it i feel like we should all have a moment of silence to reflect on that but you know what's amazing i think is i did not know your mission statement i did not know your vision statement and as i was hearing you reading them i've used several of those words in the discussion we just had and that shows that you are truly executing executing on the dream absolutely absolutely this really wonderful to see if i may ask in your views what can smaller communities do to help their artistic scene thrive that that's a great question the little town i grew up in was 20 000 people it's called it's

Starting point is 00:34:59 named ponca city oklahoma named for the ponca sioux indians um high school orchestra we rehearsed every day, some very fine volunteer choirs in the churches. We did the Messiah at Christmas, and we did it again at Easter. And it was a community-wide project. And you might say, how could a little town of 20,000 do such a thing? The answer is simple. You encourage as much music making as you can. Of course, you have to have great teachers and great leaders, but that can happen. It can happen in small towns. It can happen in medium-sized towns, small cities, whatever.

Starting point is 00:35:40 But that's way too specific to answer your question. I would say that relatively small communities are every bit as hungry and eager to listen to live performance as often as possible, and it falls to the musician to travel the distance to those communities and make it happen either living there and making it happen as residents or visiting there from an from another location and both are valid and and in tandem can be quite powerful um i think we i think we are too quick to say you got to be in chicago you got to be in new york got to be in boston you have the advantage there of so many musicians and so many venues and producers of

Starting point is 00:36:31 concerts etc etc etc but you can do a lot of wonderful music making in smaller communities the people there will find a way to rally around your dream and uh and even raise the money to help you to help you bring it to your dream to fruition and i would encourage musicians i certainly encourage our fellows to think about that as they begin their careers um it's it's a really it's it's an important thing to to spread this music as far as possible this is truly wonderful advice howard how about a really short round of rapid fire questions before we close our conversation sure what habit do you think can really help young musicians become successful for me it was meditation i think it's get quiet that's a great one how about the best advice that

Starting point is 00:37:26 was given to you that you would like to pass on to the listeners no is the beginning of yes i love that and if i may add the one that you said earlier to experience leads to knowledge i thought that was very excellent you guys have had throughout the years so many incredible performances but is there one in particular that you remember fondly of and that left a lasting impression on you that's easy when we opened the new world center in january of 2011 a lot of conversation about what music would be played on that very first concert and michael decided that we should play the copeland third symphony that's a war symphony that's a that's a symphony that whose purpose was to galvanize the american

Starting point is 00:38:18 society bring us together and we wall cast that concert the wall cast the idea of outdoor simulcasting at the highest levels of sight and sound is something that nobody really tried before and i i would try to i mean as i explained this to people as the building was being built i kept saying well you know it's kind of like drive-in movies except for classical music and people still looked at me like i was crazy so we come to the moment of the opening week and we decide that the copeland third symphony will be the culminating moment of that first concert and i stood in the park and there were thousands of people around me and this meyer constellation sound system was pouring this music out and 7 000 square feet of image was showing the orchestra on the wall

Starting point is 00:39:12 the primary facade of the building and i thought to myself that copeland and michael and miami beach and the new world symphony we were all all of a sudden in this same place and it was about bringing a society together and classical music was at the heart of that activity it will always be with me. That moment was beyond thrilling. It was just pure satisfaction that we had made something new, but we were actually reaching back into a moment in time for this country that was important. And saying it again and the saying it again caused us all to be together. What an incredible moment. It was.

Starting point is 00:40:04 How about a quick actionable tip listeners can implement today in their musical lives? If you're practicing, practice slowly. This has been all about quiet and reflection, right? So slow practice, for me, is always how you make progress. So, yeah, practice slowly. Howard, thank you so much. You know, sometimes one person can be such a powerful agent of change in the community. And we see what MTT, Michael Tilson Thomas, did in Miami, of course, surrounded by an

Starting point is 00:40:41 amazing team, which you're included in. And I hope that our conversation maybe inspires someone into action because sometimes with just one fleck of an idea, someone starts a program in their area that encompasses some of those wonderful elements and initiatives that we just talked about and can completely transform the musical landscape of that community or maybe it's a teacher that will incorporate one of the concepts we discuss and start seeing some wonderful results in their students but in any case i really hope that our conversation was maybe triggering some inspiration in my listeners and i definitely feel inspired thank you so much again you are welcome renee thank

Starting point is 00:41:28 you for having me on it's good to be here thank you guys so much for listening i really hope you enjoyed this conversation with howard herring president and ceo of the new world symphony as you've heard me say in the conversation i strongly believe that one person can make a difference have a huge impact on their surroundings And it's my hope that this discussion gave someone some ideas and inspiration for a program or an initiative that they could maybe implement in their artistic community. I encourage all of you to get familiar with New World Symphony if you're not already. So head out to nws.edu, look at the website, look at the amazing programs and initiatives that they have, and maybe start to dream about how some of those might work in your town for your orchestras, your colleagues, and your students. I also want to take this opportunity to mention again something that we brought up in our discussion about the support we get at New World in regards to all aspects of a musician's life and how the environment is ideal for growth.

Starting point is 00:42:52 The living arrangements, the musical education, the performance experience, the life skills training, the logistical support, all of this is extraordinary. and it's easy to think that there's no way to replicate such a nurturing environment in real life and that's true that it's not easy to do but I'd like to invite you all maybe even challenge you to figure out a way to implement similar nurturing structures in your life maybe think of ways to simplify your life carve time in your schedule and make it happen for yourself think of some strategies and try to create a context that allows you the time and space for that introspection that we were talking about, the room to grow as an artist. Be very intentional in creating your environment, an environment that is nurturing and allows for this to happen.

Starting point is 00:43:51 Easier said than done, I know, but it's possible to incorporate more of this in your life, even if it's just in small doses so i hope you find value and inspiration in this episode i would love to connect with you and know what your favorite takeaway from today's show is so please join the conversation on social media i am mind over finger on all platforms you can also find me at mindoverfinger.com where you can read the show notes find more information about mindful and efficient practice and performance preparation, and sign up for my newsletter. And when you do that, you'll be the first to know about special trainings on practicing that are coming up this spring, and you'll receive your free guide to a super productive practice using the metronome.

Starting point is 00:44:40 And if you're looking for a community of mindful practice enthusiasts, join the Mind Over Finger tribe. That's my private Facebook group where I pop in once a week to talk about mindful practice and answer your questions and where you can exchange with fellow musicians about practicing and music making. So join the tribe at facebook.com slash groups slash mind over finger tribe. As always, I'll have all of those links for you in the show notes. Again, thank you and à bientôt. Thank you.

The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 062 Howard Herring: The 21st Century Musician

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