Stephen Burns Interview
Stephen Burns (00:00:00):
I've had students come to me, and it used to be that I would ask them, well, what do you want to do? What's your goal? What's your ultimate dream? It's no longer the first question I ask them, but I would ask them that and they would say, I'd like to be a soloist. I would say, well, that's very nice. Where would you like to be that soloist? You can be that soloist in your bedroom, or you can be that soloist in your grandmother's retirement community. Or you can be that soloist in your church or in your hometown or your home state, or it could be in a regional or a national or an international situation. They're all vastly different things, and it really depends on what makes you happy. So that becomes my new first question rather than, what's your goal and what do you want to do with this whole thing? But it's really like, when are you happiest playing music?
Leah Roseman (00:01:06):
Hi, you're listening to Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman. This podcast drives to inspire you through the personal stories of a diversity of musicians with in-depth conversations and great music that reveal the depth and breadth to a life. In music trumpeter, Stephen Burns has been acclaimed on four continents for his virtuosity and interpretive depth in recitals, orchestral appearances, chamber music, and multimedia performances. He's the founder and artistic director of the Fulcrum Point New Music Project in Chicago, and in this interview, you'll hear him talk about some of his mentors, including Arnold Jacobs and Pierre Thibaud. After winning several important competitions and awards, including the Maurice André Concours International de Paris, Steven Burns was able to launch his solo career at a young age, but touring internationally brings challenges, which he discussed candidly with me. Stephen has also worked closely with Madeline Bruser and is a certified teacher in The Art of Practicing. In this conversation, we talked about mindfulness, the importance of a student-centered approach to teaching the deep connection to your audience, programming innovative programs, and Stephen shared valuable advice for not only brass players and musicians, but for all of us.
(00:02:16):
Like all my episodes, you can watch this on my YouTube channel or listen to the podcast on all the podcast platforms, and I've also linked the transcript to my website, leahroseman.com. The podcast theme music was commissioned from Composer Nick Kold, and you can use the timestamps to navigate the episode. Before we jump into our conversation, I wanted to let you know that you can support this independent podcast through a beautiful collection of merchandise with a very cool, unique and expressive design from artist Steffi Kelly. This weekly podcast is in season four, and I send out an email newsletter where you can get access to exclusive information about upcoming guests. Have a look at the description of this episode where you'll find all the links, including the merch store and also the support link to buy this independent podcaster a coffee.
(00:03:07):
Hi Stephen. Thanks so much for joining me here today.
Stephen Burns (00:03:11):
It's my pleasure.
Leah Roseman (00:03:13):
Madeline Bruser had suggested that I speak with you, so I thought it might be interesting to talk about your connection with the art of practicing and her work.
Stephen Burns (00:03:24):
Well, it goes way back. Both Madeline and I practice in the same Buddhist meditation community and have been kind of dancing around the same material for decades now. And back in the nineties, she invited me to kind of collaborate on her book, the Art of Practicing and Making Music From The Heart as a consultant on posture for Brass playing specifically on the trumpet. And so that was the beginning. And then over the years we worked together at the Art of Practicing Institute and developed different techniques and collaborative approaches to teaching, and I've learned a tremendous amount in interacting with her. So it's been really, really fun and enriching and quite stimulating.
Leah Roseman (00:04:15):
Yeah, I was interested, I learned a lot about your early years and your education and your very well-known teachers, and we'll get into some trumpet stuff, but I'm curious also as an educator, how has your approach changed over the years with your involvement with meditation and all of this work?
Stephen Burns (00:04:33):
Well, especially through the Art of Practicing and the Art of Practicing Institute with Madeline and our colleagues, the student centered approach has really shifted things dramatically. I think in my early career and all the way through the beginning of university teaching, there's a seductive quality to being the master and imposing one's point of view, and this is much different. This is really more about connecting with the student's view and what they're really trying to accomplish and supporting that and working more holistically. So that's been the primary shift in terms of incorporating mindfulness and meditation and Buddhist principles in my teaching that also has evolved over time. In the beginning, it was more about calming the mind and the body down and connecting mind and body. And then over time it became much more of a philosophical approach as to how to better connect with myself and have my students connect with themselves. And to recognize that there isn't really any difference between the performer and the listener between artist and audience.
Leah Roseman (00:05:53):
Could you go into that a little bit? That idea?
Stephen Burns (00:05:56):
Well, idea is that we're all human beings and that we all want to be happy and enjoy our lives. And that by creating this connection, this recognition of our shared humanity, this interconnection, this inter being, sometimes it's called within our own perspective, then we can really make music from the heart and directly to other people's hearts and really feel that sense of community in the sense of shared humanity and shared appreciation, both for the great tradition of our art form and this sense of tenderness and longing and celebration and transcendence that great music and listening in community can bring.
Leah Roseman (00:06:58):
Yeah, beautifully expressed, Stephen. So you're artistic director of Fulcrum Point,
Stephen Burns (00:07:05):
Right, and Fulcrum Point is a new music project, so the full name is the Fulcrum Point New Music Project.
Leah Roseman (00:07:10):
Okay, there we go. Yeah. And when they brought you in, they wanted you to redefine the concert experience and bring new life to this, correct?
Stephen Burns (00:07:19):
Right. Originally, there wasn't any Fulcrum Point New Music Project. I was an Artist in Residence with the Chicago Performing Arts Chicago. It was the name of the organization, kind of like the Brooklyn Next Wave Festival, if you're familiar with that. It's kind of an omnivorous, contemporary music, art, dance, poetry, film, puppetry and things like that. And I was asked to come to Chicago and create some programming that would kind of wake Chicago up to the complete possibility of what I call new art music of our generation. It is very easy for our art form, if you want to call it classical music, to be retrospective and to be constantly cherishing and nurturing and protecting or conserving. If you think about conservatories the past, the great legacy of European art music, but in reality, there's great art music in many cultures around the world when you think about Indian classical music and Gagaku Bugaku, Gugaku and all of the great Japanese and Gamalan in Indonesia and traditional musics in Americas here.
(00:08:34):
So there's lots out there. And of course there is a sense of, well, especially coming out of the 19th century viewpoint of Eurocentric Euro superiority. And of course this whole idea of classical music was not born in the United States. It was born in Germany, and we know what things happened in Germany around the last century. So that sense of hegemony and blinded view of the world, it was naturally part of our American classical music scene. The viewpoint was there is high art and there's low art and that specific kinds of art, and especially in contemporary art music, the specificities were modernism, serialism, and a certain cadre of European and American composers who controlled not only the art form, but the funding of that art form and what gets to be presented and who is that agency representation, all of that stuff. And so Susan Litman was the director at the time, and she was a visionary, and so I was not the first artist in residence that they had. I was very, very honored and privileged to be included in their list of artists in residence, which included Laurie Anderson and Gidon Kramer among others. So Marie Chouinard is a choreographer from Montreal who was also one. And yeah, so I don't need to list more, but the idea being let's switch it up.
(00:10:23):
And interestingly enough, we started off with one concert and it was pretty traditional, but rather than have say 75% of the concert be old music and 25% be new music, it was the reverse. We had one piece of old music around which the contemporary works were framed or organized. It's kind of a mandala principle if you think about it from the Buddhist perspective. You put the central figure in the center of the mandala, and then there are a bunch of different ways of entering into the experience.
(00:11:02):
And so I was looking at the urban life experience as well as looking at it from the perspective of song and dance. So the traditional works were Baroque works and then Stravinsky's Pulcinella Suite, and then there were City Life and by Jeffrey Hass, Copland, Quiet City by Aaron Copland and several other works on the program that kind of rounded it out stylistically. And then that began to evolve into everything from introducing the different kinds of music that were minimalists, different kinds of music that were influenced by rock and roll and jazz and Latin popular cultures. And this whole idea of the double-edged sword of selling out when you play music that is either crossing, they would call it some sort of s stylistic crossing or hybrid or mixing or when Kiri, Tekanawa would sing jazz standards. And the crazy thing is that people have sung folk music from the beginning of time in this Western tradition. So it's kind of all very conceptual and silly if you ask me, but what can I say?
Leah Roseman (00:12:26):
And you also include some improvisation in your concerts,
Stephen Burns (00:12:29):
Right? So over time, this is now 26 years, we have explored different aspects of what I call new art music because first of all, what do you call this stuff? If you say contemporary classical composition, it becomes a little, first of all, it's not classical yet. We don't really know if it's going to be classic or not. And is composition the only form? And does that mean it has to be ink on paper? Does that mean it can't be conceptual? It can't be graphic notation, it can't be instructional works. I mean, there's a lot there. So I began exploring the complete spectrum of new art music from improvisational music, which included jazz and rock and roll and Latin and as well as traditional music from Asia and Africa. And so in a very kind of provocative way, the idea of the fulcrum point originally was this leverage, this point where the leverage of popular culture could be applied to classical culture. But if you really think about the Bach Suites or the Handel Suites or many of the Symphonia and other works in the opera and everything else, they were combining popular dance court dance to the incorporating them into their concert music. So there were Minuets and Sarabandes and Gavottes and Courantes and all kinds of things that everybody knew about as well as song form and some contra dances and Turkish marches and all kinds of things that were being peppered into music.
(00:14:24):
So it's not a new idea. The idea of course for the 20th century and the 21st century was what do you do with Afrobeat? What do you do with artists like Steve Lacey who is a free improv, even the jazz musicians kind of wonder if his, is it jazz kind of thing. And of course, everybody kind of gave Miles Davis a hard time when he started going electric and doing Bitches Brew and later musics is that jazz. And so the idea of improvised music and composed music also form a kind of fulcrum point, a leverage point, a tipping point you could say, as well as electronic and acoustic music that same way. And then of course, interdisciplinary in ways that we can express great art in a kinesthetic way or mixing poetry and music. So all of these things became the fulcrum point, and that's the concept of the name of the group. It really evolved in group and grew. So the idea of tradition and innovation, composition and improvisation, acoustic and electronic, and as well as artistic and social political,
Leah Roseman (00:15:51):
You're about to hear Hindemith's Sonata for Trumpet, the second movement with David Korevaar on piano and Stephen Burns on trumpet. The link to that album is in the show notes for this podcast.(music)
Stephen Burns (00:18:43):
I started commissioning works while I started composing my first works when I was middle school, so what's that, 13 years old. And my first work was played with my middle school orchestra, had a very interesting experience because I was into minimalism even then. I and my teacher said, oh, well, there's a lot that you can do with all 12 tones. In fact, I'm going to bring my friend into class next week and we're all going to show him our scores, and then he'll show us his score. And this mountain of a man walks through the door. I mean, I'm talking six foot eight and a beard down to here, and it was Oliver Knussen, the British composer who was in residence with the Boston Symphony. And we showed he was mesmerizing, and he showed us his score, which was the size of someone's desk, you know, and ours were little eight and a half by 11 pieces of paper. But it was really wonderful to work with him and then have that experience. So then over the years studying at Julliard and doing all the different things in New York and Paris and Cologne and working with different composers, I began to understand the idiomatic styles of each instrument, and I kind of cut my teeth in the professional world by playing with singers. I realized that trumpet has this kind of double-edged sword, two-sided coin aspect that is that crisp and articulate trumpet tradition, but it does have this sustained lyrical vocal quality to it, and that's what makes it an ideal partner with singers.
Leah Roseman (00:20:38):
Yeah, I worked with Oliver Knussenn when I was at Tanglewood as a student, and you don't forget somebody like that.
Stephen Burns (00:20:45):
Yeah, we might've been there the same time in the eighties probably, right?
Leah Roseman (00:20:50):
Yeah, it was a little bit after that. I think I was 91, but
Stephen Burns (00:20:54):
91.
Leah Roseman (00:20:56):
But you mentioned starting to compose when you were young and actually your middle school band director, was it Dan Riley? I was taking notes on another interview.
Stephen Burns (00:21:04):
Yeah, Dan Riley.
Leah Roseman (00:21:05):
It sounded like he was an incredible teacher and motivator for you young students.
Stephen Burns (00:21:11):
I wouldn't be sitting here having this conversation with you if it weren't for him. I mean, in brief, he was a very ambitious classical flutist and composer. He also played cello and bass and piano well enough to read scores and things like that, and probably could have landed a job in a second tier or third tier orchestra somewhere, but wanted to stay in the Boston area and realized the number of flute jobs in Boston was fairly limited. And so he got a graduate degree in education and landed a really good job in Wellesley, which has, it's a suburban affluent town that has a really great performing arts department and everything else. So he was the junior colleague and of course the senior colleague, the director of performing arts for the school, and in fact for the whole town was the conductor of both the orchestra and the big band and the main concert band. This was a middle school that had three concert bands, two jazz bands and a symphony orchestra.
(00:22:27):
And so they shared the bands and a marching band. Of course, everybody has to have a football team because that's what life is all about. So after a few years, Dan was chomping at the bit and he said, because he's a string player and a flutist, and the other guy's a big band lead trumpet player, so why is he conducting the orchestra? So he said, give me the orchestra please and I can really grow it. And he said, all right, but you have to teach music 101 to the seventh graders and direct the JV marching band. He had a JV marching band and a varsity marching band, so it was like punishment city. So what he did was he took the music 101 music appreciation class, and he told every class that he taught, anyone who wants to learn to play viola cello or bass can come on Tuesdays and Thursdays before school, and I'll give you free lessons. We have instruments, don't worry about it. And within a couple of years, he had an orchestra with 24 violins and eight violas and eight cellos and four basses, and all the wind players you could shake a stick at. So he was really demanding, very sweet, very funny, and incredibly hardworking. I mean, when we would sound less than good, he would kind of look at you and say molto fakioso and things like that. And he kind of did the Interlochen challenge thing where every week, the main solos and the strings and winds were up for grabs. And so anybody who wanted to play the solo could audition and the orchestra would vote on who got to play first in that what we called the hot seat. And so the motivation was there, and then when we did musicals and things like that, he would take all the songs and overtures and everything else, and he would rearrange them so that the people in the orchestra who could really play, would get their feature. And so that was also motivating. And one day he was trying to organize the JV marching band when I was like 12 years old, and he had everybody play a B flat major scale, and you've gone across the flutes and across the clarinets and across the oboes and et cetera, and finally gets to the trumpets. And I played and he stopped the whole band, and he basically went, he is going to have an international career. And I'm going like, yeah, right. I'm going to be a doctor. I was all pre-med from the time I was a little kid, what my ambition was. But he continued to push me and continued to support me and introduced me to all kinds of great musicians. He would give me loan me records of Arthur Rubinstein and Rosa Poncel, who was this great soprano in the 1920s and thirties, and then jazz musicians. And he was a great guy and he wanted to have our standards higher. So he taught everybody solfege, and he taught everybody music theory and he taught everybody, and then when the music theory got good enough, he said, well, if you want to learn to compose, I can teach you that. And that was it. And then it was off to the races.
Leah Roseman (00:26:04):
Yeah, I heard you tell a story about how you found out about Tanglewood and you wanted to go and your parents wouldn't let you at first.
Stephen Burns (00:26:13):
So what happened after Dan Riley as I got to high school and the high school band director and orchestra director was not nearly as proactive, nice guy, really good musical, wonderful person, but he was like, let's keep it relaxed. And so I got involved with the Youth symphonies and I had a funk band on the side, and we did all kinds of things, and I was playing lots of music all weekend long. I would leave, well, yeah, I would leave home the quarter of seven and go to school and practice for an hour before school started and then go to school and practice at lunch. And then I would after school was the Massachusetts Youth Wind Ensemble. And then I'd come home to a friend's house and we'd rehearse with the funk band and have a party and then get up the next morning and practice from six to seven breakfast and then do the marching band and youth symphony. So I was in two youth symphonies and playing way too much. My parents were saying, this is going to hurt your grades. A friend of mine who ended up being my college roommate eventually was this extraordinary trumpeter, and he went to spend the summers at Tanglewood. And so one year in Youth Symphony, he said, you should audition for Tanglewood. You're good enough to get in. It'd be great to have you there, and you and I can be a team again.
(00:27:38):
And my parents who are now deceased, but had five children at the time, and they were staring down the barrel of four kids in college at the same time. There were four of us within five years, the four oldest. So I was mowing lawns in the summertime to make some money, and my parents weren't taking vacations, they were just grinding it out. But they finally, when I was 15 years old or so, they decided to take a vacation and it was like the vacation of a lifetime. They went on a pilgrimage to Rome and Jerusalem and Bethlehem and the whole thing. And of course, it was decided for me that I was not going to audition for Tanglewood
Leah Roseman (00:28:26):
Because they didn't want you going into music at that point.
Stephen Burns (00:28:29):
Well, I was not going to music. That was a decision that was de facto. I was the one with straight A's and had the capacity and the interest to go in pre-med in college. So that was that. But I was beginning to get interested in music and excel in it and everything else. And so while they were away, I forged their name on the application and I auditioned and was accepted, and they came home to an acceptance letter on the desk and sheepish looking son and a very challenging conversation to be had.
(00:29:09):
So they were very wise, and because they knew how strong-willed and determined and hardworking I was. But at the same time, they have no idea what classical music was like in terms of a career. Their association with the musicians were the 1950s big band, swing band, Gene Krupa and that whole thing, which they associated with marijuana and I don't know, divorce or something, those jazz musicians, those musicians, what did my dad call them? I think he goes those long haired types. Back before the sixties, the classical musicians who were the ones who wore their hair long, that changed in 1960 something. But yeah, and so the agreement was that at the end of the summer, at the end of the summer, I would go to the principal trumpet of the Boston Symphony and play for them. And that would happen anyway, because I was getting credit at BU for the BU TI program and said, ask if I had the talent and what it takes to have a career in classical music, especially in orchestral music. And that was kind of like the defacto fallback kind of thing. So I did. And he said, Roger Voisin was the teacher there at the time, and Armando Ghitalla was also there. And so they said, well, you've got a beautiful sound and you're a good musician. You have no articulation. They put it in a much more trumpet crude way, but why not? And so then I came back and so the agreement I had with my parents was I could go and do a double major in pre-med and music performance, which is kind of an hysterical concept if you ask me.
Leah Roseman (00:31:12):
But you didn't do that. You went to Julliard.
Stephen Burns (00:31:16):
I applied to BU and to Oberlin and Jeff Burglar, who was my buddy from the Youth Symphony and from Tanglewood, he said, oh, you should apply to Julliard too. You've got what it takes to get into Julliard. And I said, well, they already got one person from Massachusetts. Why would they take too, not knowing how everything works. So BU and Oberlin had pre-med and music double majors. They were the only schools at the time. And so I got into both of those and by some fluke, I got into Julliard. And then it came time to really decide. And the reality of looking at a pre-med and another five or six years of med school and looking at an undergraduate and probably a graduate degree and a lot of hard work, I saw 10 years of serious study before I would either be successful in either path. And as a 17-year-old, there was no way I could see myself doing both. I was already burning my candle at both ends with academics and practicing five hours a day and being part of different things. I mean, I cut back on the youth symphonies and focused on different things. So I chose Julliard. And yeah, I mean there's lots of the stuff that's where life really changes when first of all, you move away from home and to a major city, and there's the difference between suburban anywhere and New York City or Paris or London or Berlin or whatever. It's like a complete culture shock. And New York City in 1977, whoa baby,
Leah Roseman (00:33:31):
It was kind of rough, right?
Stephen Burns (00:33:33):
It was raw, it was really rough and really raw and really cheap. Actually, that was the good news. It was before the whole thing shifted. So I was able to exist on $300 a month, which included rent and food and extra things like telephone and whatnot. This was pre-cell phones. And then I would survive. I didn't have much money for concert tickets, so I would find the free concerts that were in town, the people are always doing that. And then I would stub into concerts, which was the vernacular for go to a major concert hall, knowing that the wealthy patrons really only liked the piano soloist or the violin soloist. And they don't really like Strauss or Stravinsky or Shastakovich or anything too overwrought. So they will be leaving
Leah Roseman (00:34:42):
At intermission
Stephen Burns (00:34:42):
And if you, at intermission. So ask them for back in the day when there was a paper ticket, you would ask them for their ticket stub. And then over time, I developed relationships with these people because I would find people who had the best seats in the house, and I'd go sit in the best seats in the house for the second half of every concert. It was great.
Leah Roseman (00:35:04):
Yeah, you're about to hear Telemann's Concerto, in D major, the first movement with Stephen Burns on trumpet. Please check the links in the show notes of this podcast for all the music included.(music)
(00:35:19):
So you got to Juilliard and you actually won the Concerto competition when you were very young,
Stephen Burns (00:37:38):
Right? My sophomore year,
Leah Roseman (00:37:39):
Yeah.
Stephen Burns (00:37:40):
Yeah,
Leah Roseman (00:37:40):
That's rather a big deal.
Stephen Burns (00:37:43):
Well, especially considering my second summer at Tanglewood, I was practicing way too much and way too wrong, and I injured myself. So this goes to Madeline and our work together. I really injure myself and I showed up at Julliard in day one with an oozing sore in the middle of my lip and from pushing too hard and working too hard, and I had to rebuild my technique for the first six months of school. And so that's where the extra lessons that I had to pay for. So I would be taking lessons with Armando Ghitalla on the weekends in Boston. I mean, this was one of those crazy things where you could go from New York to Boston round trip for $25 on the Amtrak train, if you left after midnight and left from New York, and then before 8:00 AM on Sunday, you could get that 25 daily thing. So for $75 lesson and a $25 train ride, I would commute back and forth.
Leah Roseman (00:38:50):
And your teacher, Julliard didn't know you were doing that, right?
Stephen Burns (00:38:53):
No, because he was Ghitalla's teacher and that was not cool. He wouldn't acknowledge any other trumpeter except for the dead ones before him. So yeah, he would say things like, the Chicago Symphony is a very good orchestra here. There's a good guy out there, there's a good player out there, what's his name? And of course he would know his colleague from another orchestra, but he would never say his name or he would talk about the other faculty members and he would just call them the other guy or the other guys, even though two of them were his, probably all three of them were his students. It was just one of those weird generational things, very funny. But over time, and also he was not the key. He taught, he taught sound concept, style concept and rhythmic concepts in an orchestral way. So he did not teach you how to play the trumpet. His success as a teacher was he had all the best students come to him, and then he shaped their sound. It taught them how to read music and be literate musicians, both stylistically and actual litering reading music. But when it came to fixing somebody, he looked at me and he goes, there's nothing I can do with you. So that's when I had to scramble and find somebody who could teach me the proper technique.
(00:40:21):
And Vince Penzerella was the second trumpet of the New York Philharmonic, and he had been in a car accident when he was 18 years old and had to rebuild himself. And so he had tremendous experience doing that. So I studied with him for a few years, and Ghitalla had cysts in the 1960s on his lips, so he had experience with that. So between the two of them, they put me back together and within a year I was really on my way. And as I've described, I was a little OCD in my approach to practicing. And I really worked hard and was very fortunate in that.
(00:41:09):
Yeah, I mean, I played the right piece and I played it really well. And there were other players who were probably stronger and better than I, but the conductor who turned out to be my mentor eventually basically said, no, no, you've got something that is very soloistic and you can't teach soloistic style or characteristic or energy or charisma or any of that that's not teachable. All the fancy dresses and capes and hairstyles, and you can put your slit up to here. And it doesn't really matter if you're not artistically and spiritually and intellectually geared towards interpretation and expression and communication with an audience.
Leah Roseman (00:41:58):
But Stephen, wouldn't you say from your perspective as an educator that a lot of people are just kind of in a box and that they can let some of that out, that it's repressed with a lot of people, that kind of energy and expressivity?
Stephen Burns (00:42:17):
Yes and no. Yes and no. I think everyone can be expressive. I think everyone can and interpret the music the way they wish to and connect with an audience. So that is where I share the point of view or your rhetorical question. I agree with that point. And I've had students come to me, and it used to be that I would ask them, well, what do you want? What do you want to do? What's your goal? What's your ultimate dream? It's no longer the first question I asked them, but I would ask them that and they would say, I'd like to be a soloist. I would say, well, that's very nice. Where would you like to be that soloist? You can be that soloist in your bedroom, or you can be that soloist in your grandmother's retirement community. Or you can be that soloist in your church or in your hometown or your home state, or it could be in a regional or a national or an international situation. They're all vastly different things, and it really depends on what makes you happy. So that becomes my new first question rather than what's your goal and what do you want to do with this whole thing? But it's really like, when are you happiest playing music?
(00:43:54):
And where are you happy living? Because if you want to be an international classical musician, which most of these people aren't even an international jazz musician, you're going to be an urban person if you want to be super successful. This has always been, when we're talking about Western European art music, I mean this was true in Europe in the 15th, 16th, 17th century, when you look at, if you read Mozart's biographies and Rubenstein's three autobiographies, or at least two, people were traveling from city to city with letters of introduction to the hierarchy who might be able to help them put on a concert. You don't stop in Podunkville. That was a 1960s phenomenon with community concerts.
Leah Roseman (00:44:51):
So in terms of your career, you have been concertizing a lot in Europe and teaching. You've had to take a lot of planes over many years, and you had a family. How have you worked out that balance?
Stephen Burns (00:45:06):
Well, I started touring when I was 19 years old, and I just said yes to just about everything for the first 15 years or so of my career. And then the balance you strike with first of all, the nature of your relationships with your either family or primary partners. And so that's challenging for most people to have a relationship with somebody who's going to be on the road eight months out of the year. And that's not eight months straight, but it ends up being kind of two or three weeks out of every month. It's like three quarters of the year off and on. And so it would be great for six months or a year. And then it was like, this isn't really a relationship. And of course, this is before Zoom, this is before FaceTime, this is before WhatsApp. This is before cell phones. So that the kind of communication when I was in Europe, it was very expensive to stay in daily communication with people. So I'd be sending letters and postcards.
(00:46:33):
I remember my fiance, she wasn't my fiance when I was dating her, but we met at a mutual friend's wedding, and then I was invited to a New Year's Eve party that she was hosting, but I was leaving for Avignon on that same night, so I couldn't go to the party, but I said, it's a pretty bad storm. Maybe if it gets canceled, I'll come to the party. And so I called her and said, the flight's going. I'll be in touch when I'm back. And I sent her a postcard, you know: "Sur le pont d'Avignon..." So I wrote this nice postcard, I thought it was romantic. She thought it was really weird. She goes, what's this guy sending me a postcard?
(00:47:33):
But it was just one of those things. And so wrote lots of letters and kept the relationships going that way, but a lot of times it didn't work out. So that particular relationship worked out. And so by the time she and I decided to get married, she was still doing her Master's degree in education. And so that was easy enough. She was studying a crazy person at Teacher's College. And then she started working, and then we started, of course, after getting married and everything, she was pushing her mid thirties and it was like, oh, we got to have babies. Probably a good idea. And if we're going to have babies, you should really think about getting off the road or at least part of the month, maybe halftime or quarter time or something, whatever. And that's when I started shifting my teaching responsibility.
(00:48:48):
When we met, I was on faculty at the Manhattan School and Aaron Copland at Queens College, but that was adjunct and it had nothing, no real security. So I applied for a job at Indiana University and was runner up, and we were kind of disappointed, but keep on going forward. And they came back six months later saying, oh, the person who actually didn't want you on the faculty is now retired, and would you like to join the faculty? And I said, that'd be great. Let's do it. So I commuted from New York for a year, and then Kate moved out and did a lot of her school psychology work there. And we were fortunate to get pregnant there, but it was a little challenging to be Jewish. My ex is Jewish and my children are Jewish. It was really challenging to be Jewish in southern Indiana. Frankly, at the time, the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan lived one town north of Bloomington.
(00:50:09):
And all students of color as well as Jews were instructed not to refuel in Martinsville. In fact, don't stop for anything. Just keep on riding and it should be fine. Everything. And that environment, we just didn't feel like we want to raise our kids in. And part of the agreement I had with my wife in taking that job was that I would get off the road, be teaching there would've a stable base. And I'm sure you know about we publish or perish realities of academia. I was touring almost as much and teaching 25 students a week plus coaching chamber music and conducting the chamber orchestra.
(00:50:57):
So that was rough. So when the kids were born, that cut it way back. And then we decided we had to either move back to New York or to Boston where my parents were aging or Chicago were hers. So we kind of cast around for a job for her and a job for me. And this is when I had just performed in New York at the 92nd Street Y, a multimedia interdisciplinary work for instruments and electronic music, dance, sculpture paintings. Basically remove the fourth wall and it's an all immersive thing. And Susan Lipman from performing Art Chicago was at the performance and said, why don't you bring this whole idea to Chicago? Because here in Chicago, we have great music, we have the Chicago Symphony, and we have the University of Chicago and Northwestern and DePaul, but everybody is doing died in the wool modernist 12 tone surrealist music. Nobody's doing what you do. I was in addition to doing the traditional academic stuff, I was also working with Philip Glass and Steve Reich. I was working with Lamont Young, so the core of the minimalist crew and then Stockhausen in Cologne and Gunther Schuller and lots of others. I mean just a whole range of neoclassical to modernist, minimalist to free improv. She said, this would be great. We could really stir the pot, so to speak. We could see what happens. And so that's how I was brought in in the first year. It was a concert in the spring and two concerts in the fall, and then it was two spring and two in the fall, and then it became five concerts. And then it became pretty clear after three seasons that this thing had legs. And Kate and I had already moved to Chicago. I started the organization in our final two years of teaching. So you can imagine we've got newborn twins, a newborn new music ensemble, and I'm teaching 25 students and and going to Asia and Italy and Switzerland and France and Finland and just crazy. And that was it. So basically Fulcrum Point grew into my mostly full-time job.
Leah Roseman (00:53:30):
But you do teach at DePaul University as well.
Stephen Burns (00:53:33):
I teach at DePaul University and as well as Northwestern University. I'm adjunct at both places, but I teach primarily trumpet and chamber music at DePaul in addition to a music 100 course called Understanding Music, which I really enjoy actually teaching non-musicians to understand all the wonderful richness and intricacies and concepts of what I call sound-based time art. And then also the other class that I teach is called Mindfulness for Musicians, and it's where I get to apply the Art of Practicing as well as note grouping and the mindfulness practices that I do in the Buddhist tradition, although I don't frame it as Buddhism and the class, it's mindfulness. And that's the great thing about Buddhism is that it's not a religion, it's a practice. And the practice ideally is kindness and compassion and creativity, actually. And I blend it with a book from the 1970s called Inner Tennis. Sometimes it's called The Inner Game of Tennis. There are two, they basically talk about the same thing. And the idea is to get people to be present and to drop their concepts and their criticisms and judgments and turn up the volume on their singing, dancing, playing creativity. And so I've developed, in addition to the practices that we do in the Art of Practicing, some other practices that help people connect with their heart and their experience and their imagination and their body, especially in the classical music world, boy, people are uptight and even jazz, some jazz musicians can be physically uptight. So it's liberating for them, and I really enjoy it, and it's very transformative, much in the same way that the Art of Practicing is.
Leah Roseman (00:55:48):
Okay. Hi. Just a quick break from the episode. If you're a brass player, you'll also be interested in my episodes with Karen Donnelly, Douglas Burden, and Hillary Simms. And I'll also link my episode with Madeline Bruser of The Art of Practicing directly to this one. It's a joy to be able to bring these meaningful conversations to you, but this project costs me quite a bit of money and lots of time. Please support this series through either my merchandise store or on my Ko-fi page. You'll find the links in the show notes for the merch. It features a unique design by artist Steffi Kelly, and you can browse clothes, phone cases, notebooks, water bottles and more. You'll also find the links to sign up for my newsletter where you'll get access to exclusive information about upcoming guests. Please check out my back catalog with weekly episodes going back to 2021. Now back to Stephen Burns.
(00:56:38):
I wanted to ask, there was a couple of things that came up that I heard you talk about before. I spoke with another colleague who had studied with Arnold Jacobs, and he'd given you advice at a certain point to turn off your inner teacher because you were doing so much teaching,
Stephen Burns (00:56:55):
Right? Yeah. So as I described my Julliard experience, I'm a voracious student and I have the capacity, fortunately to study with a lot of different teachers and teaching styles and without finding any conflict between them. But so Arnold Jacobs, for those people who are unfamiliar with him was the tuba player with the Chicago Symphony under the years of Reiner and Solti. And he was not only a great tuba teacher or brass teacher, he taught all instruments including wind and strings. He was a brilliant pedagogue and he studied the human body, and he was kind of like a true amateur in terms of physiology and psychology and the dynamics of playing our instruments actually very much like Madeline and funny that way. And I said, I'm teaching at Indiana University, I'm teaching a lot and I'm seeing a lot, and it's really just somewhat overwhelming. And of course, balancing the teaching and the playing and keeping my soloist chops going while I'm doing that, created issues.
(00:58:10):
I started sounding like my students and no disrespect to my students, it was a challenge. So I said, listen, I'm three and a half hours. I've got family in Chicago I can crash with. I'm going to go up and take lessons with Jacobs. And I went and played for him and he said, yeah, you play really, really great. And we discussed some fundamental things with brass playing that unlocked some of the playing and some of the physical things that were going on. And then I described to him what would happen when I would go to play after teaching a long day and I would sound terrible and I couldn't really function. And I said, this is really not me. And he said, oh, you've got your teacher's hat on when you finish teaching, you have to take your teacher's hat and put it on the hook and take your player's hat and put it on your head. And so we talked about the distinction between what we need to be doing as a teacher and what we need to be doing as a player and being able to really shift gears. It's code shifting. If you to borrow a phrase from anti-racist and the racial conversation that's very prevalent these days. It's code shifting. You're going from one paradigm to another, and for sanity and safety, you have to shift your mindset and your language or when it comes to music, no language.
Leah Roseman (00:59:49):
Okay, so is it partly being more of a performance mindset?
Stephen Burns (00:59:55):
Yes. It's taking off the analytical and comment, commenting, commentary. It's turning off the talking and turning up, turning on the singing and turning up the singing feeling. And it's one of those things where I began to realize that even when we approach rhythm from a one-ee and a two-ee perspective, there is a verbal component to one end of two-ee that is not helpful, that is actually disturbing. You can do one or the other, but you can't do both, right? The left side is can talk and count and do all the different things, but it is going to be inhibiting to the intuitive right side of the body's natural connection with the body and sound and movement, which is what music is. And so that was really, really key. And also being able to immerse oneself in that experience of performance mind in that experience of trust and presence. And I'm not talking about stage presence or anything like that, but just the true presence of being.
Leah Roseman (01:01:16):
This is Telemann's Trumpet Concerto, in D major, the last movement. Allegro, please check the links in the show notes for the album.(music)
(01:01:24):
Hi again, Stephen. Thanks for meeting with me again. I just want to acknowledge that we scheduled another day because there was just too much to talk about and I had a few more questions I wanted to ask you.
Stephen Burns (01:03:17):
I'm happy to be with you again. So it was fascinating last time, and I'm looking forward to this extension.
Leah Roseman (01:03:24):
I had made a few notes on things I wanted to follow up on. One thing you had said to me is that classical musicians you find were not comfortable in our bodies. And I know you've maybe learned from dancers because you've done lots of cross-disciplinary performers performances with, do you want to speak to that a little bit more?
Stephen Burns (01:03:45):
Boy, that's a huge subject. I mean, it has to do with so much that we are hyper-focused very often on one part of our body when players tend to be focused on their mouths and their embouchures and string players and pianists on their hands. And the reality is that we are organic integrated beings. And so our ability to connect holistically with the body is essential actually to create a beautiful sound and to communicate well with our audience and , frankly not get injured. And you see all kinds of posture out there and you see all kinds of approaches. And so I've just spent my whole life as a professional really exploring that dynamic as well as the coming from the work I did in my twenties and with friends who were modern and postmodern dancers, as well as people like Martha Clarke and Ruby Shang, who integrated musicians into the theatrical dance pieces that they did. Garden of Earthly Delights was the signature work that Martha Clarke did. And I think Vienna Lusthaus was her second production of that ilk. And Ruby and I did a lot of interdisciplinary things at Lincoln Center and to celebrate the centennial of the Statue of Liberty where the musicians were basically blended into the dance company. So I spent years working with dancers and trying to get my body to be in that kind of not only shape, but presence. I think that's a lot of it.
(01:05:38):
And along the way, either through over practice or misconceived ways of using my body, I've injured myself when I was 21, I had a major throat injury that I thought I was using a posture that was going to relax and open up this area of my body. And in fact, it was just the opposite. I hyper stretched it and created herniated areas in my throat, which took me 15 years to figure out and then resolve. So that's also been part of my teaching has been as a problem solver. Or sometimes people call me a chop doctor, so an embouchure specialist or a physical specialist. And what's interesting is that when people sit up, when people are really fully aligned and really connected, the sound changes dramatically. The color and the vibrance and the natural expression is audible, and people feel it as well. The musicians themselves feel more comfortable. So there's a lot of ways that I've integrated Alexander technique, yoga, mindfulness, meditation, Feldenkrais, and inner tennis. I think we might've chatted briefly about that as a way of reconnecting our heart and body and our music making. That's really key.
Leah Roseman (01:07:27):
And in terms of the physical, I mean, I was thinking any instrumentalist, and I'm sure singers, when you're in the profession and you're under a lot of pressure and you're learning a lot of repertoire as a soloist or as an ensemble player, problems creep in that you didn't use to have. I found that myself. And I was curious about maybe some of the common, because I know a lot of brass players will be listening with interest to what you have to say, maybe asure things that you find you help people with.
Stephen Burns (01:07:54):
Well, I think the key ingredient that, especially if we're just talking specifically about the trumpet or about brass playing, is there is a balance that needs to be struck between the body and the whatever you want to call our inner voice, the music we're making in our heart and mind along with air. And there's a great kind of a misconception or an overused mantra that we need to use more air. And it's exactly just the opposite. We need to use more ears, we need to use our singing. And I think especially when you bring up having to learn music really, really quickly, or most musicians, unless they play the same repertoire over and over again, and some soloists have that luxury, but most people, they're having to read stuff constantly. In the classical world and in the jazz world, you're constantly improvising, so you're always doing something new and you kind of get into that frame of mind. Now that said, the first rule of improvisation is don't play something you're not hearing. Just start playing patterns because, oh, people will think it's virtuosity. I mean, that's just absurd from an improv perspective. And it's the same thing. Don't just go and try to play fast or loud or high or whatever preconception that you have,
(01:09:37):
Actually have it in your heart and have it in your experience. And this is where it gets to be a really interesting dance, to be honest with you, of balancing your inner singing and your trust that with your body. And then the whole idea from the air perspective is you want to be using a consistent quality of air, not more. Your body knows how much it needs much in the same way that a car engine, you don't use more gas. There's a fuel pump that feeds the machine and it's constant. You're not starting and stopping your fuel pump as you're doing your thing. So it's the same thing for us. But what's most important is not you step on the gas as fast as you can and use more gas.
(01:10:38):
Most important is watch where you're going and know where you're going, and be aware of the other people around you so that you are all harmoniously going. In other words, in terms of music, we're singing together, we're playing together, that is a much more holistic approach. Plus it's just in terms of brass playing. It's a metal tube that is already full of air. You can't put more air in that tube. And I had a very interesting experience when I was studying in Paris with Pierre Thibaud, who was a great trumpeter and very powerful, and we would be doing these power building exercises and everybody's think, oh, you're going to use more air and more sound and all of this. And because he was French, and it was the 1980s, he was smoking constantly while we were studying. And literally he would have one cigarette in this hand and another one in this hand, it would be playing.
(01:11:38):
It's just absurd. And he'd be playing as loud and strong and powerfully as anybody physically possibly can. And this wisp of smoke just kind of wafted out of the end of the trumpet. And it was like, it's not like a power wash. It's the vibration of the body and air synchronized in a way that makes this powerful and beautiful sound. And by the time it gets out the end of the bell, it's barely moving. So we were all put into strait jackets and Lucite boxes and things like that during covid because everybody said, well, you use so much air to play a brass instrument, blah, blah, blah. And I'm going like, I actually, it's not that much. And oh, by the way, if I light a cigarette on this side of my Lucite barrier, do you think you're not going to smell it on the other? So the particulates don't function in a linear way. It's like the whole thing was just such absurd theater that I, so I try to get people to make the most beautiful sound. And when you sit up and relax, you will take a full breath. And if you take a full breath, atmospheric pressure will move that air through the instrument. And at a certain point, you will have to use more. But it's not a dramatic shift
(01:13:11):
Much in the same way, singers don't move air that much. They're really singing. You're not going to feel like somebody's blowing in your face. They are vibrating these muscles throughout their body. And the same thing with brass players. We're vibrating these muscles, and it's a vibration. It's not, there's all kinds of ways of training the motion of air, but really what we're training is sound. We're training sound in motion, which is a great book, by the way, it's David McGill where he talks about not only that music is waves, and it's a kind of an extension of, what's his name, Robert Morgan Thurmond. No groupings. You might've had this conversation made with Madeline. Yeah, it's one of our favorite books in terms of music is waves. And the way that we rhythmically and harmonically and melodically group notes based on their hierarchy of energy
(01:14:23):
Is key. And it's the same thing. Our, kind of tied us all together so that I tend to have a lot of ADD pew kind of thoughts, but bringing it all together, there's an alignment of the body. And when we sit up and allow our arms and spine and everything to align and just relax, then the motion of the lower body will fuel and allow the upper body to be free. And then there is a slingshot effect, a spring when Madeline often talks about it, a dropping in and springing off over, springing out. And the same thing is true with the breath and the same thing. I often put, they look like down bow markings in the music, but really what they are trampoline as we're making this large leaping gesture like the opening of Tomasi (singing), it all comes out of the first open fifth, and you're just boom. And there are 13 notes that come out of one gesture instead of going this way physically. But you're not going to be able to do that unless you can sing it. So that ties it all together.
Leah Roseman (01:15:44):
So Stephen, I'm curious, are you still doing some coaching online, or do you always prefer to see people in person?
Stephen Burns (01:15:50):
I prefer to see people in person. I have students in China and students in Europe and South America that do online. And the challenge always is the quality of sound real time, especially if you're using something like Zoom or FaceTime, this seems like there's a pretty good bandwidth. And this platform feels very, very honest. Very oftentimes, I'll have to just ask the student, is that what you intended to sound like? Because we're not exactly depending on the quality of their microphone, placing the microphone, and even then the buffering of their internet speed or the way that their wifi in their space is functioning. Even Madeline and I have experimented with all kinds of Cat seven, cat eight ethernet ports that only is as good as what's happening with Comcast, AT&T, whomever is right now I'm on Google Fiber and they're about to lose the customer. Oh, all I'm saying, if you're listening. So I prefer of course, being in person because then I can really experience the synchronicity of the body, mind and sound, which is, that's everything. And also then we can really talk about the color resonance in a very honest way. And also I, there's nothing, it's
Leah Roseman (01:17:45):
Different.
Stephen Burns (01:17:54):
It's like anything you can help people with conceptually and can help people. If there's something really grossly exaggeratedly wrong or inefficient, you can kind of get things started. But if you really, really want to make improvement, it has to be in person. Like having, we've all developed certain kinds of relationships like this, which are virtual, but if the relationship is going to deepen, it has to happen. IRL, as they say, in real life, that's just humanity.
Leah Roseman (01:18:40):
So let's talk a little bit about stage fright and anxiety. We often think about performances, but I think rehearsals are often worse for people, in a way
Stephen Burns (01:18:50):
Can be, or the anticipation thereof. I mean, for myself, my own anxiety is it peaks in the days leading up to rehearsals. And once I'm in rehearsal, my nerves go, they go away, which is really interesting. And then they come back for performances because then it's like the proof is in the pudding. We've done this work and can we realize our intention? Right? And that's natural. And then what's really, really, really key is this process of developing trust
Leah Roseman (01:19:30):
In yourself, and with the people you're playing with?
Stephen Burns (01:19:34):
Everything, everyone with the self. We have this good body. So the structure that I bring to the lesson or the classroom or to the rehearsal, depending on what role I'm in, is we have good body. The body will work generally unless we're having problems, we breathe okay, we naturally breathe and our heart functions well, and our digestion generally functions well. And if you put good breathing and good circulation and good digestion, then usually the other rhythms of the body will function just as well. We don't have a mental or other physical problems if we're drinking lots of water and fluids and eating good food, not doing drugs, minimizing alcohol, not smoking anything, really, the body works really well. So then line it up, give it its natural foundation. And this is interesting because when we're practicing, I don't call it warmup and I don't call it a routine, I call them foundations foundational.
(01:21:04):
We are establishing a good foundation, and that is posture. And if your posture is good, everything else will happen naturally. The great Chicago pedagogue, Arnold Jacobs, he was one of the great masters of pedagogy and of brass playing and everything else. It's one of the misconceptions in brass playing and wind playing in general. And his whole mantra was song and wind. But you would be surprised, the vast majority of people flip it into wind and song and they think about the wind first. But the wind is a natural component to the song. If you're feeling the rhythm and you're hearing the melody and it's embedded with a harmonic, holistic musical experience, then you just take a good breath and let it go. And you don't have to force it. And when you watch the great artists of any instrument, there's power, but it's not forced. It's the difference. But I say for my colleagues, it's like it's the difference between singing and shouting.
(01:22:25):
That's all. And that's really, then it becomes this when it's spindle, right? When you get a Maria Callas kind of voice or the kind of really intense brass playing, like the Bolshoi Orchestra, the Mariinsky Orchestra, Leningrad Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, the modern symphonic orchestra, brass playing, they do play with a lot of power. But when they're playing their best, it's not forced. What I point out, especially because everybody thinks, oh, Chicago Symphony, it's loud, it's strong, blah, blah, blah. So listen to them. Most of the time when they're playing forcefully, strong, loud dynamics, they are(singing). They are relaxing back into a resonance center. Whereas when you hear somebody imitating a Chicago symphony, loud, big brass or certain, there's some East coast orchestras that shall remain nameless for the moment, but they tend to have a trombone section that plays four times as loud as the rest of the orchestra.
(01:23:42):
And their approach is, it's flatline. It is. The tachometer is at nine because they can, but it doesn't function as a whole. The way that, and this is where you've got violists and cellists wearing earbuds and plugs and conductors throw their hands up and say, because you can't really, they're just not going to. And my colleagues in those orchestras playing trumpet, just decided not to try to match them. First of all, the tube, they've got a bigger tube, they've got a bigger megaphone, they've got a bigger concept. So yeah, so that it's not that it's really, it's, oh, by the way, going back to Arnold Jacobs, it is about the song, the sound, and it rides the wind. The wind doesn't ride the song, the wind doesn't push the song. The song rides the wind. And he said the secret to the great Chicago Symphony of the 1950s, 1960s was that everyone tried to sound better than everybody else.
Leah Roseman (01:25:14):
So like healthy competition,
Stephen Burns (01:25:17):
Not even competition, just sound and everybody, and oh, by the way, you're going to sound like a better horn or a better trumpet or a better trombone or a better tuba. And by everybody rising to their highest level sounding better than they've ever sounded better, then the whole sounds better. And he always joked with me, he said, yeah, so everybody just tried to sound better than everybody else. And he said, there's only one problem. And his name was Bud, Hurseth. Bud Hurseth was the greatest brass player of his generation, and there was no way of competing per se, but they came really, really close. And I was at a masterclass with Dale Clevenger, who was the french horn principal of the Chicago Symphony at the time. And somebody asked him, what goes through your mind when you make a mistake? And he said, he was kind of a droll southerne,r to say, and now even better. And then he paused for a beat and he said, but come to think of it when I really play great, I say the same thing, if you're just constantly singing or creating a more beautiful sound each time, more expressive than you're not stuck in the past. So this comes back to the practice of meditation and also the practices of really advanced spiritual practices in which we use sound and imagery along with the peaceful resting of basic meditation. And we're able to imagine, to visualize to, I dunno what you can call it, audio-ize. You can hear the ideal sound And picture the ideal totality, and you build trust in your capacity to envision or to embody the sound and the imagery and the entire art. So though, four steps of that is that you have a good body, you have good singing, you take a good breath and good trust. And so a lot of time I'm working with students, it's like, okay, what was your level of trust? Honestly, I don't care, frankly, but I Did you completely commit? Did you trust yourself? 100%. Great. But the mistake was this one. Okay, what was the mistake? Well, I missed this note. Oh, good. Did you miss it early or late? Did you bring the note from above or did you miss it from below? And if you missed it, the Italians called missed notes, especially in brass playing, they call them scrocche. And if you think about the word scrocche or scrocchia there are four pieces of sound in there. So that's the question is how many pieces of sound did you hear?
Leah Roseman (01:28:38):
What does that word mean?
Stephen Burns (01:28:40):
Scrocchia means a mistake. It doesn't mean anything. It's onomatopoeic. Yeah, everybody has a name. We call them clams. The English version of scrocchia is splia, and you've heard it, the French horn player or the trumpet player goes, you miss it from below or above, and you kind of go, it's kind when your voice cracks, is it too low? Is it too high? It's like, well, it's right in the cracks.
(01:29:13):
And the thing is, is that most of the time we were respond with implication. We respond with some sort of: "you idiot, you dummy", or even better, what's our favorite fricative, our word to go. It has emotional release to be able to say damnit or whatever, right? However, when you do that, you're replacing the stimulus of the feedback from the mistake. You're replacing the absolute perception of the, and whether it's too early or too late, too high or too low. And oh, by the way, were you singing or were you talking while you made that mistake? Were you anticipating making the mistake or were you just singing and feeling time? Or were you grooving with everybody else in that moment? Or were you talking? Were you saying, oh, that was really great, then all of a sudden you make a mistake? Or were you saying, oh, here it comes. Then again, this comes back to the left brain, right brain conscious, subconscious self one and self two. If you go to inner tennis
(01:30:38):
And our training, especially in classical music, our training is very detailed. And I explained to students, I said, there's two ways of teaching and they are not compatible. There are some teachers who will put every joint in every part of every muscle, and where you put the tongue, they will go to that detail. And that's great. Until you have to play something as complex as classical music or jazz for that matter or anything, you're just not going to, you'll be able to control one of those things, and it may not be the right one that you need.
(01:31:28):
But if I say to you, and I do this in class, I keep a ping pong ball and a bunch of things, and I say, here catch, and I'll toss a ping pong ball. It's not going to hurt them. And then I say, they'll catch it or they won't. I say, what does your elbow do? Did you control your pinky finger when you caught that? No, you caught the ball and you trusted your hands to do it. And when you juggled it, you bobbled it, you were still catching it, or you might've been going in your mind going, don't drop it, you're talking. Then I'll say, okay, you dropped it fine. Cool. Did you miss it high or did you miss it low? I don't know. Throw it back to me and they'll throw it back to me and catch it. And I say, so did you know what you did when you threw the ball? Or did you just throw the ball? Right? You knew how far away you know the weight of the ball because you can feel it. You knew you weren't going to hurt me. And if you were to make exaggerated fastball gesture, I'd probably duck because that's what we do. Our self two will protect itself, but it also will catch it. It's like how often do you not put your teacup on the table when you go to put it down?
Leah Roseman (01:32:58):
There's one more thing I wanted to ask you about in terms of being influenced from different world traditions. And I know you've done some pretty interesting travel, like you went to Bhutan, not a lot of people go there. Do you want to speak to a little bit of that?
Stephen Burns (01:33:14):
I've been really fortunate. My life, my parents took us all over the United States, and we were very fortunate to have seen most of the United States by car and hiking and camping and stuff. And then as a student, and then as a soloist and conductor, I haven't been to Antarctica, but I've been to just about every other. So I think it's really about when it comes to travel for me, I like to experience the local culture and just be as immersed in the culture or the experience, the language as I can. And then of course, yes. So you mentioned Bhutan. I was just there in May, and it's a magical place. They've kept it protected for millennia. Before it was Bhutan, it was a kingdom within Tibet, and it's a fully immersive Buddhist culture, although there was Muslim and Christian people there as well. But the culture itself, it's thousands and thousands of years of Buddhist culture and the respect and appreciation and devotion to this tradition is palpable in the people and in the way that they have a constitution that mandates 70% of the country is forested and will be forested. It will never go below 60%.
(01:35:31):
There are no pesticides and no herbicides. Those experiences of being in other cultures have just, first of all, grounded me in the experience of the common sacredness of humanity and our limitless creativity and interconnectedness us if we are open and honest and morally responsible living. I lived in France when I was in my twenties and thirties and learning that language, learning that culture, learning to cook that food and the way that the French love their language and their food and their culture and their mountains, deserts, oceans, rivers. But that's true in the Saharan deserts, and that's true in Kyoto Japan, and that's true in Venezuela. And God, it's heartbreaking to see the things that had happened to Venezuela. I was part of El Sistema at the very, very beginning in the 1980s and 1990s, they started off by bringing in the French School of Teaching, and then they brought in the American school to train them, and then they brought in the Berlin Philharmonic, and like that. So I was part of the second wave of El Simstema and really just loved the Venezuelan people and the culture and the how and the joy and the whole thing that when we hear that orchestra and they're playing, they're not cranking that up. That is a human gift of enthusiasm and musicality. And the same is true performing in Japan. There's a, audiences are, it's interesting. Concerts happen at six or six 30 in Japan,
(01:37:52):
And they're incredibly quiet until applause. And then they're just so generous in applause, and there's great appreciation for classical music and all kinds of music, jazz and whatnot. So those things are really, really, really key. And I think places like Bhutan or any other ancient civilization, ancient tradition, are not better than any others. I we're talking about basic human dignity. Now it's the fundamental good heart, good body, great. What do we call it? Sometimes the travelers ethos. You share water snacks on the road, you're hiking, somebody doesn't have something, you loan it or you give it. And that's universal. Been touring for 45 years and playing for 55 years, but the lessons are the same.
(01:39:22):
Studying with George Zan, who was, he was in dinner theater, trombones. What happened when the big bands got off the road in the 1950s, 1960s, they played dinner theater locally, and then they taught elementary school kids how to play, show tunes all the while drinking stale coffee and smoking funky cigars. But I can still hear his sound and feel that connection of playing an octave with this beautiful, beautiful, beautiful kind of Tommy Dorsey like trombone sound. And you learn to appreciate the funkiness of cigars and the bitterness of coffee, even though it's probably not so healthy for the kid, what you going to do? But that's where I try to bring this conversation about stage writer nerves, bring it back to the present moment. All of our fear, as you noticed, I brought it with it all leads up to the first rehearsal and then dissolves, and then it builds up for the concert, and then it dissolves once you're on stage and it's about being present, it's about developing trust in your body. It's about developing trust in your training and also in your messaging.
(01:40:52):
The great Bobby Shew, he's a wonderful jazz trumpeter. He is retired now and well into his eighties, but we were hanging out having lunch, and it was at one of these classic conferences, right, where everybody's showing their stuff, their flamboyant capacity to play faster and better or whatever. And he was like, I don't want someone to impress me. He says, I'm too old to be impressed. I want to be touched. So when our mindset is in this sense of touching in present moment and touching the instrument or the audience or our colleagues, that this is when I do the art of practicing and Madeline Bruser's, performing Beyond Fear exercise with my students. The third part where we contemplate the basic goodness of our audience, I tweak it a little bit, and I say, contemplate the basic goodness of our community, the community of sounder and listener of artists and auditor, but that can be our colleague in the chair next to us, or the violist in front of us, or the percussionist behind us.
(01:42:34):
Are you connected? Are you touching? Are you listening? Then it becomes, are you really present? And when you are, it's beyond fear. And as yo-yo often says, when you see and hear his interviews, it's like nervousness means I care and I'm alive and I have this energy. And so feel it and connect with the sound in time in expression. And so that's why I'm an incredibly boring teacher, because I'm always asking, were you singing or were you talking? Were you what I call the subdivision complex of beat backbeat and super subdivision? Are you feeling the groove as if you're a Brazilian percussionist?
(01:43:43):
And how does that make you feel? Well, all you have to say is Brazilian percussion. Everybody goes, Ooh, yeah, makes you feel alive. And then are you singing accurately? And there's a lot of people who play by fingering, and you see fingerings in everybody's parts. You see, if you're thinking about fingering, then you're not singing all the voices if you're a pianist. And the same thing on you can be the trumpet and the clarinet is the fingers are right there. It's like it's really easy to get stuck in your fingers if you're thinking that. But the other part that Madeline taught me, and this is hysterical, the fundamental hand position of dropping into the keys with a nice, relaxed and not lifting the thumb or any finger that holds true on wind instruments as well, that when you're playing, when you feel the key or the valve, the information from the instrument travels back and forth.
(01:45:01):
And I've had people who play really, really, really great, and they'll go on the hand, the fingers suddenly fly up. I got three fingers sticking up like that, and I said, just feel your valves and then play it again, and they'll play it again. And boom, all this sound comes out without doing anything except touching the instrument. And they think it's miraculous, and it's just basic connection. And so that's why I say it's boring because I just go, well, let's stand up straight. Let's feel the rhythm, and let's hear the relationship between the melody and the harmony. Where's the, so this goes back to note grouping. Where's the interesting stuff? Where's the energy highest? And generally, the energy's highest in the faster notes and in the chromatic notes. What's more interesting, a fifth or a diminished fifth when they all of a sudden started putting sevenths into Western European American music, all of a sudden we get out of thirds, fourths, and fifths, and we start putting in sevenths and semitones and augmented fourths and stuff like that. All of a sudden now we're, we're tasting the beauty of life, and it's that basic. It's really simple.
Leah Roseman (01:46:31):
Thanks so much for chatting today, Steven. It's really an honor to talk to you.
Stephen Burns (01:46:37):
It's a great pleasure. Thank you, Leah.
Leah Roseman (01:46:40):
I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please share this with your friends and check out episodes you may have missed at leahroseman.com. If you could buy me a coffee to support this series, that would be wonderful. Or you can browse the collection of merch with a very cool, unique, and expressive design from artist Steffi Kelly with notebooks, mugs, shirts, phone cases and more. I'm an independent podcaster and I really do need the help of my listeners. All the links are in the show notes. Have a wonderful week.
