I want to again congratulate all our graduates, all of you today on your many impressive accomplishments.\u00a0 You have worked hard, faced setbacks, triumphed and done things you once thought impossible.\u00a0 Now, as a first order of business, I invite all of you to stand up \u2013 all graduates right now, turn around and thank your family and friends who have been there with you each step of the way, through it all.\u00a0 Please give a big round of applause to those that have supported you on your journey.<\/p>\n
So, here we are, and we\u2019re celebrating your great success as we should.\u00a0 That\u2019s what today is about \u2013 the celebration of your success, of your hard work and efforts.\u00a0 You have become deeper, more thoughtful artists and scholars.\u00a0 You owe that to your hard work and determination, and the commitment and dedication of the faculty with whom you have worked during your time at Peabody.\u00a0 I know you all know how deeply your faculty are invested in your success \u2013 and I am sure you have thanked them as well.<\/p>\n
At the same time, I want to turn your attention to asking the question, what are you going to do with this now?\u00a0 Some of you will continue your studies, some will go out and start careers.\u00a0 Eventually, we are all faced with, what\u2019s next?<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s a little sketchy out there.\u00a0 The Chicago Symphony just came off of a seven week strike.\u00a0 Also in Chicago, the Lyric Opera Orchestra was on strike last year.\u00a0 The Pittsburgh Symphony was on strike in 2016, and settled with a 7% salary cut in the first year.\u00a0 Right here in Baltimore, the Baltimore Symphony has been playing for months without a contract, and faces an uncertain future.\u00a0 That gets your attention.<\/p>\n
The uncertainty extends beyond the orchestra or opera world to dance companies, other forms of entertainment, and many businesses.\u00a0 There is more competition than ever for eyeballs and ears, for dollars, and for that most precious of consumer resources, time.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a sobering statistic.\u00a0 According to a National Endowment for the Arts survey, in the first decade of the 21st<\/sup> century, the percentage of U.S. adults who attended at least one classical music event a year declined from 11.6 to 8.8 percent in just 10 years.\u00a0 That\u2019s a challenging trajectory.<\/p>\n Certainly, there are myriad reasons for this: gaps in music education in our schools, changing lifestyles and technology, to name a few.<\/p>\n We also have to consider demographics as we look to the future.\u00a0 According to Census Bureau data, in 2014, the United States was effectively two-thirds white, one-third non-white.\u00a0 By 2060, that will flip.\u00a0 And classical music and other arts \u2013 unless diversity is addressed \u2013 will be recruiting performers and attracting audiences from a shrinking minority.<\/p>\n This is both a huge opportunity and a challenge.\u00a0 If we\u2019re going to prosper, future audiences will have to be much more diverse than we can even dream of today. \u00a0And audiences will only become diverse when the performers on stage are diverse.\u00a0 More on that in a moment.<\/p>\n Today, I want to challenge you to think about how you as artists going out into the world can have a positive impact.\u00a0 I ran several large orchestras, and now I run a large music school, and despite a challenging landscape, I have always been and continue to be optimistic about what\u2019s possible.\u00a0 But you have to think about why what you do matters, and how you\u2019re going to get others to care about it, to see the intrinsic value in what you produce.<\/p>\n You already know that you will need to be as persistent, creative and resilient in making the case for what you do as you are in making music.\u00a0 You are hopefully thinking about these critical issues.\u00a0 The idea is to confront this head on, before it confronts you.<\/p>\n Now, orchestras are not especially creative places.\u00a0 I single out orchestras, because it\u2019s something I know well, but it\u2019s not just orchestras that I worry about.\u00a0 I worry about institutions that are built largely on the past, and are slow to recognize the vibrancy and the promise of the future, whether it\u2019s in the work of living composers, different blends and styles of music, or caring enough about building new and different audiences for the future.\u00a0 These things can add an immeasurable element of richness to what we do.<\/p>\n I believe the survival and indeed prospering of classical music and many other art forms – at least in this country and I dare say elsewhere – is going to be built on a triangle, a three-legged stool if you will, of excellence, innovation and diversity.<\/p>\n We are all very familiar and comfortable with the notion of excellence, it\u2019s what we have focused on our whole lives, and it\u2019s what has gotten you here, today.\u00a0 And we can never overstate how important it is.\u00a0 It\u2019s a competitive world and you have to be outstanding.\u00a0 In fact, it is excellence in performance that makes art compelling and inspires others.\u00a0 You learned long ago to dig deep in your art and be the best you can be.\u00a0 That never-ending search for making something better is what artists live for.<\/p>\n The second leg of the stool is innovation.\u00a0 That\u2019s a hard one in fields built on the past.\u00a0 But it can come in many wonderful forms \u2013 in diverse and unexpected programming, in new formats, in creative community engagement, in how we present and talk about what we do, and in the partnerships we build across other disciplines and art forms.\u00a0 You as young artists are hopefully thinking about this, even if that just means recognizing that these issues will be part of your artistic and professional lives.<\/p>\n The third leg of the stool is diversity. \u00a0We must recognize that classical music has a diversity problem and we must act aggressively to remedy that problem.<\/p>\n Classical music was once part of popular culture. \u00a0As we all know, Paganini and Liszt were rock stars in their days. \u00a0Even in the 20th<\/sup> century, classical music was featured on television way before your time, for example, in the \u201cBell Telephone Hour\u201d and Leonard Bernstein\u2019s Young People\u2019s Concerts, and in Looney Tune cartoons. \u00a0Think Bugs Bunny.<\/p>\n But as time went on, classical music became an exclusive club, a closed inner sanctum that \u2013 certainly in the United States \u2013 represented and served a primarily older, whiter, more affluent demographic.<\/p>\n While there are notable exceptions \u2013 classical performers, conductors and composers today remain not exclusively, but largely homogeneous. \u00a0As do audiences. \u00a0And by the way, this extends to dance.\u00a0 A true bright spot is in Jazz which through its rich diversity and the place it\u2019s taken in educational and performing arts institutions today is helping to change this world.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not that diversity in our world hasn\u2019t been an area of concern. \u00a0For more than 30 years, orchestra leaders have discussed diversity in their ensembles. \u00a0American orchestras have also talked earnestly about attracting more diverse audiences; they have launched sometimes impressive community engagement efforts.<\/p>\n Yet, despite gains by women, something we celebrate, our orchestras are no more diverse today with regard to underrepresented minorities, specifically African-American and Latino musicians, than they were when this conversation began decades ago.<\/p>\n Two years ago, the Peabody Institute made diversity one of five pillars in our strategy. \u00a0And we have moved the needle on underrepresented minority faculty from 6.5 percent of total faculty last year to 10 percent this year, nearly twice on average of music schools nationally. \u00a0At the same time, our underrepresented minority applicant pool increased 33 percent for this next year resulting in 100 underrepresented minority students for this coming fall, nearly 15 percent of Peabody\u2019s student population.\u00a0 We are committed to continuing this progress.\u00a0 Our challenge also is to make sure that once here, all students at Peabody can prosper.\u00a0 We know there is work to do on that, and are committed to efforts to ensure that a welcoming environment exists for all students here.<\/p>\n I hope you are proud to be graduating from a school that says this is important.\u00a0 Everyone in the arts \u2013 in conservatories, orchestras and ensembles, opera and dance companies, at presenting organizations and elsewhere \u2013 must see diversity as more than the right thing to do. \u00a0It\u2019s an \u00a0\u00a0existential question. \u00a0A strategic imperative that will be a prerequisite for classical music and other performing art forms\u2019 prospering in this country and beyond.<\/p>\n Many Peabody students are already experiencing the three concepts that I\u2019m talking with you about, today.\u00a0 Many of you graduating here today participated in a program that beautifully put front and center how powerful the result is when excellence, innovation and diversity come together.\u00a0 Peabody\u2019s performance of Leonard Bernstein\u2019s MASS this past fall, was a performance characterized by these three qualities, implemented through partnerships reaching beyond traditional boundaries.\u00a0 The result was a community-based event with 3,000 people attending, many of whom were still talking about their experience long after it ended.\u00a0 That\u2019s the kind of impact you can have and demonstrates the power you possess as artists.<\/p>\n Excellence, Innovation, Diversity.\u00a0 I hope you will think about these things as being inextricably linked, mutually reinforcing, and all central to creating a healthy eco-system for artists and arts in the decades ahead.\u00a0 You are that future and I am really counting on you to do this differently, and to do it better than it\u2019s been done in the past.\u00a0 We\u2019re all counting on you.<\/p>\n Thank you.\u00a0 Congratulations again, and good luck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" May 22, 2019: Commencement Address I want to again congratulate all our graduates, all of you today on your many impressive accomplishments.\u00a0 You have worked hard, faced setbacks, triumphed and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"parent":1389,"menu_order":41,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-32246","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peabody.jhu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/32246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peabody.jhu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peabody.jhu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peabody.jhu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peabody.jhu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32246"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/peabody.jhu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/32246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62358,"href":"https:\/\/peabody.jhu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/32246\/revisions\/62358"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peabody.jhu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peabody.jhu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}