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Chi-Wei Lo interviewed Hankus Netsky, past chairman of and now department advisor to the Contemporary musical Arts Department (formerly Contemporary Improvisation and Third Stream), in honor of NEC’s upcoming celebrations (Nov 15th– 22nd) honoring the legacy of composer-performer-pedagogue (and former NEC president) Gunther Schuller. The week-long festival of concerts bridges many genres, presenting lectures, panels, and other collaborative events [Details HERE].
Selected keynotes from Netsky’s “Borderless Flows” conference from University of Alberta (2022) serves as an extended preface to Lo’s interview.
“In 1972, Gunther Schuller was five years into his stint as president of New England Conservatory, a school that, only two years earlier, had almost shut its doors due to a lack of funds. The oldest music college in North America, “NEC,” as it is now known, had gone through periods of innovation before, hiring preeminent futurist Ferrucio Busoni to teach piano in the late 1800s and training the innovative African American roots-music composer Florence Price in the early years of the 20th century. Its legacy of innovation has produced many remarkable results over the years since, unlike a large university, a small private music conservatory has always had the flexibility to adapt to the times, as long as their Board of Trustees was willing to go along for the sometimes-wild ride.
But the revolution that Gunther Schuller unleashed on the school in the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s was totally unprecedented. The child of two German immigrant musicians, French horn virtuoso, composer and conductor Schuller had no academic credentials, in fact he actually never finished high school, having dropped out at age 16 in order to play his instrument with the American ballet theater. By age 18 he had become principal French horn player for the Cincinnati Symphony.
Instead of relying on academic constructs, he took his model of music education from his own “self-education” in the music room at the New York Public Library and from what he had actually experienced working in the rich musical scene of 1950s New York City, overflowing at the time with Black improvisational music, Latin music, European concert music, contemporary and experimental music of various stripes, and a multiplicity of ethnic and world music traditions. Ten years earlier, he had coined the term “Third Stream.” He was referring to artistic musical genres that had benefited from intercultural cross-fertilization, something that had been going on since at least the days of Monteverdi and that he had personally been a part of multiple times in during his years in New York, including his presence as a session player on the pivotal 1949 Gil Evans/Gerry Mulligan/Miles Davis recording, “Birth of the Cool.”
It didn’t make sense to him that only one type of music was represented in the academy and that everything else was considered unworthy of academic transmission or recognition as art simply because it relied on oral transmission more than notation and referenced somewhere other than Europe as its place of origin. Once appointed president, he took it upon himself to re-make NEC as a very different kind of music school that focused on the overlapping of all forms of artistic musical expression. In doing so, he saved an institution that for years had been teetering toward collapse, giving the school the goal of creating not only “the complete musician” but the open-minded well-educated and well-trained musician of the future. Schuller was that unique musician who had his pulse on the artistic heartbeat of his time and, unlike any other conservatory president of that era, he knew that there could be no turning back. Twice during his ten-year tenure he resigned out of frustration but, in each case, he was lured back by a board that didn’t have any better ideas about who might lead the institution forward.
To help him along on his mission, Schuller brought on-board George Russell, a composer, pianist, drummer, theorist, and fellow high school dropout who had postulated new rules for analyzing musical compositions and improvisations using his “Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization.” Russell’s own music imagined creative collaborations between Charlie Parker and Igor Stravinsky, something Parker himself had been moving toward before his premature death at age 35 in 1955. Russell re-cast iconic American folk music warhorses as art music pieces that reflected the bleak realities of the lives of real working people, most notably, his much acclaimed “re-composition” of John Brown’s Body, “The Day John Brown Was Hanged,” and his variations on “You Are My Sunshine,” the only piece of music ever to win an award from the United Mine Workers of America. Later, he invented compositional techniques including “Vertical Forms,” juxtaposing layered rhythmic and harmonic structures so that they would not only play off each other but also converge at various junctures to create unprecedented episodes of rhythmic vitality.
Schuller also hired Joseph Gabriel Maneri, a Brooklyn-born grade-school dropout who had earned his living and his musical reputation as an improvising saxophonist and clarinetist known for jamming virtuosically on tone rows in clubs on 52nd Street while introducing futuristic interpretations of Greek ethnic dance music to the Brooklyn club scene. Maneri, a maverick microtonal composer who had studied with Alban Berg protégé Adolphe Schmidt, had actually been living in a car when Schuller invited him to move up to Boston to join NEC’s music theory and composition faculty. He remained on that faculty for over 35 years and was considered one of the school’s most revered and innovative instructors during that time.
To teach Non-Western Music and ethnomusicology Schuller brought in Peter Lyman Row, a sitarist who had earned doctorates from both Wesleyan and Benares Hindi University. Row had distinguished himself not only as a scholar but also as the only non-Indian ever to win the gold medal in the All-India Music Competition. As legend has it, the year after Row won the award, the folks who ran the contest decided to take down the screen that they had been using to ensure fairness in their judging in order to make sure that a non-Indian never won the competition again.
And then there was (and still is) Ran Blake. Schuller had discovered Blake in the late 1950s when he began showing up at Atlantic’s studio recording sessions, offering to sweep the floors if he might be allowed to listen in while such artists as Ray Charles and Chris Connor recorded some of their now classic LPs. A graduate of Bard College, Blake had teamed up fellow Bard student Jeanne Lee, a singer whose artistic presence and gravitas went even a step beyond that of the contemporaneous actress/singer, Abbey Lincoln. As a duo, they created what Schuller dubbed “The Newest Sound Around,” the title he lent to their debut 1962 RCA recording. As with Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor, two musicians whose creations Schuller had lauded well before most musicians knew what to make of them, Schuller decided that Blake was yet another genius, even if virtually no one else could comprehend it at the time.
Blake hardly even read music, which made him a somewhat surprising choice to head a department at an American conservatory. Creative music, in his mind, was an aural art and, as he said in a 2022 Downbeat interview, he’d prefer it if his students “saved their eyes for Picasso and Grandma Moses.” He was well aware that, in its recorded form, most great music expressed personal conceptions of phrasing that had no relationship to any score. Blake’s approach was to insist on detailed listening that enabled the student to “internalize” every detail of the music they were using as a point of departure. He would ask his students to listen carefully, then sing what they heard and then teach their instruments to match the sounds and phrasing that they expressed with their voices. Then he would challenge them to make new and, ideally, spontaneous versions of what they had internalized, versions that reflected their own personalities and perhaps also expressed a story line a la “film noir” or, for those who had no interest in such plotlines, maybe something more akin to the day-to-day exploits of one’s cat. In any event, the goal he set before them was to give whatever music they learned a new spin that no one else might have been able to come up with, as he has continued to do throughout his 60-plus-year recording career.
Eventually, working in tandem with Row, Maneri, vocalists Geraldine Martin and Dominique Eade, Russell and, beginning in 1978, the author of this article, Blake went about trying to conceptualize curricular and performance opportunities that enabled students to engage with the intense alchemy that he knew could emerge if only Charles Ives had had the adventurous spirit to seek close musical relationships with Billie Holiday, Thelonious Monk and Ali Akbar Khan, and the four of them had shared multiple servings of Jack Daniels’ Kentucky bourbon on the Greek Riviera.
The program went on to attract students interested in trying out such an approach, in fact two of them organized the present conference. Another Blake student currently chairs the music department at Columbia University and, until recently, another chaired the music department at Wesleyan University. Yet another Blake protégé developed a music curriculum at a State University in Massachusetts that has made innovative music education affordable for everyone. Meanwhile, for more than 50 years, Blake has continued to teach students by drawing on his own experiences in becoming an enduring and open creative musical force.
Initially known as the “Third Stream” program, Blake’s open incubator for inclusive musical innovation became the “Contemporary Improvisation” department in 1992, when cellist Larry Lesser, NEC’s president at the time, observed that the time of “Third Stream” had come and gone and, beginning in the fall of 2021, “Contemporary Musical Arts.” Not long ago, a special task force convened by the College Music Society, a national organization comprised of College and University faculty members, published a “Manifesto For Progressive Change in the Training of Undergraduate Music Majors,” suggesting that music schools and departments develop radically new curricula that address the needs of 21st-century musicians. Reading their manifesto (for which the lead author was maverick Ann Arbor-based music educator, Ed Sarath) seemed to me precisely like reading an account of what Blake and Schuller had set in motion 50 years ago at NEC.”
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Chi-Wei Lo: Gunther Schuller founded the Third Stream Department in 1972; it became the Contemporary Improvisation Department in 1992 and, more recently, the Contemporary Musical Arts Department in 2022. I’m curious, what inspired the most recent name change, and how do you see the evolution of these names reflecting the department’s identity over time?
Hankus Netsky: I actually think it would have been better if “Contemporary Musical Arts” had been the name all along! The term “Third Stream” was pretty arcane even by the 1970s. NEC president Larry Lesser requested the 1992 switch for that reason (I remember him asking “Isn’t Third Stream something from the 1950s?”). Gunther Schuller was at that meeting and gave the change to Contemporary Improvisation (then-Provost, Peter Row’s idea) his blessing. When he coined the term, he intended it to be used as an adjective, but critics turned it into a noun, and he went along. Current president, Andrea Kalyn, requested the latest change, pointing out that improvisation is only part of the skill set that we teach. We put it to our faculty, and I came up with “Contemporary Musical Arts” one night at 4 AM (!) — and our faculty liked that name. I think it describes the musical world we live in and the diverse music scene that we prepare our students to be part of.
You’ve said that Gunther Schuller envisioned NEC as a place where all musical boundaries could overlap, from Black improvisational and Latin music to European concert, experimental, and world traditions. Where do you think we are on that path today at NEC? Are we now seeing the full bloom of that vision in NEC’s current community?
I think the CMA department sees that vision as our vision, but I can’t really speak for the school overall — better to ask the current president and Dean. Gunther transformed the school in the late 1960s by hiring many faculty who shared his vision. Shortly after Gunther retired as President, the school became much more compartmentalized (or “departmentalized”) and, in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. It seemed to me like the administration was primarily interested in competing with Julliard, Curtis, Oberlin, USC and Eastman for the top classical players at that time, and the classical music world was then and still is largely focused on competing to attract potential competition winners. NEC tried to do that by hiring top classical faculty artist/teachers and expanding their orchestral program and specific niche departmental requirements, which made it difficult for “classical majors” to participate in our ensembles or classes. Also, on at least three occasions that I remember, the school actually considered eliminating our department.
While the jazz department remained strong, CMA became less of a presence in that era, but Ran Blake (our department head from 1972 until 2005) continued to steer things as best he could, according to what he saw as Gunther’s vision — and, of course, Gunther was still around, still local, and still somewhat involved with the school. When Tony Woodcock arrived as president in 2007, he turned things around somewhat, touting our program as “the signature program of NEC.” He let us expand our faculty and let us grow to the point that as Gunther put it, his “vision had been realized,” especially regarding our partnerships with NEC’s chamber music, music theory and music history departments. At one point during that administration’s tenure, the school included five ethnomusicologists on the faculty, all of whom were also well-known as performing musicians. After Tony’s stint as president ended it seemed to me that things took a more conservative turn again, especially in regard to faculty hiring and course offerings, for example, the number of electives our department offers was reduced by four. The current administration seems to be interested in moving things forward again, especially in regard to teaching a 21st-century technological skillset but, in my opinion, technology is a tool for musicians to use, not so much something that can replace one’s actual musical skillset. I’m still hopeful that, as the school moves forward, the administration will hire more faculty outside our department who share our vision. Meanwhile, we’ve been excited about collaborations with those that do, for example Cameron Stowe in collaborative piano and Bruce Brubaker and Steve Drury in piano performance, Ken Schaphorst in Jazz, and former Wind Ensemble conductor Charles Peltz, all of whom have initiated exciting cross-genre projects involving students and faculty from our department.
Where do you see the department heading in the coming years?
I think that’s a better question for the current department heads, Eden and Farayi. I stepped down this past summer. But my wish would be for the school to embrace the concept of training all of our students to be ready for 21st century musical careers, and I do think they should look to our department for guidance on how to do that since we’ve been doing it for over fifty years and our graduates have impressive track records. Some (Don Byron, John Medeski, Aoife O’Donvan, and Sarah Jarosz, for example) have become iconic performers, composers, and improvisers, and others (Cris Wahburn, Eric Charry, Albin Zak, and Alan Williams, for example) have earned reputations as groundbreaking educators in their own right.
You were very close with Gunther Schuller. Beyond assembling a faculty of groundbreaking musicians, in what other ways did he actively cultivate and implement these forward-looking ideas within NEC’s culture. What were some ideas that laid the foundation for what we see today?
The idea of jazz education, not as a vocational workbook-oriented discipline but as an artistic heritage taught by significant innovative musical artists.
The idea of a “Contemporary Musical Arts” program that produces composer/performer/improvisers who can flourish in a post-genre musical world.
The idea of a school that encourages collaborative projects and ensembles involving students across departments and disciplines.
The idea of learning music’s oral traditions AS oral traditions.
The intensity of our musical life (which, I believe, started when, in 1977, Gunther programmed Gurrelieder and Wozzeck in the same semester – and has never really quieted down since then).
An emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration.
An emphasis on training students to have a critical eye and to see through the “hype” that often permeates “fusion projects” and the like in our contemporary musical landscape.
An emphasis on the importance of musicians having high-level aural skills at a time when many other schools have very much ratcheted down their standards in that regard.
The idea that the artistic musical world is one continuum in an era when so many other schools have chosen to educate their students as specialists in one musical genre, niche, or discipline. -A World Music performance legacy, replete with ensembles that teach Indian, Persian, Middle Eastern, African, African-American, Bluegrass, Irish, Gospel, Brazilian, Jewish, and American Roots traditions.
The idea of an expanded musical cannon that goes way beyond the Western musical cannon.
What was Gunther Schuller like as a mentor? To him what were the most important qualities of a “compleat musician”?
It was all about versatility, knowing how to synthesize musical genres, and the ability to speak and be creative using multiple musical languages. As a mentor he let you know his opinions, but I also found him very open to hearing mine. The bottom line was that he set the example for me of what a career as a composer, arranger, performer, and conductor looked like and my career followed that path.
And as an educator — are there any particularly memorable moments or lessons that stand out to you?
If you were willing to put in the work, he empowered you to do things that seemed way beyond your ability. The most memorable moment for me was when I improvised an oboe solo based on the music of Thelonious Monk at the end of a Third Stream concert in 1975. After the concert he told me to see him in his office the next morning and, when I got there, his desk was filled with the hardest virtuosic contemporary oboe music one could imagine. I wasn’t even an oboe major, but he told me that he had decided to give me the oboe chair in the new “Contemporarly Music Ensemble” that he was launching at NEC. I protested that the music was way too hard – and he countered that what I had improvised the night before was on a higher virtuosic level than any of the scores on his desk! I joined the group and remained in that position until I got my Masters Degree in 1978.
Do you have any favorite stories about Gunther Schuller that capture his personality or philosophy?
Gunther wanted all of us to expand our listening list to be more inclusive in every way possible. After one of the Contemporary Ensemble concerts that I wasn’t involved in he stopped me in the hall and asked me what I thought of the repertoire. I told him that my favorites in the program were the selections composed by George Russell, Charles Ives and Charles Mingus. But the group has also performed All Set by Milton Babbit and, at the time, it really didn’t resonate with me. He expressed his disappointment and told me that he felt strongly that it was the best piece on the program and I needed to re-consider. Many years later I had the opportunity to put it together myself, and it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my musical career!
Do you believe every musician should learn to improvise and compose, and develop the ability to learn different genres by ear?
It depends on your definition of a musician but, in my career, I hardly ever work with musicians who can’t do all of those things, including Itzhak Perlman, whom I’ve worked with now for 30 years and is so much more than a violin virtuoso! And for anyone looking for a career in music in the future, I would highly recommend that they develop all of those skills because, in pretty much every case, they’ll get the gig over someone who doesn’t have them.
During the weeklong celebration of Gunther Schuller’s 100th birthday, you and Eden MacAdam-Somer are curating the Contemporary Musical Arts Department’s concert on Tuesday, November 18th, titled CMA Today: A Global Vision Realized. Could you share more about the conception of this concert and the ideas behind the repertoire choices? Is the entire department involved in the performance?
Yes, they certainly are! But we’ll also be featuring students with specific expertise, for example two of our students composed pieces based on Gunther’s “Magic Tone Row.” A piece that I arranged features a native Yiddish speaker from our department and requires the instrumental soloists to be fluent in traditional Jewish cantorial improvisation. Another one contrasts the percussion background of virtuosic soloists drawing on Chinese, Haitian, and Persian rhythmic traditions. There’s an original Americana song, students channeling the innovative musical languages of Ornette Coleman (really a Schuller discovery) and NEC graduate Cecil Taylor. There are selections that originated with Jelly Roll Morton, Billie Holiday and Sweet Honey in the Rock, and our emeritus Char, Ran Blake who turned 90 this past year and selections that reach across multiple genres. I’m pretty sure that it’s just as Gunther would have wanted it.