The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 239 Randall Goosby: Play With Purpose - Expression, Identity, and Musical Impact

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

In this inspiring conversation, violinist Randall Goosby shares how he balances technical mastery with deep artistic purpose. He offers insight into the mindset, values, and strategies that have shaped his unique approach to music-making—and how you can bring more meaning into your own playing. In this episode, you'll hear about: ·         The shift from performance perfection to performance purpose ·         How Randall connects with his "why" to stay grounded and inspired ·         Lessons learned from studying with Itzhak Perlman about authenticity and expression ·         The importance of honoring underrepresented voices in classical music ·         How to cultivate intention in the practice room—even on difficult days ·         Strategies for building connection with audiences beyond the stage ·         Why vulnerability is essential to making music that matters Whether you're refining your technique or rediscovering your voice as an artist, this episode offers thoughtful takeaways to help you grow with more clarity, confidence, and connection.   Are you ready to take your playing and career to the next level and create a life that feels purposeful and joyful? Let's connect and explore how personalized coaching can support your journey. Click here to schedule your free consultation, and let's start turning your goals into reality. If you're ready to step on stage with confidence, perform at your best, and finally feel secure in your playing, let's talk!   Book your free consultation with Renée HERE Download the transcript from this episode HERE     MORE ABOUT RANDALL GOOSBY Website:  https://randallgoosby.com/ YouTube channel:  https://www.youtube.com/@RandallGoosbyViolin Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/rmgviolin/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsgooz/   Mind Over Finger Click www.mindoverfinger.com/coaching to book your free consultation with me. Visit MindOverFinger.com for my online courses as well as free resources on peak performance. Grab my free workshops and PDF downloads by going to www.mindoverfinger.com/resources. Connect: https://www.youtube.com/@MindOverFinger https://www.facebook.com/mindoverfinger/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/mindoverfinger https://www.instagram.com/mindoverfinger/     THANK YOU: Most sincere thank you to composer Jim Stephenson who graciously provided the show's musical theme:  Concerto #1 for Trumpet and Chamber Orchestra – Movement 2: Allegro con Brio, performed by Jeffrey Work, trumpet, and the Lake Forest Symphony, conducted by Jim Stephenson.  

You're listening to the Mind Over Finger Podcast, and this is Episode 239. Welcome to the Mind Over Finger Podcast, where we dive into the world of mindful music making, peak performance, and crafting a purpose-driven life and career. I'm your host, violinist, certified performance and life coach for musicians, and your guide unlocking your full potential, Dr. Ranipo Gautier. Hi, everyone, and welcome to season eight of the Mind Over Finger podcast. It's so great to be back with you, back behind the mic, and I have an incredible season lined up for you guys. It's going to be filled with inspiring guests and conversations that are designed to meet you where you are in your musical journey and help you grow

into the musician and artist you want to become. So whether you're working toward the next big audition or maybe you're trying to bring more joy and fulfillment back into the practice room or exploring what a fulfilling musical life looks like for you, well, you're going to find something valuable here this season. And we're going to start today with a question I know many of us have asked ourselves, how do I bring more meaning into my music making? Not just precision, but real presence, depth, and purpose. If you've been asking yourself this lately, well, you're going to love today's episode because my guest is the incredible violinist Randall Goosby, and he has built his career around that exact pursuit. From his early debut

with the Jacksonville Symphony at just nine years old to stepping on stage with the New York Philharmonic at 13 and studying with the legendary Itzhak Perlman at Juilliard, Randall's journey is deeply rooted in curiosity, purpose, and service. But it's not just about where he's played, it's how he plays and especially why. His art history has been praised for its warmth, honesty, and emotional clarity. And beyond this stage, as you're going to see, Randall is fiercely dedicated to making classical music more inclusive and accessible. And he brings the voices of underrepresented composers to the forefront, and he connects with communities through education and outreach. Since signing with Decca Classics in 2020,

Randall has released two meaningful albums, including Roots, a celebration of African-American musical heritage, and his latest concerto album with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Randall has performed with orchestras like the Chicago Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, LA Phil, and New York Phil, and he's doing all of that while staying grounded in his mission to use music as a tool for connection and change. Now, why does this matter to you? Well, if you're refining your technique, if you're chasing big goals, or if you're searching for a deeper artistic voice, this conversation is going to offer so much for you. Randall shares how he approaches practice, storytelling, and mindset in the way that's both inspiring and practical. In our

conversation, we talk about what it means to focus on expression over perfection. He talks about his lessons from studying with Itzhak Perlman, the power of representation in music, and how that can shift everything. And also how to stay anchored in your why, especially as your career grows. So here's your backstage pass to the artistry and depth and insight of violinist Randall Goosby. I hope you enjoy. Let's go to the show. Randall Goosby, it's so great to have you on the show. Thank you so much for having me. Randall, I think that my listeners are going to want to hear your story in your own words.

So please tell us about how things unfolded for you. Yeah, I guess it's a sort of funny story. It's not necessarily deeply inspiring or anything like that i was six years old when my mom first um suggest well i shouldn't say suggested she stated that i would i would begin to learn an instrument as would my two younger siblings so she said look you guys have no choice you're going to learn you're going to learn an instrument but you do choose what you play so she didn't decide for us and i chose violin uh straight straight away i don't know why uh to this day i have no idea what the what the real reason is behind why i chose it i must have you know seen it on tv or maybe heard it on the radio or something

uh but that was my first response uh and it actually took several months for me to actually get a violin in my hands because we went um when we first wanted to go and buy a violin we went to a sort of general music store that sells and rents like band instruments and string instruments and they have piano lessons in the back um all purpose and uh so obviously we didn't know what we were doing at that point and the gentleman at the counter once he learned we wanted to start violin lessons my he looked at my mom and says you know your son is kind of on the smaller side he's very young uh he doesn't have very big hands you know a lot of times when kids come in at a very young age and they want to learn violin they quit very soon because they realize how difficult a you know

an instrument it is uh so we didn't know any better and he encouraged us to start on piano to get a more sort of basic fundamental understanding we didn't know that his wife taught piano. So I think that was a little bit of an ulterior motive for him. But I played piano for a few months. And all I remember about taking piano lessons is that no matter how badly I played or how little I practiced, I got candy, Sour Patch Kids, every week. So that kept me in it for a few months. But already after a few short months, I mean, my mom says that I was starting to say things like, oh, I'm not smart enough. I'm not good enough to do this. Because I think that the double challenge of learning to play with both hands and also read two

staffs at once. I was still learning to read music on a very basic level. So I think it was just too much for me. And, and, you know, at the end of the day, it was a blessing in disguise that I didn't start violin immediately. And sometimes it's the wrong teacher. Yeah. Yeah. That could very well, could very well be the case. And I was very fortunate, you know, from, from the time when I started violin until the time when I stopped taking

lessons, every single teacher I had was amazing in very different ways. But so, you know, by the time I started violin, after three miserable months of piano, I was really hungry for it. So I was not the kid whose parent sort of forces them to play and they have to be forced to practice. I mean, I had my dad telling me, hey, son, you know, it's getting late. You know, I've got to wake up in the morning. Do you think you can put it away for the night and start again practicing in the morning? And my mom would get so upset. She'd say, how dare you tell him not to practice? You can go to another room and he'll practice. How about that? so uh it was always a love at first sight kind of thing for me and uh yeah i think i i kind of

just got lucky it's so wonderful that you were exposed to the music from an early age and that's where we see the importance of music education absolutely because i think that even if you don't end up doing a career out of it learning an instrument is so important but for some people being exposed to it shows you that you have a real passion for it and in your case also um a talent and i know you've worked really really hard yeah there's been some hours put in for sure yeah yeah randall i know that you're very um involved in in the community and you've spoken about music as a tool for inspiration and social impact can you walk us through perhaps a moment where you really felt that true power of music not just as performance but as connection

and transformation? Um, yeah, I mean, there's countless examples. I think, uh, one of the earliest examples when I was probably 13, 14 or so, and this was shortly after I won the Sphinx competition, they had the, their annual competition for black and Latino stream players in Detroit every year. Uh, and I entered when I was 13 into the junior division and I was very fortunate to win the first prize. And as a, as part of the prize, the winners are, um, uh, how do I, how do I put it. The winners are marketed to and sent out to perform with the partner orchestras of Sphinx, which include New York Phil, Cleveland Orchestra, New World Symphony, you know, legitimate ensembles like this. So that was sort of my first go around with touring and having

multiple concerts in a short amount of time. Now, at that point, I was 13 and I was playing, I think, either Meditation from Thais or First Movement of Mozart D major for all of these. So it wasn't like I was playing full concerti. But the most nerve wracking part of any of those trips that I remember was going into schools and playing and performing and sort of interacting with kids. And I think part of the reason I was so nervous was because I felt as if I was imposing my love and my passion and my relationship with classical music. I felt like I was sort of imposing that on these kids who weren't interested in it.

or so I thought. I was sort of under the impression that there was this preconceived notion from the general public that classical music is like lame. You know what I mean? Nobody wants it. It's for old people. And I mean, given what I had experienced playing in audiences and in concert halls, I believed it. I never saw any young people in concert halls in any places where I was performing. So those experiences made me extremely nervous because I was like, okay, well, I either have to play really, really well, or they have to think I'm really cool in order for them to get something out of this. And so I didn't think I was going to check either of those boxes. But after every single one of those performances, mind you, when I'm 13, when I was 13, I looked

like I was maybe nine. I was I always have looked very young. So when I would go into high schools and play for kids who had like beards and tattoos and stuff, I was like, what, what could they possibly learn from me? You know, they already they're already adults. But every time I played one of these performances and I looked out at the audience, there's always kids who are just like, wow, you know, I never knew this was possible. There were many kids who had never seen a violin in person up close before, let alone heard one played at a reasonably high level. And so that those experiences in that first year of performing with Sphinx's partners really opened my eyes to the sort of inspirational power of music, right? I don't know what exactly it is. I mean, I know

firsthand, I remember being a young kid and watching videos of, of Oistrakh and Heifetz and Perlman playing. And it really looks like some kind of, some kind of wizardry. I mean, for a young kid, it was just starting violin. I thought that was the coolest thing I'd ever, ever seen. So I think, you know, for me to think that it's not possible for another kid to have that reaction to seeing someone play, um, was a little naive. And I think I've learned, uh, from that. And now I'm most excited about those, those kinds of performances and visiting schools and introducing young people to classical music, because if it's something you've never heard before, you're going to be impressed, you know, and you're going to be inspired to at least

check out some recordings, if not try and start the instrument on your own. So that was sort of the first and most, I think, impactful example of how, you know, music can be used to inspire uh you also mentioned the word connection um and I think you know that that's one of the mystical things about music is how it can really connect our experiences as as people who don't know that we have anything in common necessarily I remember after a concert once I think it was a recital and I I think for an encore I played um Heifetz's arrangement of estrellita the manuel ponte song and there was a member of the audience who came to me afterwards like with tears in their eyes and that wasn't the surprising part to me because that piece

brings tears to my eyes you know i think it's just that kind of music but uh this person said you know i i remember this a much much older person than me and they said you know i remember when i was i don't know something like six or seven years old and i sat down in my grandfather's living room uh and he put on an lp of this piece for me and it took them back to that moment was probably 60 plus years ago for them at that point and for me i kind of got chills in the moment because i was like wow i don't know you i didn't know you were in the audience right i could have never imagined that scene in playing the piece myself but to know that regardless of what what i'm feeling and what i feel is coming out of the instrument music takes every every individual

person to a completely different place and i think that's part of the magic of it especially in the times that we're living in i'm sure a lot of us want to go to a different place yeah quite often and so i think music is is kind of that bridge into uh uh you know a a friendlier or a positive or more loving world, however you want to look at it. Yeah, I really agree. And I think that that audience member and all of the people that you've played for,

they take that with them. And sometimes it fuels you for several days, sometimes even weeks after the event. And you know, as one of my favorite quotes is Maya Angelou, and she says, when you know better, you do better. But also sometimes you don't even know that something exists.

exactly so for you to go in schools and play for young kids or for them to have the opportunity to see you play you make them discover something new i think it's so so so important yeah i i remember one of the one of the greatest um i guess i wouldn't necessarily call it a lesson but a sort of um i guess for lack of a better word i can't think of a better one right now but one of the greatest lessons that my mom taught me um and i think it was in response to my being very nervous about those those first school visits when i was young she said look there's going to be people who don't like it but your job is to inspire one person or one kid to either go and ask about starting violin or go and look up a recording of the piece that you played if you can

inspire one person that you did your job so that gave me a lot of kind of peace and confidence in terms of um you know just being myself in those situations and not trying to um make what i do or make myself seem cooler or different than i than i than i was at the moment well yes you have a very wise mother yes yes i do and i can confirm that you're both very good and very cool i want to talk about the repertoire a little bit you have two amazing recordings out on deca I highly recommend everyone listen, actually three, pardon me, because you have the deluxe edition. Ah, right. Two and a half. Yeah, two and a half. And we're here, we're downstairs backstage at the Chicago Symphony, and you're going to play the Florence Price Concerto No. 2 tomorrow.

And it looks like you've made a priority to uplift underrepresented voices in classical music. and what you've learned about your own artistry from interpreting and championing the works of these composers composers like Florence Price William Grenstall can you talk to us a little bit about that what what that the impact that it had on you yeah absolutely I mean my my I keep going back to Sphinx I mean they played a very big role in in my development as a as a young person and as an artist um and they were my first exposure to black composers until i was 13 and i entered the sphinx competition i legitimately thought that composer meant old white man i didn't know that a black person could be a composer because it's we don't learn about

black composers right we're not taught about that part of musical history um or women composers or women composers exactly um maybe like fanny mendelssohn at the most right but but you know i was so i was so um uneducated for lack of a better word at that point uh so grant still was the very first black composer that i ever uh came to know and for me obviously as an african-american person it really puts things into a different perspective for me because suddenly i feel as Oh, wow, I'm not, you know, I could write music like this. You know, when I was growing up, not that I was necessarily looking for it, but it would have been hard for me to tell you what I had in common with Mozart or Beethoven or Bach, right?

These people who I really don't know anything about. I don't know what their experience was like. They lived long enough ago that the world was just a completely different place. And with people like Grant Still and Florence Price, Coleridge Taylor Perkinson, even Samuel Coleridge Taylor to some degree, it wasn't that long ago that they were alive. I mean, Grant Still and Florence Price were composing into the 1940s and 50s, right? So it really was not even 100 years ago. Um, and, you know, I, I think that for me, I was very lucky growing up as a young person because, um, I don't know exactly whether it was just the fact that I was sort of too young and naive to understand that like myself being a Black person playing classical music was different. I didn't feel that way. And watching these documentaries, I'm sure you know about the art of violin. This was like my window into what could have been possible, you know, what was possible for me in the future.

I would watch these guys, Milstein and Gitlis and Menuhin, and just completely be entranced. And I never once did it cross my mind like, hmm, these guys don't look like me. But I think now in this day and age, especially where technology has completely taken over and we are aware of so much more, both immediately around us and also as far away as across an ocean, I think it's really important for kids to see themselves in the content, in the material, in the experiences that they accumulate as they grow up. You know, for me, I could only imagine how different my experience would have been had I known a great black violinist who I could have looked up to, you know, who I could have seen myself in on the stage. And I think that's one of the things that that very quickly became apparent to me was was really important in these school visits was most of the time I'm going to majority black or Latino communities where funding for the school is not great. Arts programs were either about to be cut or had already been cut. And many, many in many cases, those students came from challenging social backgrounds and circumstances. And so I think for them to see someone who's actually not like an old white guy in a tuxedo playing a violin was really impactful and powerful for them to see like, wow, actually, we're not that different.

And you're doing now, like, why can't I do that? You know, and I think as far as growing the audience internationally for classical music, that's how we do it, right? We create an environment where people can see sort of reflections of themselves, whether it's in the musicians on stage, whether it's in the music that they're hearing, or in the background of the composer, for example, in Florence Price. There are so many Black people and Black families who could read Florence Price's biography and listen to her music and latch on to those things that she was trying to say, I think, in her music. And I think as many people as can do that in Mozart, not everyone can. So I think from a programming standpoint, broadening the scope of the stories that we tell in classical music is so, so important. And I've seen already just in the past few years, since these albums have been released, how truly important it is and how much of an impact it makes on especially aspiring musicians, not even people who are trying to become professional musicians, but people who love music, right? And they want to continue discovering and finding new ways to love music and new things about music to love. And I think if you can find a little piece of your own personal story in a particular piece of music or in a particular composer, that's going to keep you coming back.

And it's going to keep your appetite up for continuing to try and find those pathways for connection and inspiration like we've been talking about. Yeah, eloquently put. In so many words. you said something earlier too that i feel like ties in with this and it's so important and it's a great transition into a question that i had um and i'm gonna make that twofold um at the beginning you talked about how you learn piano and at some point you had this thought of you know i'm just not smart enough for this and the one of the big part of the work that i do with with musicians is this important of mindset and how sometimes the power of one thought

can change and change everything for you can change your life um we talked about representation seeing something new can change your life because you're exposed to something new um what is a thought that maybe opened up new uh new worlds for you i mean you talked about your mother saying you just need to right you need to touch one person today that's enough already that is kind of an eye-opening thought is there a thought in particular that either had a really sort of um the word dramatic is not what i'm looking for but this french canadian is running out of words so i'll use dramatic but maybe had a profound profound much better word profound impact on your life or maybe it's a thought that you keep nearby daily to stay strong

yeah I think there's a I could I could offer a couple of uh thoughts I think the first one that comes to mind in terms of having a sort of profound impact on on me as an artist specifically is probably from Itzhak Perlman who was my teacher for for quite a number of years at Juilliard uh I first met him at his summer music program the Perlman music program which takes place in the summers on Long Island and uh it's a seven week long program all it's for all string players under the age of 18. And I was 14 when I first went there. And this was my very first lesson with him at the very beginning of the festival. So I was super nervous. I think I was playing like Wieniawski's second concerto or something that was kind of technically challenging. And

obviously I'd heard all of his recordings hundreds of times. I had so many questions for him about, how do you do this? How do you do that? How does this look so easy for you? You know, and all these other things as far as technique. And he stopped me before he ever answered any of my questions and he said you know let me ask you a question first before i answer any of yours that how does this music make you feel and i didn't really know what i hadn't thought about it and i think my first response was like oh it makes me feel nervous because it's really hard and i'm playing for you um and he said no seriously like think about it and then come back and we can talk about some of your questions because until you realize and discover for yourself what the

message of this music is what is the story that you're trying to tell the technique is is irrelevant you know the music comes first right it's not the other way around and and and i myself was sort of guilty of subscribing to that sort of uh ideology where okay i'll learn all the notes first and then i'll sprinkle in the music on top right but ultimately what you're doing is setting yourself up for having to unlearn unmusical playing right if you're learning something just to learn the notes and just to get the rhythm right and with no shape no color no phrasing no personality that is built into your system after so long and so once you feel like you have it you listen back and you say actually this is incredibly boring now i need to add some some

some stuff to it but i i think in my experience that's actually quite difficult right to have to approach something that you've always only approached as a technical pursuit and suddenly try to make it art and try to tell a story with it whereas for him his point was you know from the beginning when you first open the score for a piece of music whoa you need to be asking yourself questions yeah what why did he write this why did this composer write this why did she put this dynamic here and not there right why did you put it in this octave and not that octave and i think all of these decisions are um are decisions that composers ultimately made to tell a story and to communicate something if it's not a story it's an emotion or maybe a picture or a scene uh but that

was probably one of the most impactful um ideas that i still carry with me today especially when I'm teaching. It's something that I have come to, to accept, uh, for myself and something that of course I need reminding, uh, about, but anytime I have a chance to teach or whether it's a master class or, or a lesson of some kind, um, this idea drives my whole process because I've seen firsthand how instant and dramatic the change is with a student you've never met when you tell them, listen for for the next 20 minutes forget about whether you're playing in tune or not i don't care i'm not here to help you play in tune right you have a teacher for that yeah and even if i wanted to help you play in tune i couldn't fix it in 20 minutes right what i can do is ask you

let's try to figure out what your relationship is to this music right i can ask something simple like what do you think is one word that describes the feeling of this particular section in the music. And the student will say something. It can be something so, so simple. Oh, I think this section is heroic. And suddenly they play it again and it's magically in tune. Right. Right. And it's, and it's so much more engaging and interesting and you can see and feel that the student has much more fun creating something that is removed in a way from the physicality of playing the instrument. It's, it's all up here and it's in here. And I think when that shift in mentality happens, then I think a lot of doors are unlocked as far as developing more

command over the instrument and also developing a little bit more, a sense of trust and a sense of comfort in what you feel about the music. Because ultimately, that's, as a teacher, what I would want my students to get out of our lessons. I'm not going to teach you how to perfectly recreate the same technical sequence every time, right? But I can teach you how to leave the lesson and continue to approach things as if maybe you're your own teacher and asking yourself, why am I doing this? What in the music tells me that I need to do this? And if there's not something there, then maybe you can shift your approach a little bit. But I think that those words from Mr. Perlman about, you know, the technique serves the music and not the other

way around uh has been has been um extremely valuable over the past it's been 15 years since he said that to me and i'm still talking about it and one thing that i love about this you modeled something so important and i see that you're doing that as well with your teachers with your students rather is that he brought it back to you before he gave you answers who opened he opened the door for you to look inside before he pretended pretended that he had all the answers for you And I think that's, that's wonderful. And that is something to be emulated by, by all. Absolutely. Yeah. I think we're, we're hopefully continuing to move farther and farther away from the days of a teacher saying, Hey, this is the way to do it. And this is the fingering, right?

This is the fingering. This is the, this is the way that you should use your bow. You know what I mean? I think music is so incredibly subjective, not just classical music, but any genre, right? Any instrument, everyone has their own personal relationship to it. And so I think the best the best that you can do as a teacher or as a mentor or as a guiding figure in someone's life and work as a musician is to try and just gently push them closer to finding their own answer, right? That empowers them on their own. Exactly. Finding their own truth. And I think equipping someone with that degree of responsibility is incredibly productive and powerful, I think, especially for that young person who's now been given permission to make

their own decisions, right? Instead of waiting until the next lesson and saying, hey, how do I do this? So I think that's something that I still carry very close to my heart when I'm teaching or when I'm playing. Another question that I have about mindset for you, you play all over the world with some of the best orchestras, Chicago, New York, and you strike me as being someone who's really centered. What does that look like for you to, you know, there's a certain amount of pressure with operating at this high level. What helps you stay grounded? That's a great question. I think, first of all, a sense of balance in life is very important. So music is not my whole life, right? And it never has been. As much as I've always, it's always been my first love. It's been

the number one sort of priority um and the sort of you know primary activity that i spend time doing but i always have something else that i can treat as like an escape and just completely takes my mind off of music whether it's now for me it's golf i play a lot of golf uh it used to be going to the gym i used to go to the gym like religiously before that you know when i was when i was still uh in high school you know my my friends would come over and we had a basketball hoop in front of the house so we'd play for hours right um and i think you know it's it's important because music all this amazing classical music we get a chance to play is in some way an expression of our experience as human beings so as musicians who are meant to convey this experience we have to

have experiences outside of playing music right going and hanging out with friends or going and and seeing, uh, seeing a movie that you would have never otherwise gone to see. Um, I think a big part of it is, and I'm really not doing so well at this at the moment is maybe not using my phone as much, not scrolling on social media quite as much and sort of just, um, you know, that's one way. And I guess you could say to take your mind off of reality, but it's not an active state of, of being I think it's this sort of like autopilot mode where nothing really matters there's no consequence to anything that you're doing or anything that you're seeing um so it's actually an overload of exposure exactly it's just it's too much to do anything with but I think that

sense of balance and having almost like a second passion um has always been has always been important uh for me my mom was always the one who was very strict about practicing um and I always say that she was a hybrid tiger mom because i think i had one of those oh yeah because she said look practice three hours every day there's there's there's nothing you can say or do to get out of it that that is your job every single day but after you practice your three hours i really don't care what you do go and watch tv go play outside you know what i mean go across the street to your friend's house, do whatever, do nothing. I don't care. And especially in the early days of when I was trying to ramp up my practice schedule, my dad was always a little

concerned because he was like, listen, he's 10. Why is he doing this for three hours a day? His friends are outside knocking for him to come outside, let him go play. And my mom said, I will, but he has to practice. And she never lost that argument. I think after a while, both my dad and I always felt very comforted by the fact that he was he was kind of on my side in those moments where I didn't want to practice um but at the end of the day and especially now looking back that was that was the way that that it had to be I think um and I think one other thing that contributes to um I I guess yeah like you said this kind of centeredness or groundedness um is this idea again that i sort of got from my mom which is that everything happens for a reason

and it's hard at times to convince yourself of that especially when things aren't going well and things aren't going the way you wanted them to go uh i've had my fair share of experiences i go through a sort of cycle every few months where suddenly i feel like i'm not i almost feel like i I don't know how to play the violin. Like I've forgotten how it works and how to sort of get what I want out of the instrument. And those times used to really stress me out. I'm a very, very positive person. Extremely optimistic, sometimes maybe even to a fault. But it's always been the case that as happy and as optimistic and positive as I can be, the one thing that can throw me off is if I'm not feeling good on the instrument, if I'm not comfortable.

um and that used to really really bother me i mean so i i don't cry very much and some of the times that i remember really sort of just like breaking down in tears was because i just felt like i wasn't going anywhere with with the instrument and obviously in hindsight that was absolutely not true i mean i think as as players uh it's hard for us to to really see feel and hear improvement because we live with ourselves every day right that little tiny incremental improvement that happens day after day is invisible right it's not until you get you know a year down the road and you listen back to something you're like actually it wasn't that bad um but but you know i think this mindset applies as much to music as it does for my life

in general which is that i get excited when things aren't going well and i've had to like kind of train myself to to respond that way because um part of part of the fun in life for me at least is coming out of those low moments and and getting to a place where you can look down at where you just came from and say wow yeah i figured it out you know i did that yeah let's let's keep going now that was one of my questions for you actually is what keeps the fire going when you you feel like yeah to me to me it's really exciting you know life would suck if everything was great all the time because we get so bored and we'd lose this sense of appreciation for how great that thing is um um you know if if every single performance goes exactly how you want it

to i would imagine that would start to get boring right um it's like if i stopped getting nervous for concerts that would be a little weird to me because it would feel like suddenly i stopped caring right i think i i take nerves as a very a very positive thing um which i know is much much easier said than done nerves can be can be crippling at their worst um but again this this attitude of like hey you know what even if this doesn't go the way that i want it to go i'm going to learn something from this, right? And I'm going to be able to spin it around, maybe not immediately, maybe even not, you know, weeks later, but months or years later, I'll be able to look back at that experience that didn't go well and say, wow. But that's what I learned from

that experience. You know, there's always something to take away and something to learn from moments that you feel like you're less than your best. And I think that pervades, you know, every aspect, um, of life. I think you have to appreciate the low moments and the times when you're not feeling your best in order to appreciate the times when you're, you're way up and you're on a high and you're feeling great and everything's going well, right? Otherwise we'd lose gratitude for those, for those moments in time. Uh, and I think that, that is ultimately the essence of, um you know living a full and enjoyable life is reaching the reaching the sort of mountaintop of the day or of the week or the month um and then going back down into the trenches and working

hard at something and overcoming an obstacle or a boundary of some kind that to me is is probably what the most fulfilling thing is about playing violin is can is we're on this lifelong never-ending road of discovery right and of learning and of overcoming challenges and obstacles right there are things that i've been trying to find a way around and find a solution for since i was a kid and things i still haven't really found that for you know and and and it used to really bother me because i was like well how can i be a great violinist if i don't have all the tools that you know every single technique you know um but at the end of the day if everybody could do everything then no one would really be that special would they everyone has their own

unique uh strengths and weaknesses that together make up who they are who that unique individual is and so yeah i think embracing tough times is um like i said it's it's easier said than done But I think it makes, it puts things into perspective in a way that I think only sort of increases the amount of gratitude that I have for whatever, good or bad. Beautiful, but I love this answer. And it makes me think also that it's such a great approach for people who are suffering with, you know, I hear it from musicians all the time, debilitating perfectionism. And I feel like this is such a great way to start tackling it. Yeah, absolutely. I think there really is no place for it.

in in classical music or music of any kind um it's expression right it's it's it's um an artistic manifestation of our experiences as humans none of that can ever be perfect right drop your mic and so you know i think that the the sooner that we can get over that and get away from this idea that it's not a good performance unless every note is in tune I mean, Mr. Perlman used to, he used to host these Q&A nights for us, the students at his music program over the summer. And I don't remember. Actually, you know what, this was more of a YouTube night. So there were Q&A nights, and there was also YouTube nights where he put together a playlist of his favorite recordings. favorite artists of all genres many of them were singers which i think had a bit of big effect on how i sort of started to relate to sound specifically as it relates to violin right i just wanted to figure out how to sound like that singer yeah you know that's a great idea i stopped

trying to sound like hyphens right which is impossible and suddenly you start to sound like you start wanting to sound like ella fitzgerald you start wanting to sound like uh i don't know Luther Vandross or Pavarotti, um, of course it's unattainable, but eventually you start to want to actually start sounding like your own voice, which I think is the crux of the, uh, the challenge. But, um, he would always pose this question to us because he would play several, maybe three or four different recordings, same piece, different artists, usually singers, different singers. Um,

and he would always pose this question to us. Would you rather go to a performance and hear someone sing or play perfectly, not a note is out of place, not a beat is in the wrong place, everything is perfectly in place, very clean, tidy, but maybe not the most interesting sound, the most compelling voice? or would you rather hear someone who every now and then there's a note that might stick out it might be out of place but they have the most incredible quality of sound or sense of phrasing or timing rhythm and for him the answer was the same every time i would always rather hear the more interesting player with a couple of little technical difficulties here and there then hear someone who can play anything perfectly without that that spark that makes you feel something that takes you back to your grandfather's living room yeah yeah you know um so so that for

me is is what it's about and i think that's what makes uh that's what keeps it fresh for me performing in so many different places with different orchestras and different repertoire um is time and again having to sort of succumb to the moment and say okay what's it going to be today you know what am i feeling today what's the story today um it's funny i've had a couple of experiences where maybe into the first second maybe even into the third movement of a concerto i haven't really made like a technical mistake i haven't missed a note or i haven't played anything out of tune or no bow whistling and i'm kind of like oh this is really scary i wish i would just make a mistake now so i can just loosen up you know and it's once it's not a perfect performance

anymore in a sense i feel a bit freer to take risks and let things happen the way that they happen on the day so yeah again everything that i've said in regards to this sort of mindset thing is easier said than done but i think if it's something that you can sort of train into your system if you really stick to it and and convince yourself that these things are true yeah you know hear this from randall to you i love what you just said too it's a training this will just happen absolutely yeah yeah i love that thank you so much for being so generous with your time it was you know we just had rehearsal but people are going to hate me if i don't ask some questions about practice okay so i hope that's okay um so you've worked at the highest level for a long time

How has your definition of productive practice changed over the years? That's a great question. I think. Thank you. I like that. Yeah, it's a really great question. You know, I think most, if not all, you know, young violinists growing up at some point, we think that, you know, we have to hit a certain number of hours for it to be a good practice day. right I think for me in high school um it was four to five hours was was my number every day that I was trying to hit and most of the time I did um and fortunately you know this entire time from when I was 14 until when I went to well into college and I had Mr. Perlman in my corner and Catherine Cho was my other primary teacher uh Philippa Quint I studied with before them all

fantastic violinists and they all definitely know how to practice. Um, but I think nowadays I don't always have four or five hours to practice. And even if I did, maybe I don't want to practice five hours on my day off. I have to do my three. Exactly. Exactly. I've got to, I've got to stick by mom's rules, even though I'm not under her roof anymore. Um, but you know, Well, I think the productivity of my practice, I mean, it's not necessarily like a concrete measurement that I can take, but I think it has a lot to do and correlates with how present I am in whatever it is that I'm playing. I feel like I have to be asking myself questions for me to get something out of a practice session. I never really practice for the sake of repeating something over and over again anymore. I mean, I do just by nature of trying new things with the same passage.

But I think there's always there always has to be something that you're after. And this is a dangerous sort of way to put it, because it's not necessarily it doesn't mean I want to fix this thing today or I want to get better at this thing today. It might be. I want to play this phrase differently today. today right a different inflection on this particular note or maybe a little bit of a different timing here or you know maybe this place is actually green and maybe it's not yellow anymore these little tiny like conceptual things that are very personal to you um trying to get a little bit closer to your truth in what you want out of the music right and i think these things these sort of lofty questions ultimately trickle down all the way to things like

bohold or posture you know what i mean the the process of um the process of arriving at these thoughts and then saying okay so if i want to do this i have to do this i want to do this i have to do this and there's sort of a a trickle down effect which if you allow it to it can take you back to the most basic aspects uh of your playing and obviously if this is your thought process and you're working on beethoven concerto it's going to take four hours whether you like it or not so um i think it's it changes very very often for me uh but i think as long as i feel like i've spent you know a quality two three hours really present with my instrument and with myself and with the music and really actively thinking about what it is again i'm going back

to Mr. Perlman's quote, which is, why? Why am I doing this? Why am I playing this piece? Why is this passage written this way? Why does this passage make me feel this way? And these things ultimately, again, start to spread out into the rest of your technical checklist or whatever the case may be. But I think it's much more, they say it all the time, it's a little bit of an overused phrase, but it's quality, not quantity. If you practice five hours and you're watching TV the whole time, you're not really going to remember and really hold on to the things that you worked on, even if they might have been very productive. But I think if you're sitting there, you know, let's say you play a passage once. It takes you 30 seconds.

And then you spend the next, like, you know, minute and a half thinking, what is it about this place? That's the kind of thing that's going to get you closer to something that someone listening can actually relate to. Yeah. And, you know, find their own experience in. They're not going to find that by hearing a perfect Paganini 5, you know. But I think if you can find a way to make Paganini 5 raise some eyebrows, be like, oh, I didn't know that harmony was there. Yeah.

You know, oh, I didn't know that that little sequence was. And you start to bring out elements of the music that even if everybody knows it, nobody has necessarily listened to it or heard it or played it in this way, with these kinds of emphases and this kind of um kind of a story behind it so i i think that i mean it's a very vague answer but i think that's what for me makes practice productive is when questions start to pop up and and i feel like i'm actually able to answer some of them i'm with you on the why i have that word it's a drawing that my daughter did and it's framed right above you Oh, that's perfect. That's perfect. That's perfect. Yeah.

How about, well, no, I think we already covered that because you've answered it so beautifully. Here's maybe a tough question about performance. So when you step on stage and I don't know why that would be hard, you know, New York Phil, Chicago symphony, what is helpful for you to help you anchor yourself in that moment? Oh, that's a good question. I mean, breathing is a very important one for me. As often as possible, I try to feel as if anytime I begin playing, begin a phrase, begin a note, that I'm exhaling, as if I'm actually singing, right? I'm with you. I think that's a big one for me. Breathing is something that, uh, we take for

granted as, as string players. Cause we don't, we don't necessarily need to have full, you know, total control over our breath the way that wind and brass players do, but not, not really paying attention to our breath can be equally destructive as it would be for a wind or a brass player. Because for me, I mean, you probably saw, and those of you watching probably saw when I said, and i and i actually exhaled you can see everything move down yeah everything you know everything just allows gravity to to do its thing whereas if i inhale naturally things start to rise and they start to become held and imagine if i were to yeah and hold my breath and things start to become so uncomfortable so quickly and i'm one of those players who especially in softer more

intimate passages i care so deeply about those places that the last thing i want to do is give it too much so i often overcompensate and things start to feel like this like i'm kind of floating you know i'm coming out of the string and it starts to feel less grounded because i'm fighting against the sort of natural relaxation the natural forces of gravity and i think breathing helps a lot with that um and i think the other thing is just enjoying the music that i'm playing you know um i fell in love with music because um it made me feel it made me feel really special to hear a piece of music and to understand that you know i was having a very unique and personal experience that no one else could have could have

had you know and so to to take that mindset as a listener and bring it onto the stage and say okay this is good this is going to be the only time from now until the end of time that this piece is played this way so let's find out what that is you know what i mean i try not to plan so much i actually try not to play even too much on the concert day um because i i don't necessarily want to have exhausted um first of all my energy but i don't necessarily want to have decided i don't want to play long enough to say okay i'm going to do it that way tonight because to me that takes some of the fun out of it uh and it actually takes you out of the present if you know okay in 30 bars i'm going to do this whereas if you're almost sort of a passenger and you're

experiencing the music both physically and mentally and spiritually as it's happening i think you open yourself up to so much more opportunity for spontaneity and originality and personality um the last thing that i would want is for something to feel or sound planned because again the sort of trajectory uh emotionally speaking of a particular piece is not set in stone so if we can sort of teach ourselves that in practice you know so that instead of practicing to play it one way the same way every time you practice in a sense to give yourself options so that let's say you feel like you know laying into it a little bit more on one day you have an option for that or let's say the next day you want it to be actually a much more

intimate moment you have an option for that it's not something that takes you out of your comfort zone to do something different than what's on the page or than what you did the last time you played it so i think that that's comforting to me it's just just being in the present and um yeah breath is a good one too i love it because i'm also an exhaler i see and like i said exactly what you said because we don't technically have to breathe but actually we do have to breathe exhaling what do you need to do once your lungs are empty you need to breathe so i feel like not only does it relax our upper body all of the muscles and that all of this but also it's an incentive to engage into the breathing absolutely so helpful yeah so i'm not your first interview i'm definitely not

your last is there a question that maybe it was never asked that you would have loved for someone to ask you oh that's a really good question i actually can't think of one no i can't think of one yeah i don't know i i'm i'm a little bit of a not necessarily recluse but like after rehearsal usually I go back to the hotel room and it's pretty quiet. I might watch some like YouTube videos or I might catch up on some sports highlights or something like that. But I generally don't find myself thinking like, Oh, I wish I could have talked about that today. You know what I mean?

So yeah, I don't know. Every interview is a little bit different. Many of them ask the same question, which you haven't, which I very much appreciate. But yeah, generally, I'm sort of happy to unpack whatever, whatever unfolds in that, in that moment. It's a little bit, it's kind of similar to, to playing last question before i let you go relax sure like a recluse and you have an actual tip for the listeners anything that they could implement maybe in their musical lives or you know their regular life to find some balance am i talking to violinists no you're talking to

all musicians all musicians of of okay hmm that changes things i had something in mind but only really well it could work for multiple instruments but you know i want to i want to give something that every everyone any possible person who could be listening i think i think something that anyone musician or not can can um could afford to build into their daily practice if they haven't already is actively reminding yourself at least once a day what you what in your life you're grateful for I think in a lot of ways, it's a really, really, really difficult time in our world and in our country, obviously here in the U.S. for very, very obvious reasons. And I've had a lot of moments myself where I sort of, I don't know, I have like a zoom out moment and I exit my own sort of personal sphere.

and I'm like, wow. There are millions and millions and millions of people who would probably give anything to be in the situation that I'm in. And that's not necessarily related to my career or my music or anything. Sometimes I'm sitting in a restaurant and eating food and drinking a glass of water and I'm like, man, somebody could really, really use this right now. And so I think reminding ourselves of the little things in our lives that we might take for granted and that, you know, we can sit there and say, you know what, I'm really grateful that I have this, you know, I'm really grateful I have this person in my life. I'm really grateful that I decided to cook breakfast this morning, you know what I mean? Instead of go out and buy

something or not eat. You know, I think reminding ourselves of the little things that make us happy, little things that make life, um, a little bit easier can go a long way. I think, uh, there's a lot, I think there's a lot more that could bog us down right now than there is that could lift us up. Uh, so we have to be our own lifters, you know, we, we, we have to do that for ourselves. And so I think just taking 30 seconds at the beginning of the day and saying, well, you know, grateful to be alive today, you know, grateful to be able to take a deep breath, grateful to be able to, you know, call my mom or my brother, you know, connect with people or grateful that I don't have to see anyone today. Whatever it is for you that makes you smile a little bit, remind yourself that that's there and be grateful for it and thankful for it because it's not guaranteed. And I think that's probably the one actionable tip that I think can apply to everyone. And this also serves as a reminder to myself to continue practicing this sense of gratitude.

It's really important, especially, again, in such hard times that we're in. I think that's part of what I was talking about earlier of appreciating the highs and the lows, right? No matter how low you go, there's always something to be grateful for, right? There's always something that is going to stick with you no matter how high you get or how low you get. And I think that's, that's important to recognize what that thing is or what, who that person is, um, and, and keep them close. Beautifully put. Randall, we can find everything about you at randallgoosby.com. Yes.

Correct. And everything that's not there, you can find on my Instagram. Yeah. So everyone, please check it out. Where can people catch you live in the 25, 26 season? Where can we see you? Um, a few different places. um i think i start the season in my hometown of memphis tennessee i'm opening their season for

the memphis symphony playing tchaikovsky concerto um so i've got a few tchaikovsky sort of the main uh piece for for the fall winter uh so memphis uh i'm actually going to be in asia for a couple weeks which i'm very excited about making my debut at the kbs symphony uh peter ungin conducting um let's see um actually before i'm already in the fall but before then i'll be in london doing my first bbc proms yes that's right very exciting yeah with the orchestra nationale de france and uh christian michelaru conducting uh it's going to be the french night at the prom so i'm playing a couple of different uh pieces by french composers one of which is the G major concerto of Joseph Bologna,

so Ballet de Saint-Georges. And the other one is Chanson Poème, which is one of my favorite piece. I'm sure that most violinists would agree. I'll also be going back to my real hometown, which is where I was born in San Diego in December, which I'm really excited about. I love going to the West Coast and to the South

in December and winter months. I'm a warm weather guy. But following that in the spring, i'll be doing quite a big tour with the sphinx virtuosi um i i think it's a probably coming back to chicago i'm guessing i would hope so they have two tours one of them is in the fall one of them is in the spring i have the feeling that the spring one is is a little bit more west coast centric but uh it could be that it could very well be that we're back um in chicago and i did a special arrangement of uh the suite for violin and piano by william grant still

for violin and strings string orchestra but actually violin and strings and also i did a second version for cello and strings because in the fall tour uh sterling elliott is going to play the solo part so yeah few few exciting uh dates and tours and uh hopefully some of uh some of your listeners are running to on the road yeah i'm going to put all these links in the show notes uh of course your beautiful cds everybody should grab those and i'm gonna have all the links to the social websites official notes i cannot thank you enough for this generosity of time and insight and wisdom and i mean i was already a fan of your playing but now i'm really a fan of of you as an artist as a person so thank you so much

and there you have it thank you so much for spending this time with me today if you enjoyed this episode i'd love it if you'd share with your friends and colleagues Take a screenshot, post it on social media, and tag me. I'm mind over finger everywhere. I always love hearing your favorite takeaways. And if you're ready to take your playing career to the next level, I'd love to invite you to join the Music Mastery Experience. This is my signature group coaching program

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Until next time, much love and à bientôt. ¶¶