Pat Harbison’s blog

One of the features I enjoy about my local newspaper, the Bloomington Herald-Times, is that they regular feature columns on the editorial page by various members of our community. One such column this week really brought into focus some of the things I feel about the value of music education.

Rebecca Robbins August 9 column was entitled, “At 40-something, she rediscovered her inner band geek.” The column spoke of how Robbins rediscovered the joy of making music after leaving her clarinet in the case for over two decades. The opening paragraph was where she had me…

“After my first law firm hired me, one of the partners confided that they liked lawyers who had played on a sports team… because it indicated a certain level of discipline, teamwork and focus. While I was lacking in the athletic department (see my earlier column about Title IX), I did have experience that my prospective employers deemed just as valuable: I was a musician. I had learned about hard work and daily practice. I had learned when it was appropriate to be a soloist and when it was important to blend within the group. I could handle the pressure of public performance. I attribute the real development of these career-enhancing skills not so much to my undergraduate music training at Indiana University, but to an earlier institution: my high school band.”….

…Robbins is right. Musicians develop all of those skills and so many more. People who learn to make music learn to work independently and in teams. They learn to accept a role for the overall good. They learn to listen, concentrate for extended periods of time, work diligently at tasks that sometimes push their abilities to the limit, defer gratification until the hard work is complete…

However, there are even more skills to be learned (and in my opinion more gratification to be had) as one learns to improvise. A developing jazz improviser learns to blend the rational mind and intuition. They learn to assess a musical situation and turn on a dime. They learn to invent and execute simultaneously. They acquire an entire musical language, including common turns of phrase, idioms, dialect, etc. Then they aspire to make personal statements using that language and the lore and heritage of that language in the present moment.

When it turns out well there is possibly no more gratifying experience in all the arts… for either the musician or the listener. When it turns out not so well… we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and try again.

I have just returned from London, where I taught and played as a faculty member at the third and final week of Jamey Aebersold’s Summer Jazz Workshops. The UK edition of Aebersold’s Jazz School is organized and sponsored by Charles Alexander and his company, Jazzwise, which also publishes the UK’s finest jazz magazine.

This was my 30th year teaching at the Aebersold Workshops. One thing that I have noticed over the years is that there are increasing numbers of adults of all ages who participate as students in these workshops. This is a point I would like to dwell on next time as I continue this topic.

I appreciate your feedback and dialogue.

Pat