On The Edge

I heard this joke at a meeting of senior consultants at First Boston:

An associate conductor for a regional orchestra was asked to guest conduct for an orchestra 1000 miles away. He arrives at the concert hall eager to meet orchestra members and establish good chemistry with them. 

All seems well except for the concertmaster violinist, who regards him throughout the performance with a baleful frown. The conductor tries everything to get on the violinist's good side -- he tries being athletic, modest, emphatic, solicitous -- but nothing changes the expression on the violinist's face.  

So preoccupied is he with the concertmaster's frown that the entire concert falls flat. He knows he will never be invited back. But before he returns, he decides to have it out with his nemesis. "All through the concert you frowned at me. Nothing I did was good enough for you. What did I ever do to you?"

To which the concertmaster blinks languidly and replies, in a thick Czech accent, "I hate music."

So what is this "one buttock" stuff? Zander explained it immediately, illustrating the difference in piano-playing at ages 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11. Each year, the awareness of the music deepens, until the young pianist finds him or herself sitting on the edge of the piano bench -- on one buttock. The posture bespeaks a level of involvement, of soulfulness, of suspense even, that a beginner or disinterested party is incapable of. 

You cannot sit on the edge of the bench, on one buttock, and hate music.

One thing obvious about Benjamin Zander -- he does not hate music. And yet music per se is not his message. Music is a means to a deeper message for him -- that we live together, sharing the same hopes and heartaches, in a realm of remarkable possibilities. But to achieve this state of mind -- generous, joyful, and young at heart -- one has to be a little at war with the world.

Just as Jim Loehr talked about "expedient adaptation," the comfortable and conformist position that the best way through life is the easiest way, Ben Zander described the normal point of view in the world as one of downward spirals -- the conventional wisdom that is invariably negative and pessimistic.

Loehr also used the epigram, "If you're on the edge, you're taking up space." Being on the edge, of course, is critical to one-buttock piano-playing.

That awful voice

Masters Forum oldtimers may remember the talk given five years ago by Martin Seligman, on "Learned Optimism," in which he told us that a pessimistic outlook is the leading predictor of depression and failure. That talk has many points in common with the message of Maestro Zander.

The downward spiral is apparent everywhere we turn -- the negativity of the nightly news, the dismal attitude that prevails at the workplace, the feeling we all have that being positive is somehow not respectable.

Zander's talk was all show-and-tell. He drew the classic "nine dots" trick on a pad. How, he asked, can we connect the nine dots with only four lines?

Thinking of the nine dots as a box, the problem is unsolvable. Thinking "outside the box," however, the solution is simple:

The box we dwell in is the box of the downward spiral, the dismal treadmill 

Why do kids skip? he asked. Why does a four year old waddle up to a stranger and cry out, Hello! Why do you never see people skipping on Wall Street? The answer is that adults have forgotten the rhythm of transformation, and succumbed to the lazy cynicism of the downward spiral. We are all the victims of The Voice, that nagging, awful voice we hear inside our heads all day, every day, telling us we're stupid, we're wrong, and we're going to get caught.

Zander said reminding us of that rhythm, and urging us to ignore that awful interior voice, is his job.

That rhythm is pure manic energy, he said, pointing out that the time signature of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is 180 beats per minute. Zander played a few bars -- we expect the familiar leitmotif to be grand, because no one plays it the crazy way Beethoven directed; we don't expect it to run fast as a cheetah.

An A for everyone 

Ever wonder why people don't respond better to your overtures? Maybe it's because you haven't given them an A in advance.  In his composition class in Boston he gives every student an A -- provided they write him a letter describing who they will become by the end of the course.

It's surprising how much learning people can do when they know grades don't matter, and they've sent The Voice to stand in the corner. And you can giver anyone an A -- your boss, your colleagues, your mother. The Israelis can give Arabs straight A's and vice versa -- who's to say how that might affect the dialog?

You might think it is nice to be a musician in an orchestra. But according to one poll, musicians ranked below prison guards in job satisfaction. Why? Perhaps too many conductors are Arturo Toscaninis -- temperamental potentates who make musicians' lives miserable for the fun of it.

(Toscanini once fired a musician with 25 years of playing with the orchestra. Before the musician left the hall, he shouted out, "Toscanini, you son of a bitch!" Toscanini called out after him, "It's too late to apologize!")

Having said that, what kind of conductor is Zander? He invited a former student, Katja Linfield, now with the Minnesota Orchestra, to practice a bit of a Bach cello piece. Her first efforts sounded great to the audience. But Zander, moving all around her, offering suggestions, asking questions ("Which sounds better?") and compelling her to improve the phrasing, right on stage. Within three minutes the Bach was incredible, swinging and rhythmic and strong.

Then he did the same with a quarter Katja had assembled on an ad hoc basis, composed of herself, violist Kerri Ryan, second violinist David Wright and concertmaster Stephanie Arado. Zander joked, teased, sweet-talked and cajoled each of the musicians in turn -- even mussing up their hair -- until they too were feeling the feelings Mozart embedded in the notes ("weeping, crying") and the music improved 500% before our very ears. 

If you are at all interested in teams and teamwork, you had to find this demonstration. Masters Forum members quizzed the musicians afterward, and all agreed that they had experienced more freedom and joy in the music than they knew they could feel while playing. Why? Because Zander had given them an A in advance. This did not prohibit Zander from offering suggestions -- indeed, it made the suggestions welcome.