Episode 2.12 - Rising Tide Music Press Summer Symposium Panel - “Diversifying Your Stand”
We have a special episode today! This is a recording from a panel Ashley Killam led during the Rising Tide Music Press Summer Symposium, titled “Diversifying Your Stand.” She was joined by Estela Aragon, Marcus Grant, Ashley Hall, and Chloe Swindler!
Learn more about these four guests at their websites:
Full Transcript
Carrie Blosser 0:03
Welcome to Diversify the Stand. Together we build a community to listen and learn from the stories and experiences of passionate musicians. I'm Carrie Blosser.
Ashley Killam 0:12
And I'm Ashley Killam. In our second season, we talk with musicians, performers, educators, historians, and entrepreneurs to expand how we think of the music we perform and follow non-traditional career paths. Episode 12 is a rerun from a panel that I moderated for Rising Tide Music Press’ Summer Symposium this past July, the panel was titled Diversifying Your Stand, and the panelists included four incredible trumpet players with a wide range of backgrounds. So the four panelists are Estela Aragon, Marcus Grant, both of whom you have already heard in previous podcast episodes, Ashley Hall and Chloe Swindler. So this chat was just too good not to share with the world. So please enjoy our panel from this past summer. So I'd like to just have each of you three introduce yourselves, and then we can get started.
Ashley Hall 1:05
I can start. Hi, I'm Ashley Hall, and I'm on the trumpet faculty at the Longy School of Music of Bard College, and I also manage our career coaching program, which is a program that's designed to really help raise students’ agency and sense of autonomy and choice in who they are, what they value, and how they might really take those things and create something that's really unique and powerful in the world. So Longy is a school that's committed to the intersection of social justice and music, and so that's the work that I get to do. And there's a lot of facets to it. But that's a little bit about me. Happy to be here.
Chloe Swindler 1:39
I'll go next. Sorry, Marcus.
Marcus Grant 1:41
Oh, no, you’re fine.
Chloe Swindler 1:43
Hi, everyone my name is Chloe Spindler, and I am a freelancer out here in Los Angeles. I just finished up a few years ago at the Yale School of Music with my master’s of music. And now I'm finishing the last year of my doctorate out here at UCLA. And in the fall, I will be taking over for one semester for James Ford at Cal State LA. So I'm very excited to be having my first teaching job. And at the moment, I'm working on my dissertation, working as a booking agent for the Rodney Marsalis Philadelphia Big Brass, and I think that's all for now. So I'm going to hand it over to Marcus.
Marcus Grant 2:18
And I'm Marcus Grant, I am a professional composer, arranger, performer, and content creator. The biggest part of my business and brand right now is built on the idea of exploring ways that you can grow and develop your business online, how you can utilize the social media algorithms of different websites to help you find your audience, communicate with the audience, and connect with your audience in a way that sort of takes the gatekeeping away of finding your voice. I do a lot of stuff, especially for trumpet ensemble, it makes it easier because I could do multitracks of them, and I can record my own works and works with other individuals as well. And with that has come a lot of video production training and business training as well. It's been a really fun ride, I've done quite a bit of teaching, but especially as of the past year, we've done plenty of video producing and that side of things. So that's a little bit about me.
Ashley Killam 3:19
So to start, what we always ask, Carrie and my big question at the end of every single podcast and I know Marcus knows this, is we ask how are you diversifying your stand? And that could be like physical music stand, or, you know, the metaphorical stand of what steps are you doing today or this week to just, you know, increase your awareness, increase inclusion in everything you do?
Chloe Swindler 3:43
I can start us off here by answering that question. So in the physical aspect, I'll mention some of, two of these pieces, because there are trumpet players in the room and there may be other people interested as well. There is this piece by Hale Smith called Exchanges for solo trumpet and concert band. That's one of the pieces that over the next couple of months that I'll be continuing to shed. And then another is this anthology of art songs by Black American composers. This has great pieces in here, it has the full piano score and the parts. So these are, you know, vocal works, but they transfer over well for solo instrument with accompaniment. So these are two, I mean, there's probably, I don't know, 30 or 40 pieces in here. So these are great, you know, two to three minute works that you can put on a recital for an opener, closer, you know, whatever sort of short needs you might have for that. So those are two sort of physical ones. And then in terms of the more general, you know, stand, part of what I'm excited for is I'm here working on my dissertation and part of that has involved understanding Black women's music, Black American music, the underlying history of that, and then also how that relates to trumpet music. And so for me my focus—Hi, Estela—My focus over the next year as I complete this last year of my dissertation is focused on the topic of compositions for trumpet by Black female composers. So at the International Trumpet Guild conference next year, in May, at the end of May, I will be presenting my research for a lecture presentation called Five Works for Trumpet by Black Female Composers. So in our repertoire currently, no music exists in the standard canon, especially, really, of Black composers in the trumpet world, but especially, you know, there are very few women composers, and then also even scarcer for women of color. So those, you know, those are some of the initiatives that I'm really excited to keep moving towards. It was nice, too, I just did my first doctoral recital, a couple of months ago. And that was all works by women of color. And part of the difficulty for me was uncoupling this concept of, like, “high art music,” and what's expected of this, like, classical idiom, of these great classics that we’re expected to perform. And it was actually a very difficult conversation for me to have with myself of “Am I going to be worthy of receiving, you know, this Doctor of Musical Arts degree if I am not, you know, recording or working, you know, on these three years that I have for this program on strictly standard repertoire.” And so for me, you know, my half of my recital, I'm also a jazz guitarist and vocalist, was a mix of recording those with trumpet and, you know, making arrangements of pieces by popular music artists as well. And that's a whole other chasm of, you know, of classism within, you know, being able to discriminate against popular music and create those barriers from popular music and classical music. So these are just some of the conversations that I have with my students, that I have with my colleagues, mentors, other faculty. And bringing people into the conversation is a super important part of that as well. So those are some of the things I've been up to.
Ashley Hall 7:21
I can jump in next, and hi, Estela. So some ways that I'm diversifying my stand right now on, like, a just a practical musical way, I'm creating a concert in Cincinnati for brass quintet at the TAF museum to celebrate the 200th anniversary of this museum that was formerly a house and now it's an art gallery. And I've been doing some research about the different art pieces and realized that one of the first and most prolific artists that was an African American has these amazing landscape murals all throughout the museum. And so I'm trying to think about ways that we can both bring in really amazing new compositions that I have never played before, and really celebrating this rich history that we have with both the art and the musical side. So because of Ashley Killam, I have amazing resources at my disposal. So I sent her an email, she sent me a whole list of resources and so some of the pieces that I currently am in the process of kind of thinking through the flow are William Grant Still has a couple of amazing brass quintets, All That I Am and his Folk Suite for brass quintet are some things that are going to be on the program. In addition to I think, when I—I basically ordered, like, all of William Grant Still’s music, and then when they sent me the music, they were like, sorry, we didn't have this one, but here's David Wilborn’s Escapades. And it turns out, this piece is so cool. You should totally go on YouTube and listen to it. It's amazing. So we're putting that as the opener on the second half. And then I got some pieces by Kate Nishimura, the Valley Views is so beautiful and expansive, especially with this landscape idea. Zhou Tian has a really amazing piece that celebrates the intersection of Asian art and a kind of both European and Asian influenced music styles, and it's called Night-Shining White, and that's going to be on the program. So those are some things that I'm kind of musically thinking about right now. And then in my own work, well, in my own personal work, I am being just deeply impacted by Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste. It's the best book I've ever read. And if you haven't read it, it was one of Oprah's book choices, New York Times bestseller, and it's some of the best writing on the systems of oppression that we have, had, seen, is, that exist in this country. And I've never seen it spelled out quite this way. So I am grappling with new things every day through this book. I'm also simultaneously reading Austin Channing Brown’s incredible book I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness. And that's blowing my mind. And so that's some work that I'm doing personally. And then at Longy, I'm always thinking about diversity in a lot of different spaces. And so one of the things that I do is I run a speaker series called The Multifaceted Career. And the idea with the speaker series is that we want to be thinking about our careers in a very expansive way. And for too long, I feel like music conservatories have sort of given us this, like, narrow, myopic, like, you will either play in an orchestra or you will be a soloist, or you will teach at a college level. And we haven't been thinking more broadly and expansively about who we are, what we value, and what we might contribute. And so I've really been wanting to give weekly examples of people who are living out this expansive narrative. And so with that comes diversity in terms of scope, in terms of careers, in terms of race, in terms of all of it. So I'm booking my series for next year right now, Aaron Dworkin is going to be my lead speaker. He's the Co-Founder of the Spinx organization, which hopefully all of you have heard of. He's my first speaker, and is probably as multifaceted as it comes. A couple of other people on next season: Portia Dunkley is this amazing Black bass player from Miami who started this really cool mobile violin teaching unit that goes around into underserved communities and gives lessons, it's called Teeny Violini. It's so cool. We're doing a bunch of stuff around, like, culturally responsive pedagogy. And so I've got Angelica Cortez, the new CEO, interim CEO of El Sistema International org—I don't know, one of them. And Monique Van Willingh, who's the new DE&I leader at NEC, just really thinking as expansively as we can about what does culturally responsive pedagogy mean in music education space, in the way that we teach at a conservatory level, just all of it. So those are some things that I'm thinking about currently, in these different spheres in my own life.
Marcus Grant 12:24
I almost don't even want to add anything, that's so great. You know, like, I almost just want to kind of sit and kind of take in all that you guys just said, also hi Estela. Yeah, so I have a unique perspective as a composer and a performer, you know, I get to be on both sides of the stand, so to speak. And I have to say, as a composer, oftentimes, when I think about diversifying my stand, what I'm really doing is diversifying the stands of my audience, people who are reading music, looking for things, etc. I mentioned that from a content creation standpoint, I do stuff with my own, but I also do stuff with others, I've gone out of my way, especially over the past year or so, to just go and seek some of the works that are out there that haven't been performed. Some of them are original compositions. I've actually got one coming out in the coming weeks on my channel on YouTube. And then some of them are arrangements, but they just don't find their way around the repertory. You know, I think it's a shame, I had the distinct honor and privilege to be interviewed on the first season of Diversify the Stand, and one of the things that I mentioned is just that, you know, how great our standard repertoire is, but we get to the point where we, where it feels like it's not great, because you hear it all the time. You know, it's like you, you pop on your, whatever your favorite radio station is, and you hear a particular artist six times on the car ride to McDonald's, and suddenly, they're not your favorite artist anymore, because you've heard it the entire time. And you know what, you know, and unfortunately, a lot of times we go to schools and conservatories, etc. and, you know, there's a reason why our standards are standards, but they're sometimes just absolutely beat to the ground. So, a lot of what I try to do in my work is to take those works that are obviously very well done, but we just haven't gotten used to looking outside of our standard repertoire to do that. From a compositional standpoint, some examples that I've done, I've put together right now a piece that's currently in review to be published, an arrangement of Daft Punk Medley by Pentatonix for trumpet ensemble and a lot of people don't think oh, Daft Punk for trumpet ensemble, that doesn't work. No, it totally works. It totally works. Video game soundtracks, movie soundtracks, anime opening, you know, and everything in between. I’ve just really gotten into it, and in fact on my website, I’ve started to put together a lot of those and release them, and you know, oftentimes when I put a new piece up, you know, I do what most people do and you put the big shiny you know, “new” letters right beside the repertory, and I realized I have, like, five or six or seven right now that's about to be published on my website. And it's all things like that, things you wouldn't expect for a trumpet ensemble, as well as things from individuals you're not typically used to, you know. Chloe mentioned how incredibly small our African American community is of composers and how incredibly small our community of female composers are. And I can tell you guys from experience, from my research, especially, you know, listening to some some of the works that are out there by composers who are women, just some great, fantastic, beautiful, colorful pieces of music that are out there that just never get played. It’s a real big shame. And we'll be changing that here. But but yeah, from a composing standpoint, I put a lot of my effort towards trying to to seek out those works, expand on those works. If they aren't originally for trumpet, I arrange them for trumpet. And then I like to always put those links in and send those to the original works and support those people as well. And kind of get, not necessarily get rid of, but transition into this idea that if music is good music, then it is worth being performed. And it could be the same thing that you've heard, you know, 400 times, or it could be something that you've never heard for this ensemble, or for this instrument, or whatever the case may be. But it works perfectly well. It challenges you in many of the same ways. And it helps you grow as a musician, as a player, as an educator, and as a, in some cases, as a producer, and you know, if you if you explore along, there's room. So anyway, that's a little bit of how I'm diversifying my stand.
Ashley Killam 17:06
That's so great. I was just thinking that a whole other panel could be “what is good music, what makes something good?” And then we have our fourth guest here, Estela, hi. Could you give a little introduction to yourself? And then what we were just talking about, our first question that I know you answered on the podcast, but how are you diversifying your stand either physical stand or metaphorical stand?
Estela Aragon 17:36
Cool. Well, hi, everybody. I'm sorry, I was late today. The first lesson I'm going to teach you guys today is know how to change your own car tire. It's very important. So well, I'm Estela Aragón, I'm based out of Austin, Texas, I run a private studio called Music Fit Academy since 2014. And then since 2015, I run THQ, which is TrumpetHeadquarters.com, which is a heavy trumpet resource website that I made to kind of try to combat all the trumpet disease on the internet—did I just call it “disease?” I did. I definitely called it disease. And it also houses my new trumpet online course, which I am still developing and working on as we speak. So how do I diversify my stand, I've actually started working on some new things in the past couple months before life decided to throw everything at me. But one thing I started doing was I have a lot of private students, I teach all the time. So my work entails teaching privately, teaching online through my Trumpet Headquarters forum, with about 70 students right now who communicate with me via the student forum. And those are all self-paced lessons. So they just kind of send me videos and ask me questions. And they talk amongst themselves about artists they’re listening to and things they’re playing and things like that. And then I do a lot of content creation, because I create videos and lessons and things like that. So my private students, my oldest is about 76, my youngest right now is about six. I've had kids as young as four, and usually my young students are between five and nine or so. So one thing I started doing a couple months ago was once a month, we'll just talk about who is the classical player with, you know, with with the little ones, and who is a jazz player, and what they're supposed to look like. So, first, I just kind of do—it's not like a test, but I kind of just see where they stand and what their views are. So, for example, the first one would just be something like, I'll just pull up some pictures and it's funny because Chloe, you're actually one of the pictures, and I'll just pull it up and be like, okay, so this is Chloe, do you think Chloe plays jazz? Or do you think she plays classical music, you know. And it's just, it's the look. And the idea that dark-skinned people are jazz players, or, you know, Latin players and things like that. So sometimes I'll get some really young kids that are that are just like, I guess she could play anything, you know. And that's like, the Holy Grail, right? So if they respond, like, oh, she definitely plays jazz, then I'll ask why. I have gotten the response, “because she's Black.” And then I'll just be like, well, newsflash, she actually plays classical music. And then we'll go on and try to talk about and find a lot of other classical players that are Black, not just women, also men. And then, you know, I just kind of work with them to try to shift that mindset. A lot of the projects that I do are long term, monumental sort of things. And so I need some things in my life that are just more actionable, where I'm seeing the change as we're going. And so I focus a lot of my, like, diversity in my work and things like that. So working with them, because, you know, that could just change someone's mind so much, especially with my Black students, because they sometimes feel limited. And so yeah, things like that. Then on my Trumpet Headquarters forum, there's a lot of discussion on there about what I'm playing and who I'm listening to. And it's mostly white men, you know, that they're listening to and playing. And so I'm consistently throwing in there, “But have you heard of so-and-so and check out this video here. Marcus.”And so, you know, it's stuff like that. And so I'm sort of hoping that I'm throwing in the seeds sporadically and spraying them with a little water, and hopefully they're gonna grow and do something with that. Some other things I'm working on, I have this very, very talented Black student. And we're working really hard to try to get him a scholarship into Interlochen. Interlochen, as we know, is a music, very popular music program with some summer stuff. They have the trumpet Institute over the summer, and it's usually, like, 95%, white, if not 100% most of the time, I've had several students go there and always get pictures and stuff like that. So I really want to put my Black kid in there, because I know that's going to change, it's going to change his mind about stuff. It’s going to change everything that you know, he thinks is possible. And so I've been just working my kids really hard on that front. And then finally, something for the future. I want to do another panel. I did, I invited some Black women, trumpet players, brass players, because we had shinies, who plays horn, last summer to talk to my kids and do some private one-on-ones. I wanted to do something sort of similar, but we're going to do an event for Trumpet Headquarters, it's going to be women-only with a lot of diversity. So that's just another project that I have in the works.
Ashley Killam 23:20
That's awesome. So exciting. My question for you all is when we're thinking about just everything in terms of, you know, creating content, in terms of lessons, in terms of these events we're putting on, with all of that, what things do you personally think of to cultivate an inclusive space? Maybe that's language, maybe that’s people you bring in? What are some things that you think about that you could pass on to others to just keep in mind and consider as we move forward in all of our spaces?
Chloe Swindler 23:56
Yeah, I can definitely start us off here. I love to talk so much, so I'm going to try and keep it all condensed. I love having these conversations, and I'm so happy to just be listening to everything that you guys are talking about. I mean, it's really inspiring me, I'm writing all these pieces and things down so I can have these afterwards for myself too. So in terms of cultivating an inclusive space, I think one of the most helpful things that I've had is the experience of teaching in schools. So when I was at Yale, I was a teacher for the Music in Schools initiative, which sends us as Yale master’s students out into the New Haven community, and we give lessons for free to students in the Greater New Haven Public School District. And that, for me, was really enlightening because the students that I worked with—New Haven is fairly segregated in some parts of it—so when I was teaching at one of the schools, it was a 99% Black community school. And so the majority of my students were Black female middle schoolers. And, you know, part of what I had to think about was when I came in for lessons, this was also the poorest performing school in the district, for academics. And so music wasn't really, you know, a focus for the school, it wasn't really well-funded, a lot of the instruments didn't really work, the valves didn't, you know, work, things like that. So, we were battling against, you know, not enough funding, not enough time with the teacher to begin with. Not enough, you know, resources, physical, like copies of music and instruments that work. So to even, you know, have not the first foot, not the first leg up, you know, you're starting from the bottom trying to help that. And part of what I learned from these lessons was, you know, sometimes it wasn't about the trumpet, it was also about making a space where the students I was working with felt comfortable talking to me about what was happening within their lives. We started every one of our lessons off with a few minutes of meditation. One of the things I realized is, most of my students when I asked them, you know, we took a, I took a brass pedagogy class when I was an undergrad, and one of the things that our teacher said is the first lesson you ask, and kind of get a survey of what resources the students have. Do they have access to a practice room at home? Do they have access to an instrument they can actually take home? You know, is it loud in their house, are they allowed to practice, all of these things. And so when I asked them, they, you know, mentioned they had multiple siblings, they would come home, they didn't have their own room, they couldn't practice, you know, by themselves. And practicing at home usually meant taking the trumpet on the bus, sometimes they would forget it, all these things. So I guess part of, you know, cultivating an inclusive space, for me, means recognizing the background that my students come from, the resources that they have and don't have, and how I can help them have a leg up. And so I just taught for the past week at the LA Phil's Youth Orchestra Los Angeles program as the trumpet faculty. So all the students were students of color, they were high schoolers about to be seniors ready to go off into the world. And some of them wanted to be musicians, go to music school, some of them did not, wanted to do it as a minor or hobby. And part of what I compiled for them was every resource that I could possibly find, because most of them, you know, didn't have private lesson students, they were part of a community program where they would get group lessons. But I made sure that I found, you know, I included in a drive specifically for them, you know, the Stamp book, the Clarke books, like some of the fundamental books that we have, I made detailed notes and walked through with them, we had two hours every day, and showed them, this is how you practice this on your own. And all of those things are recorded, I made it in a Google document, I sent it to you, Ashley. We talked about this, but, you know, making sure that they had the resources that I had access to, just having that. And in addition, as I cultivate, you know, an inclusive space, as I think of materials that I'm teaching, it's not just music, I think that, you know, we need to start, that we need to be teaching students as I'm trying to think about going forward and, you know, especially being a college educator, students really need to also know about personal finance, about music business, I just started my LLC, Gold Coast Artists LLC, and you know, understanding more about how the music industry works and your place within it as well. You know, it's not enough these days to simply know how to play excerpts or play a solo or, you know, perform. Marketing yourself, being professional in professional spaces, all of that stuff is super important. So, as I'm cultivating this inclusive space, I'm also thinking about, you know, the materials that I'm teaching, it's not just music, but life skills that go along with it, you know, have you started a Roth IRA, have you started saving, you know, how are you thinking about your finances, because those affect your life as a musician? So I'm really trying to think holistically and especially also think of, you know, what are things that it's assumed students know that you can't assume that everyone knows that, or you can't assume that everyone comes from the same background? And has these understandings? So in terms of that, you know, that's one of the main things that I've been focusing on.
Marcus Grant 29:25
So I would really love to chime in a little bit on that, just because I think it's so powerful. The importance, first of all, of teaching the human, right, you know, and in many of, in our cases, you know, we're trumpet players and as educators, we can be teaching trumpet players, but really, we're teaching individuals who have passions, who have dreams, who have desires, and they're looking to achieve those dreams and desires, even if it has nothing to do with music. You know, what they do in the time that they spend with us, as individuals, professionals in the business, or friends or colleagues, whatever the case may be, it helps them to be able to open the door. And sometimes, you know, literally open the door to their dream job, but sometimes open the door of their minds to the possibilities and the things that can be done. In terms of inclusivity, that's kind of the biggest part of my work. I've done a lot of teaching, I spent five years teaching at two different colleges and universities. And also taught students as young as six. So Estela has me beat on that. And as old as 76. But it's just very fascinating, you work with individuals of all ages, and they have this preconceived notion of what they can do, what they're capable of, and what they have permission to do. They think, well, I don't have these resources, therefore, I can't accomplish this goal, or, you know, I want to be a professional musician, and therefore, these three opportunities are the three opportunities that are available for me, I have to play in a symphony orchestra, I have to be a band director, or I have to play in the military band. And there's no other jobs out there for music, and it’s just kind of getting people to open their minds. And sometimes, you know, you run into a student who really wants to do music for a living, but they want to be a Broadway artist. And they just don't know that they can do that for a living, one, and two, they're told in a lot of this conversation that maybe they're not ready or prepared, or they don't have the resources to do that. And it's all a fallacy, because at the end of the day, when we teach the human, what you need is the passion and the skills, and you can develop the passion and the skills in order to do anything. As a content creator, I almost make it a point, the only thing that I've kind of splurged on is my microphone, my microphone I received recently, and it is a fantastic microphone. I do video editing on free editing software. I do mixing and mastering on free software. And when I started school, for nine years, I performed on a $100 JC Penney manufactured trumpet from a pawn shop. I got into college with it. And it's one of those things that, you know, we think that, you know, and a lot of times it's especially important for these people in those socioeconomic backgrounds or in areas and schools, etc, where music is not a priority, where they're not able to have access to those levels of equipment to think, well, I just can't do this. But the reality is, you can. You just need the skills. And my former teacher, Rex Richardson, I met him, obviously, before auditioning for VCU for my undergraduate degree in music education. And he looked at me and he went, man, yeah, that's a really rough instrument. And then he picked it up, and he still sounded like Rex Richardson. And then he handed it back and he was like, yeah, man, that's rough, you need a new trumpet. And it was just really, really funny to kind of see that experience and to know, hey, it didn't hold him back. And it was a very valuable lesson, because I realized at that age, and I still teach this to my students as well, you can accomplish those goals, you can create your identity, you can make a career as a professional in any craft, if you build those skills. And I find a lot of times in my personal experience, I hope everyone has different experiences, but those students of color that I teach, and those students of different gender identities, will realize whether I preach it to them or not, that I'm going to support them in their goals, no matter what, and if they're experiencing issues where they're being discriminated against, or they're experiencing instances where they just don't feel comfortable in a space, to really follow their passions. They know that when they walk in through that door to meet with me, that all changes, they're able to do that, they're comfortable, and we prepare those individuals to walk into those other areas where they maybe feel less uncomfortable and be less apologetic because it's their passion. It's their dream. It's their goal, whether or not they have what they might think that they need. What they really need, again, is that passion. And as long as they have that passion, they're willing to achieve those goals.
Ashley Hall 34:47
That's so good. I was gonna jump—Oh, sorry. I'll be quick. I mean, just the thing that I was thinking about as Marcus and Chloe were talking to think about this teaching the whole human and this is idea of non-assumption. In terms of inclusive space, there's these three essentials that I learned in my coaching training that I think are so helpful in the way that we engage as educators in music space. And that's, we assume that each person is capable and whole, we assume that each person has their own answers, and our job is to ask, not tell. And we can create this environment where we ask open-ended questions, where we're curious about other people, where we build partnerships and not hierarchies, where we ask what are your pronouns? What do you want to be called? Like, ask, be curious. Then, when you create these spaces for conversations, like my speaker series, and you watch artists be human, they are grappling, they're figuring out their place. They're figuring out what does it mean for me to be transgender male in the opera world? What would it mean for me now to take testosterone and transition from a mezzo soprano to a baritone? And then to have students to go like, whoa, whoa, these people? Wow. And then you break down these barriers, right? These are humans, we are humans. So that I think is some things that I've learned to just to sort of sum this up for me that I'm learning is when we ask, and when we're curious, and when we assume that each person will have their answers and that they're resourceful and whole, there's space for this kind of inclusivity. Sorry, Estela.
Estela Aragon 36:35
Thank you, jumping out of the bushes now. I'm loving all this passion and excitement around this topic. I wanted to throw in just a couple things on my website, on TrumpetHeadquarters.com, I actually have a page for careers in music which details, like, a bunch of different, you know, options. So under the careers that I talk about in there, that are where you actually play your instrument, there’s so much in there, chamber music player, commercial player, orchestral player, private service band. trumpet player, university level, wedding trumpet player, there's just so many options. But then I also include a bunch of other options on careers that are in music, but when you don't actually play as the main source of income, such as church choir director, a composer, for example, conductors, instrument mouthpiece accessory makers, instrument repair, music business management, which will be huge, if you're thinking about getting into that get into it now. It's a great idea. Music journalism, music therapy, record studio careers. I mean, there's just all the options are out there. And like Marcus is saying, and, well, everybody here is just, you know, we have this “three options” sort of thing idea in music school. But yeah, it is a fallacy. It's absolutely not true. And going into the topic of, you know, teaching the whole human. I wish everybody just had teachers like you guys that are here. Because if it was like that, you know, so many people would be at many different places in their lives that maybe they would have liked better. A personal experience, I have a student, Jaden, who is transgender. And the very first day she came to my home for lessons, I knew she was transgender. And I said, hey, my name is Estela Aragón, my pronouns are she/her/hers, what are your pronouns? And you could just see her face. It just lit up. She was like, oh, she/her/hers, thank you for asking. Nobody ever asks. And I'm like, well, I mean, you know, that's only what you do. And I could just tell she was so comfortable. Because she felt accepted. And I came to find out, she actually did go to music school for trumpet performance for only a couple years. And she quit because of differences with her teacher of how she should look on stage, how she's supposed to present herself. Lo and behold, she actually did two or three terms, I think, of Mary Bowden's Apex trumpet symposium, and she was one of the best in there from what Mary was telling me, she totally killed it. And so it really kind of makes me wonder, I mean, she's a fantastic player. Where could she have gone had she gotten that support that she needed at that time in her life where she was probably just figuring things out? You know, so, yes, teaching the whole human. That's what it's all about, and it's never too late. It's never too late to make people feel welcome and good in who they are.
Chloe Swindler 39:47
If I can add just one small thing onto this is especially, I found as, you know, a person of color which I still, we have all these labels for what we call ourselves and you know, BIPOC, person of color, Black, African-American, like, all the stuff, I think truly, you know, as a college student who went through, you know, I was in university when these protests were going on for Michael Brown, for Tamir Rice, for all of these different, you know police brutality events. And on top of that, I got to Yale, Yale police had driven off campus and shot, you know, a New Haven resident in their car. We had protests throughout that time, and now, you know, being at UCLA and having just 2020 exist, you know, I'm not blind to what happens in the real world. And that does, you know, students, especially, you know, students of color, at times have to work particularly hard to be present, and pretend like some of these things aren't happening. I remember last year, I was finishing a class, you know, right when all the protests started happening, and this teacher wanted me to submit, you know, a 15 page final essay. And at the time, I also had to move out of the place I was at, because of different, like, COVID situations and different things were changing. And so part of, you know, for that class, I got a B, because I, you know, I didn't really feel like okay, writing this 15 page paper is the most important thing to do right now. Instead, I started a talk series, called the Common Ground Series, where I got, it basically was like, a great month of, I think it was July, maybe, or June, where it's all catalogued on Facebook for the Common Ground Series. And I got groups of people together to talk about different issues of what was happening in the music world, like to actually assess, like, where are we. First panel was a Black artists panel. And we talked about, you know, I had CoCo Smith, who was on the Book of Mormon on Broadway, you know, talking about her experience, and having, you know, an artist from the Yale School of Art talk about his experience of being, you know, a Black artist in, you know, the art world. So having these conversations was super important. And then, you know, we talked about K-12 music equity, we talked about jazz music, does it serve the Black community? We talked, had a whole panel of Black female brass players talking about—one, just meeting, that had never really happened before—and talking about, you know, what we wanted to see going forward. So, in all of this, you know, part of what I think especially, you know, people in positions of power should be mindful of, is that students, especially students, you know, of color, during these times, it’s hard to process and to keep up with what is happening. And so making sure that especially, you know, we are human, we do experience, you know, issues that that touch our communities, and so being able to speak about those in spaces where you're being mentored, where maybe you're giving private lessons, or you have bands, you know, having a space where you feel comfortable to talk about that is really important. And I knew the spaces on campus where I could talk about it, I knew the people I could not talk about it with. And that really made a difference overall.
Ashley Hall 43:26
Speaking of that, I just wanted to share something that we had at Longy that I want to share this resource with everyone. And so I don't know if any of you have heard of Philip Ewell? Philip Ewell is a researcher that's really, like, trying to transform the way that music theory—yes—is all centered on the white male frame. And so these six blogs that he wrote, and his entire lecture series, are all about confronting racism and sexism in American music theory. But what we came to is, especially listening to our students of color, they were, they're just, they're like, what is this? And why are we not talking about this? And then we, you know, had Philip Ewell come in and all of us just started breathing like, wow. For us, like, I was like, I never even thought. Never even thought. But for, you know, people who are Black, they have been thinking about this their entire training. So I wanted to bring that up and share that. And then the other resource that is so huge and powerful that I reference a lot in terms of these kind of understanding racial, systemic racist roots of our kind of music education pieces, and I'm sure this has been disseminated before, but this, it's a weird document, Google Docs, it was embedded but it's this whole document about songs with questionable past, and how can you actually understand and learn about these kind of racist, misogynistic roots of these songs that we kind of just grew up singing. So I wanted to drop those resources in there because I think they're really important to mention in this light of this conversation here, too.
Ashley Killam 45:15
Those are so amazing. And if anyone has any questions specifically, you can send me an email, because I can get you in touch with any one of these amazing human beings. Thank you guys so much. You four are wonderful, and I appreciate you humans so much. And thank you for sharing your words of wisdom and spending time with us. I know I learned tons and wrote down a bunch and have a lot more reading to do. And I hope everyone else enjoyed this as well.
Allyssa Jones 45:46
Thank you, Ashley, for putting it together. Thank you, all of you for joining us, it is just, this is why we come out of the silos at Rising Tide, right? Because the through lines, each one of these panels features a different kind of sector, and to hear in my, you know, a bazillion, because I'm, like, Methuselah-old, a bazillion years of music education, you know, what's the cross pollination? And, you know, I think people get, are shocked, right, when people in the bubbles are shocked when they hear outside the bubble. And I'm just hoping that folks are figuring out that the community around these issues, around pushing forward, is bigger than we think, right? And we're more powerful than we know. Because we have all four arms on the body doing the work, right? It's not, we're not isolated here and here and here and here, right? And when we walk as if we are a whole body, we shall overcome as the song says. So thanks again. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ashley. Thank you, Ashley, Chloe, Marcus, Estela. Thank you for being our new friends. We shall see more of you, I hope.
Ashley Killam 47:07
Thank you for listening to Diversify the Stand. I'm Ashley.
Carrie Blosser 47:10
And I'm Carrie. If you'd like to support us and our projects, find us on social media and visit our website. We now have a store where you can pick up some Diversify the Stand gear.
Ashley Killam 47:20
And as always, a huge thank you to Trevor Weston and Whitney George for allowing us to use their compositions in our podcast. The musical introduction is Trevor's trumpet duet Fanfare for Changes, and the ending music is Whitney's Incantations for trumpet and piano. Both composers’ websites are listed in the podcast description.
Carrie Blosser 47:38
Until next week, what's on your stand?