Overtones: Spring 2017

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THE COMPLEAT MUSICIAN he says, just is the emotional sign or symptom of my freedom. I am anxious because I can choose among possibilities and the outcome is unknown to me. If I were not uniquely a choosing being—“if a human being were a beast or an angel,” as he puts it—then I wouldn’t be anxious. I should pay attention to my anxiety, rather than try, as I too often do, to alleviate it by letting others choose for me or evading my choice. “The deeper the anxiety, the greater the man,” Kierkegaard provocatively says—“greater” meaning something like “more dignified, because the author of his or her life.” Kierkegaard is retrospectively a founder of existentialism, which restores the emotions—especially the “yucky” ones, as my students and I call them—to the center of philosophical inquiry dominated by rationalism. Martin Heidegger, writing roughly a century later, builds on Kierkegaard by saying that angst is about my being. I am anxious about being in the world as such—and about, one day, my no longer being. What makes angst uniquely “yucky” is that I can’t locate its source—unlike fear, which clearly threatens me from without. Angst is close, so close I can avoid it only by avoiding myself, by avoiding or denying my time-bound freedom to choose among possibilities. Who do I want to be? Will I be up to the challenge? Am I wasting my time? Angst is that restless, wordless feeling that murmurs such questions, if I take time to listen—if I am “attuned” to it, in Heidegger’s aural metaphor. “The deeper the anxiety, the greater the man,” Kierkegaard provocatively says—“greater” meaning something like “more dignified, because the author of his or her life.” WHAT TO DO? Another student, after worrying that people in power are normalizing “sexism, racism, bullying, xenophobia, and the non-existence of climate change,” says simply, and not so simply: “What am I doing?” Note that any of those things may frighten me or people I care about, but what gives me angst is me: what I am to do, whether I can, whether I should. The existentialist, whether godly like Kierkegaard or an atheist like Jean-Paul Sartre, thinks that no one can answer these questions but me. And once I’ve answered them, anxieties about new possibilities follow, which I evade or face. By their analysis of anxiety, boredom, ressentiment (resentment)—another feeling much in the news of the world—and other disagreeable emotions, the existentialists individuate what often seems attributable to the public, crowd, or group. If I’m told, or tell myself, that “the group is anxious and resentful,” this becomes one more way I evade or justify my own anxiety or resentment, rather than face its meaning for me, what it says about my life, and how my choice affects others. Today’s world is uncertain and disturbing in ways that give the lie to “the end of history” and other nostrums that comforted after the Cold War, as global capitalism reached far and wide with the upbeat pretext of consumerism. Rarely has philosophy, not least existentialism, been so readily invoked in journalism as in recent months, for the effort—the need—to make sense of who we are in confusing times is one description of philosophy. “Man is in anguish,” says Sartre, bringing another, maybe the least pleasant, emotion to bear—anguish adding to angst the pain of responsibility I cannot escape and that I convey to others through my example, be it courageous or cowardly. Another student, paradoxically, finds this terrible uncertainty “optimistic” even while a “burden”: “Nothing is ready-made, there is no prototype. We must make something out of ourselves and we have no choice but to accept that responsibility and embrace it, no matter how difficult that might be. There is undoubtedly a pressure one feels when one thinks for all mankind, but there certainly is a beauty—that we are free, ‘we are freedom,’ as Sartre says, we are ‘condemned to be free.’” James Moyer, Ph.D., a member of the liberal arts faculty, teaches philosophy and literature. His course on existentialism was offered last fall. 30 OVERTONES SPRING <strong>2017</strong>
MEET THE ALUMNI Enterprising Ideas CURTIS ALUMNI WIN GRANTS RECOGNIZING ENTREPRENEURSHIP. BY LAURA SANCKEN In 2016 Curtis announced its first alumni entrepreneur grants for projects highlighting innovation, sustainable community impact, and creative employment of musicianship and skill. After receiving an overwhelming response to the call for applications, Curtis awarded three grants of $2,200 each in the categories of Community, Performance, and Innovation. Here, the alumni recipients discuss their projects. “I want an everyday person to hear what I’m doing, no matter what it sounds like, and relate.” —Gabriel Globus-Hoenich COMMUNITY BREAKING DOWN BARRIERS “Playing doesn’t have to mean playing at Carnegie Hall, and teaching doesn’t mean being in a static classroom environment.” So says percussionist and 2008 Curtis graduate Gabriel Globus-Hoenich. In 2015 he joined forces with Brazilian percussionist Rogerio Boccato to create PlasticBand, a drumming project that partners with the New York City Department of Probation to build community. A NeON Arts Grant from the Carnegie Hall Weill Music Institute helped them to create an initial ten-week program of free drumming classes for probation clients and community members in Harlem. Using found objects as instruments, they encouraged everybody to participate in the creation of music. “Every day at 5 p.m., we were here to make music. We had a chant: ‘We are a Plastic Band,’” Gabriel recalls. Both probation officers and clients would join in this weekly chant together, often ad-libbing off each other and breaking down barriers to make music. In its final event, PlasticBand gave a performance for the community with guitarist Lionel Loueke and community partners from the New York Mission Society and Afro-Latin Jazz Alliance. Through PlasticBand, Gabriel realized how blending performance and teaching could build community and appreciative audiences at the same time. “I want an everyday person to hear what I’m doing, no matter what it sounds like, and relate. If the music is complex, like a foreign language, you need to pull them in to understand it. I feel like the audiences, who are typically families of my students, appreciate this.” With the grant from Curtis, Gabriel hopes to expand PlasticBand as both an educational and artistic organization, and commission teaching artists to create, perform, and record original compositions. Gabriel Globus-Hoenich (Timpani and Percussion ’08) OVERTONES SPRING <strong>2017</strong> 31
Page 1 and 2: Vol. XXXXI, No. 2 Spring 2017 Commi
Page 3 and 4: CONTENTS FALL 2016 AT CURTIS Opposi
Page 5 and 6: NOTEWORTHY Images from the orchestr
Page 7 and 8: NOTEWORTHY Curtis Sweeps Musical Am
Page 9 and 10: MEET THE FACULTY diverse musical ta
Page 11 and 12: MEET THE STUDENTS Anastasiia Sidoro
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Page 27 and 28: Ms. Saariaho’s residency in Octob
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Page 37 and 38: NOTATIONS Glass’s Akhnaten with t
Page 39 and 40: NOTATIONS the Indianapolis Symphony
Page 41 and 42: NOTATIONS STUDENTS In November, HÉ
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