Taylor Ackley, a professor of music at Brandeis University, and I wrote a book chapter about our experience founding an American Roots music ensemble while we were grad students at Stony Brook University. We featured instruments from classical traditions and performers from jazz and chamber music backgrounds all playing folk music by ear. Check out one of our albums!
While we were successful as a performing group on Long Island, our approach sometimes conflicted with typical instruction musicians receive in higher ed in America. Taylor and I told the stories of these conflicts through Taylor’s experience as a way of encouraging students to give this approach a try, and encouraging educators to challenge their own expectations about what makes a successful graduate-level ensemble. We got to write about a lot of things that are important to us, including the complicated history of American popular music, race, and class in the 20th century. I loved getting to write about my experience playing clarinet in church as a boy, and I love Taylor’s first line of the conclusion that reads:
“This chapter has purposefully presented big questions without offering any real answers.” (!!!)
Check out the book here.
I have to admit, it is a little bittersweet to be reading our chapter now since I decided to leave academia a little more than a year ago. Taylor and I drafted the proposal for this chapter in the summer of 2020, when many things about our lives weren’t certain. Publication can be a pivotal step in gaining seniority and better job placement as a college professor, so there is a kind of dull pain that runs alongside my sense of pride and accomplishment holding the book in my hands. Brainstorming about creative projects and collaborating on them are still some of my favorite things to do, and this last year has involved stretching these skills in new and unpredictable ways for me. But I will always be proud of Taylor and myself for our enduring friendship, the writing we’ve done together, and most importantly, the music.