New England Conservatory

What I'm listening to this week is a jazzy new album called Shape the Future by one of my favorite producers, Takuya Nakamura.

Nakamura is originally from Tokyo, but he came to the States in the early 90s to study jazz at the New England Conservatory of Music, and then almost immediately fell in love with Jungle, which was just forming at the time.

and he's been making super beautiful trumpet-forward jazz-inflected electronic music ever since.

He's become a bit of an elder statesman in the electronic music world who more than keeps up with the often youthful crowd.

Yes.

Well, I'll just mention these three young musicians are in their early 20s and all three of them went to New England Conservatory as well as some other schools.

And our cellist here is Alexander Davis Pegas, who just finished his second summer

as

Instead of having 23,000 music majors every year, can we have 500,000 music majors? I think the conversation has shifted completely.

Even the New England Conservatory, which is one of the top seven conservatories in the United States, which trains the highest level of musician, is now advertising to its students, not only if you get a music degree at NEC, are you going to be able to play on stage at Carnegie Hall? But if you get a music degree at NEC, you can do one of a hundred different things, a hundred different careers through your ability to perform and present something to an audience that is looking to receive something that you have to offer.

What an amazing message.

The idea that the versatility of a music degree, even from a top conservatory, can prepare you for a degree in aerospace engineering.

Okay, so this was in the Berkshires of Massachusetts camp called Greenwood Music Camp.

And it did draw from New England Conservatory students and Juilliard.

So the prep division, so like, you know, preparing to go to those conservatories.

Right.

But first, we want to have a brief musical interlude.

This is a recording of Richard performing Paganini's Sonata Concertata for guitar and violin at the New England Conservatory of Music in 2017. . . .

Before we talk about how people can honor Richard's legacy, I just want to say that so we we played that music from that performance and Richard also gave a talk as part of that, and we'll drop the link in the show notes, about post-covered music.

And it's a great, it's a wonderful illustration of all the breadth of what Richard brought in, you know, weaving in music and the arts.

This is at the New England Conservatory of Music.

He's speaking to students who are looking to have careers playing music.

And he weaves together all of these different threads and gives some really amazing life advice.

But Hope Kirk realizes that In order to have a more stable position and more stable income, she wants to find a position somewhere.

And so her friend from Leipzig Conservatory, one of her friends was George Chadwick, who had just become the director at the New England Conservatory in Boston.

And that's how Hope Kirk ended up ultimately emigrating to the United States in 1897 with her husband to teach at the New England Conservatory in a faculty position there.

So he was well enough, recovered enough from that accident to continue a fairly normal life?

Yes, he just wasn't able to work and provide in the same way that he had been before.

So it wasn't like he was a complete invalid, but not able to provide in the same way.

So it was all up to her? So New England Conservatory in Boston.

And I'm just picturing these people back and forth on a ship across that ocean.