Season 4 Episode 6: George Marriner Maull - Conductor & Artistic Director of The Discovery Orchestra

Layers of different patterns are used to create the texture, another one of the elements of music we can focus on when we listen. This particular kind of texture was favored by a number of composers at the end of the 19th and early 20th century. One of them, French composer Claude Debussy, was also a great influence on Stravinsky. Listen to some of the layers Debussy used to create texture in his tone poem "The Sea," "La Mer." This passage is from the second movement called "Play of the Waves." Here's the primary pattern played by violins and violas. Now listen to the rising a scale-like pattern played by cellos and harps. Here's a pattern Debussy gives to— well, you tell me which instruments play this pattern. —And that pattern was played by— woodwinds. Yeah, woodwinds. The bassoons, the clarinets, oboes, flute, and piccolo. Here's one more pattern Debussy gives to the French horns and to one additional a solo brass instrument. See if you can identify which one. So what's the additional instrument? Trumpet. The trumpet, yes. Very unmistakable. Now, using these 4 patterns, layered one on top of each other like lasagna. And by manipulating the dynamics, the use of loudness and softness, Debussy builds an enormous climax and then backs away from it. Allow your listening to absorb all four patterns as we now play them together for you. At the Discovery Orchestra, we don't bring concepts like sequence to your attention so that you might impress your friends at parties or concerts. We bring concepts like sequence to your attention so that you will notice and enjoy them as you listen to music in real time.

Welcome back to another episode of The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song. Here, tradition meets innovation. We bridge the timeless beauty of the piano with the dynamic pulse of today's world. I am your host, Yukimi Song. During the summer, I was searching for some incredible talents in our industry to interview for this season, and after posting about it on social media, and it received warm feedback from our fans and listeners. We were able to create quite an incredible guest lineup for this season thanks to you who took the time to fill out the nomination form. Well, one of our faithful listeners, Mr. Rick Collar, who is the executive director at the Discovery Orchestra, also took his time to fill out the guest nomination form for the show, and he nominated today's guest. Massive shout out to Mr. Collar. Thank you. Hope you're tuning in today. By the way, the link to the guest nomination form is in the description, so if you would like to recommend someone or nominate yourself for the future episode of The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song with Yukimi Song, we welcome your recommendation. Now, without any further ado, let me introduce today's guest, Maestro George Marinermahl. He is a distinguished educator, public television personality, conductor, and violist whose love for classical music has profoundly impacted millions of listeners nationwide. Serving as the Artistic Director of the Discovery Orchestra and being a 3-time Emmy-nominated public television personality, Maestro Ma has guided countless individuals toward becoming more discerning listeners, enriching their classical music experiences. Whether commanding the podium or engaging audiences in lecture settings, Maestro Ma's contagious enthusiasm for classical music knows no bounds. For over a decade, Maestro Meng has graced the stage as the host of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center's Classical Overtures, enlightening audiences before performances by world-renowned ensembles and artists. His radio program, Inside Music, now in its 4th season on WWFM, The Classical Network, continues to captivate listeners biweekly. As a distinguished conductor, Maestro Moll served as the music director and conductor of various orchestras, including the Philharmonic Orchestra of New Jersey, Louisville Ballet, and the New Jersey Youth Symphony. He has graced prestigious stages like Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center and conducted performances in multiple countries, leaving an enduring musical legacy. Additionally, Maestro Moll is a gifted violist, having performed with esteemed orchestras such as American Symphony Orchestra, Aspen Festival Orchestra, and Brooklyn Philharmonic. His journey began in Philadelphia, where he received choral training and piano education. Later, he honed his viola skills under the guidance of Irving Segal of the Philadelphia Orchestra and pursued advanced studies at the University of Louisville and the Juilliard School. So I can't wait to invite Mr. Maul to the show and delve deep into his incredible journey, exploring the mission and vision of the Discovery Orchestra, the art of audience engagement, and the transformative power of classical music. Before starting this special episode with Maestro Ma, I want to welcome all our first-timers to The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song with Yukimi Song. I'm a classical pianist and educator from New York City. Whether you're diving deep into the piano career, working professionally in the classical music scene, or simply have a passion for piano tunes, This podcast is your backstage pass to the fascinating piano world. I also want to welcome back and thank you to amazing TPP fans and faithful listeners for tuning in today. Please rate and review the show on your favorite podcast platform because every rating review will help people find the show. So dear TPP fans and listeners, get ready for an enlightening conversation with Maestro Ma that will inspire and captivate music enthusiasts and learners alike. Please enjoy the show. You are listening to The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song, where we talk to the brightest minds in the industry about how they are bringing the piano into the 21st century. Hello, Maestro George Marion Amahl. Thanks for being on my show this morning. What an honor.

Yukimi, thank you so much for inviting me to be with you today.

I have been researching in depth about your work through the Discovery Orchestra. I've known this orchestra for quite some time, and then actually, as I was developing this idea of podcasting, I watched your show. I watched your small video clips a lot because I really love the way you engage with your audience, and then I had to learn from a good example, and which was you. So Then also you sent me the link of this video. There were several, but one in particular, Discover Saint-Saëns' Organ Symphony, where you talk about sequence and timbre and forms and compositional styles and so many things to the audience. And actually, your video brought me to tears because really, really, because you made me fall in love with music all over again. And, you know, I wish I had a teacher like you. I wish I was in the audience when I was a kid, you know, to experience that. What a powerful thing, powerful video. And so anyway, enough about my feelings. So today I really want this— how I feel about watching the video, you know, the sensation I felt. I really can't wait to share this feeling with my audience through our conversation. So anyway, so let's, let's talk about the Discovery Orchestra. So I visited the Discovery Orchestra's website, discoveryorchestra.org, many times lately, especially lately to do some research for this episode. And then in the front page of the website, it says, we teach the listening skills that help you really connect with classical music. Wow, that is powerful. Simple yet powerful. So what is the Discovery Orchestra? What is the mission and vision of the Discovery Orchestra?

Well, of course, the Discovery Orchestra is a 501 not-for-profit musical education organization, and we incorporated it in the state of New Jersey. Our offices are in Summit, New Jersey, in, in sort of central New Jersey, sort of a direct line from the Lincoln Tunnel. If you go west on Interstate 78 and the, the mission, of course, is that very sentence, helping people to really connect with classical music through teaching them how to listen. And it's, it's important. It's important to learn how to listen.

Wonderful. And, you know, in the society field with electronically reproduced music? How does this Discovery Orchestra help people truly engage with classical music? Right.

Well, as we know, there is a 24/7, rather incessant presence of electronically reproduced music. It goes everywhere you go: supermarket, doctor's office, on the hold on the telephone. There's always music being played in the background in our lives, and it's actually trained generations of people to merely hear music as sort of a sonic wallpaper that accompanies everything they do. And the list of things you could be doing while you hear music only is endless. But as a consequence, people have actually learned to ignore music rather than to be completely and fully present with it. I, I'd like to ask friends sometimes, the next time you're in a restaurant with friends, after a few bites to eat, mention, how did you like that last piece of music that was played on the sound system in the restaurant? And there will always be someone at the table who says, is there music playing? That's how desensitized people have become. So the first thing that the Discovery Orchestra does to help people engage is to initiate a circumstance that provokes an individual to have an aha around whether they are actually listening or not, because people don't realize that they are not actually listening, but only just hearing music while they do or think about other things. And you can even see it in the concert hall when we're on stage. Out of our peripheral vision, we see people texting friends in Ohio, and, um, we see people reading the program notes. And of course, that's defeating the purpose of being there, because every sound must be taken in by the person in order to understand it. So all of these distractions. I mean, there's always someone in the audience who seems to be scanning the people around them for perhaps an attractive person to hook up with at intermission or something. It's, it's amazing what people do in the concert hall. So, uh, how we accomplish this aha, I, I will speak about in detail a little later. But having cajoled audience members into making a decision to give music their totally undivided attention Then we ask them to fill in gaps in information that we provide them. That is, we, we ask them questions which can only be answered by giving the next short excerpt of music we play their undivided attention. So we kind of force them to listen. And in this process, we help them notice various aspects about the elements of music, the rhythms, melodies, textures, harmonies, the dynamics, the timbres, and the form as used by the composer in whatever is the featured musical selection on that concert.

You know, that's a lot of planning to do and also a lot of work. I mean, put together an orchestra and play music itself is already a lot of task anyway.

And as I was watching— This is true.

Yeah, and as I was watching your show, and you know, the— your orchestra knew exactly which excerpt to play according to whatever you, you know, tell them to do.

There, Yukimi, there is a secret behind that, and that has to do with all the work that we do ahead of time. Obviously, I select these excerpts of music to be played, and then we I make master copies for each part of the orchestra, the first violin part, second violin part, and there are these books that we assemble, these binders for the orchestra so that there is only one thing to play on each page and they just turn to the next excerpt one after another. They know that the next thing they're going to play is after the next thing I say, and that's why they're so on top of it. But of course they have to agree to do that.

Yeah, but you know, the whole experience, even just by watching at home on YouTube, was just so powerful. And then I was like, wow, this is well choreographed. And that it is nonstop. And then how audience, your audience was captivated by the presentation.

When you think about the teachers in our lives, and I'm thinking mostly here of the people in school, that we studied with when, when we were in either high school or whatever. Um, our— my favorite teachers, and I think many people's favorite teacher, are the ones who combine a knowledge of their subject with a slightly entertaining personality, perhaps even humorous at times. And, and they also have a little flair for the dramatic. They're sort of actors and actresses, and those teachers really get the class involved. So that's kind of the model I try to use as I prepare the scripts for these programs.

I want to know more about your life a little bit later in the episode because it seems like you have more than just one skill. Like, being a conductor itself is a big task and big, you know, training, long years of training. But then you seem to have different skills, like, you know, even you're very comfortable in front of the camera, on the microphone. That takes a lot of guts and also practice too. So we'll talk more about that later. Absolutely. Yeah. So could you share a bit about the history of the Discovery Orchestra? What was missing in the industry that made you decide to start the Discovery Orchestra? Because to me, there was something missing in my field, like teaching music, that I decided to start a podcast, just sort of like a fill in the blank. Yes.

Well, the Discovery Orchestra was originally founded in 1987 as the Philharmonic Orchestra of New Jersey. Uh, a good friend of mine, Brian Dallow, and I founded that orchestra as a professional freelance symphony orchestra that performed standard orchestral repertoire primarily in venues that are in Somerset County, West Central New Jersey. The roster of the musicians was and still is composed of members of the Musicians Union Local 802 in New York City, and it functioned like other freelance orchestras that are in New York, some of which I used to play in as a member of the viola section, orchestras such as the American Symphony, which performs at Carnegie Hall. The Philharmonic Orchestra of New Jersey expanded its geographic reach at one point by starting to perform in Richardson Auditorium at Princeton University and at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark when that facility opened. In 1997. Uh, the Philharmonic Orchestra performed in this capacity from 1987 for 18 years until 2006. And as far as what was missing in our industry goes, some of our patrons early on when we first founded the orchestra began to call the office or write to the office— people weren't using computers so much at that point— and they would ask if we knew of a course in music appreciation that would help them understand classical music better. It was really interesting. We'd have empty Nesters, who said, our children have now moved out of the house, they're gone, they're pursuing their own lives, we want to look for something to do and we think that music appreciation would be it. Or one of the funnier calls we got from someone was a gentleman who said, my wife has been dragging me to symphony concerts for 25 years, I'm bored to tears when I'm there, is there anything you can do to help me? So since I had been fascinated really since I was 9 years old with why some individuals seem to give music their undivided attention and others didn't, I told our staff that I would present a course in music listening for adult students. And it was originally, I think, 8 sessions on like first Monday, on Mondays in the month or for 2 months, and they lasted 90 minutes. And I, enjoyed giving those courses a lot. I think 12 people took the first one, and then it just began to grow and grow until the Arts Center was having me do these things before 500 people at a time in, in the smaller concert hall there. But in any event, um, this— these courses became very popular, and at a meeting of the Board of Trustees of the orchestra in 1995, I was asked if I could present a concert with the orchestra that would teach people how to listen as I did in my course. And so during the 1996-97 season, we presented our first discovery concert in Princeton. Now, several years later, at a 1999 long-range planning session, the board members were asked to write their personal list of the top 5 things they'd like to see happen at the Philharmonic Orchestra of New Jersey, and These suggestions were then written on large pieces of paper, uh, stuck to the walls, and the trustees were then asked to rank each of the ideas that were on these pieces of paper. And the, the idea that received the most first-place votes was, could we make a public television show with a Discovery concert as the material? And so in 2002, Bach to the Future Our first show was videotaped totally on spec. We had no idea if any public television stations would choose to broadcast it, but we made it at the Performing Arts Center in Newark, and our producer, Elise Van Stolk, sent the show to American Public Television, and they in turn decided to distribute it nationally. The first broadcast I remember was by the Philadelphia public television station, WHYY, on New Year's afternoon in 2003. It was an ideal time slot because it was 1 hour before the annual televised concert by the Vienna Philharmonic on New Year's Day. So a lot of people got to see our show. And this, this program subsequently received an Emmy nomination and was broadcast from coast to coast and in Canada for the next 3 years and seen, according to the Nielsen ratings, by about 1 million people. So in the wake, in the wake of the success, the board meeting conversations began to hover around this question: what is the most important thing that the Discover— excuse me, that the Philharmonic Orchestra of New Jersey provides? What unique offering do we present that other professional orchestras do not? And the answer was, what is missing in our industry, as you asked me. And it was that Nobody else was trying to teach the audience thoroughly how to listen to this music. And of course, that was a gap that needed to be filled. Now, there were audible gasps in the boardroom at a later meeting when it was suggested by one of the trustees that we consider presenting only Discovery Concerts each season. No more regular symphonic concerts. I mean, it scared the board. But the momentum continued, and what followed was an in-depth strategic review that resulted in the, in the 2006 renaming and rebranding of the Philharmonic Orchestra of New Jersey as the Discovery Orchestra.

Wow, that is just quite a journey. It was. And then where does this, the name Discovery, comes from?

That's, that's a cute story. I belong to my local Episcopal church, St. Luke's in Gladstone, and have since I moved out from the city. And one of the members of the parish is now a good friend of mine. His name is Richard Somerset Ward, hyphenated last name, from Britain. He went to Cambridge University and he His last job was head of art and music at the BBC, so he had made dozens of television shows, many, many, I don't know how many, with famous singers like Pavarotti and you just, you name it. He did films with them essentially for the BBC, so he was very interested in what had happened to the Philharmonic Orchestra of New Jersey. And so, um, He, at the church picnic one year in June, he said to me, well, you know, George, I think you ought to name it the Discovery Orchestra because you give discovery concerts. I said, bingo, you've got it. So we have Richard Somerset Ward to thank for our name.

It's a really great name, catchy and inviting as well. That's exactly what we need, right, in our industry. So as you've said several times, you know, your orchestra focuses on teaching listening skills. And, you know, I'm an educator, classical pianist, and I teach piano lessons. And as a teacher, my job is not just about teaching how to play the piano. Right. Yeah. My job is much bigger than that. I feel like, and especially, yes, especially I'm doing this piano teaching on my own as a solopreneur. This is my piano studio, so I feel like I have so much more to offer. I have to offer more, much more than just what's on the score. Does that make sense? So yeah, so I think teaching listening skills is part of my job as well. Which I'm trying to do. And then, you know, in the end, I want my students to attend Carnegie Hall. You know, I live in New York City. You know, I have this luxury. My students have this luxury to go to any of this world-class concert anytime they want, every night almost, right? However, do they go? Not so much. They're busy, but also sometimes it's a little bit intimidating. To get there, right? And also they are not being informed about how to listen, what to look for in music, right? Yeah, so I think music education teaching, as a teacher, that is part of teaching as well. So having said that, what are the 21st century general audience's needs? What do they want in the classical music setting concert, do you think?

Well, I think that our biggest task is to help people discover how moving this music is. I mean, why would I want to go to a concert if I thought I would be bored? Many years ago, when I was still living in Manhattan, one of the board members of the New Jersey Youth Symphony— actually, he was the president of the board of the New Jersey Youth Symphony, which I was conducting at that time— and he had tickets to Carnegie Hall. His corporation had a box at Carnegie Hall, and he couldn't go. And so he said, would you and Marcia like to have these tickets? I said, absolutely, sure. Well, we went and found that there were lots of strangers in the box. Apparently a lot of the executives were unable to go that night, so there were a bunch of people who had never been to a concert before, including a young couple who seemed to be maybe in their 20s. And, um, you know, they were turning to us. I said, do you know what's going to happen here? I said, oh, I do. Now, the program was going— this was a Vienna Philharmonic, one of the great orchestras of the world. And of course, Marcia and I were excited out of our minds to be there because we had never heard the Vienna Philharmonic live before. And, um, so this young couple wanted to know what was going to happen. I said, well, just Stay tuned and we'll find out. Now, sadly, the first piece on the program was Anton Webern's Five Pieces for Orchestra, which, while it used all 95 or 100 people on stage, was a rather typical, uh, 12-tone composition, incredibly dissonant and unbelievably disjointed. And so when that piece was over The couple turned to us and said, "Is this what it's like?" And I said, "Not always." And I said, they were thinking of leaving, they were going to exit the hall. And I said, "Stay until after intermission when they play Mahler's First Symphony." I said, "Then we'll find out what this is about." And so they did. And of course, they were knocked out by listening to Mahler's First Symphony. They never heard such a thing in their life. And so I thought, this tells me something about what educators need to have in mind. In other words, you probably shouldn't use a 12-tone piece of music necessarily to start beginners on their listening journey. Yeah. We might turn them off, you know. So even if it's our favorite piece of 12-tone music or whatever. So, um, I think that audiences need to be educated. Now, we know the sad thing is that in public schools and even in private schools, uh, although it varies greatly from many— from school district to school district and from school to school— but, uh, kids are not being taught how to listen to music. The primary emphasize— emphasis of music education in school is performance. You know, that's— they're teaching the choir to sing their concert, they're teaching the other kids to sing their Broadway show, they're teaching the orchestra to play their concert, and the band to get ready for the marching, uh, events with the football team or whatever. And so those teachers, even if they've wanted to teach music listening, many times I think they feel like they don't have time. In other words, there's just so much pressure to have that concert for the grandparents ready, you know, at a private school. I remember when I taught at a private school, we always had an annual concert for the young children for their grandparents. And this, this was the big thing, you know. So. But because I was already interested in teaching music listening, when I took the job at the private school, I told the headmaster, I will teach a course in music listening to the older kids, to the high school-aged kids. And so we had a course in music listening there, but normally you don't find this. And I feel like, you know, people are always saying the audiences are aging drastically, but you look out at the concert hall, sea of gray hair out there. And I don't see it getting better unless we make a concerted effort to teach people how to listen, because once you've been moved to tears by a piece of music, you will never be the same. And you will want to repeat that experience whenever you can, either with recordings or with live performances. And so we've got to get people to have that peak experience listening to music somehow.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. And everybody remembers that moment that you fell in love with music, right? That sensation, whether that is through video or through the record set you had or CD, whatever, or live concerts. So can you elaborate on the specific techniques or methods you use to enhance people's listening experience with classical music?

Sure. Well, first of all, due to the format of our programs, we greatly restrict the repertoire. In other words, I don't try to teach people everything that's important in The Rite of Spring in a 1-hour concert, not even everything that's important in the Dvořák New World Symphony in a 1-hour concert. I select a single 5 to 10 minute movement from the standard orchestral repertoire. Um, and that's what we're going to stick to in this Discovery Concert format. And we play the movement straight through, usually, or almost all the way through. In— if it's 10 minutes, we might only play part of it at the beginning, but with no explanation, we usually play that 5-minute movement straight through. The next item on the agenda is to create the aha around the act of listening. So we will ask the audience to answer a question by listening to the next music. For instance, for example, I might explain that in the next music, all 3 trombones will play a very loud chord, and I ask the audience members to raise their hands when they notice that happens. We then proceed to play the wrong music on purpose, an excerpt in which the trombones do not play at all. And this always causes some consternation and confusion, even some laughter to erupt in the audience. And then I chastise them and I say, I didn't see any hands go up. And then in desperation, someone will say, well, the trombones never played. And I confess my crime, and then I launch into a brief explanation about the difference between listening to music and just hearing it as a background. And we, we end it with something like, now that we all know the difference between listening and hearing, we must make a conscious decision to give music our undivided attention. And then we proceed to play the right music containing the trombone chord, and of course all the hands go up at the right moment, accompanied by big grins and smiles of recognition and satisfaction. So Then continually referencing a printed listening guide that we've provided the audience, which has numbered musical events such as at number 2, the trombones play their chord. At number 7, how many steps are there in the ascending sequence at number 7? Or number 15, the dynamic level, the volume changes, the music gets— and then there's a blank— could louder, softer, whatever. So these gaps in information give the audience members listening problems to solve. I think that people learn best when they solve problems. In other words, I just tell them, it gets softer there, here come the trombones. If I tell them all that, they don't remember it. But if they have to figure out themselves what it is, so we'll play at number 15 and ask them to fill in the blank. Let's say the music becomes subito piano, suddenly soft at that moment. So they write in their answers, and then we verify the answers, and we work our way through the listening guide for about 45 to 50 minutes. Finally, we ask them to follow their listening guides as we play the entire movement again straight through. Sometimes we have the numbers projected on the wall behind the orchestra so that they can keep their place in the listening guide in case they get confused, but we never fail to receive verbal comments or written survey responses that say the second time through was so much more enjoyable. It sounded like a completely different piece of music, right? That's exactly what we were hoping to accomplish. So that's the methodology in a nutshell.

Wow, that's incredible. And then I actually got to experience that through that, uh, Saint-Saëns organ symphony that I watched. Yeah, totally. Even I'm a trained classical pianist, but then the way you explain and present it just gave me a total different perspective on the piece. Yes.

Do you want to hear a funny anecdote in this vein? Yes, please. Frequently, when my orchestra members are walking off stage after a discovery concert, and these are graduates of the Juilliard School, the Manhattan School, the Curtis Institute, Oberlin College, you know, New England Conservatory, whatever. Someone will be walking off stage and saying, you know, I never heard that spot in this piece. They'll tell their colleague, and I'm thinking to myself, what have you been doing all this time? But it's fine. I'm glad that we can even have professional musicians discover something they hadn't noticed in a piece of music.

Yeah, but you are literally bridging the gap between the audience and the professional musicians, and that's It's so important because the way these general audiences would look at us classical musicians are like really cold, stoned, non-expressive facial expression, you know, playing music.

But when I was a child, those few television shows that featured a symphony orchestra, except for Mr. Bernstein shows, okay, Mr. Bernstein shows were very, very different. But if they made a film of the Philadelphia Orchestra playing or any other professional orchestra in the United States, what you saw was a group of men, mostly, almost no women, mostly white people sitting, looking very dour as they played their music, you know. And, you know, I was thinking anybody look at this thing, what on earth is the point of this? They look like they wish they were somewhere else.

Yes, yes.

Yeah, so your point is well taken. Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I don't want the musicians to make funny faces to play the music. That's right. Yeah. And then, you know, we're not really talking about dumbing down or watering things down. Not at all. No, right? Yes. Yes.

No, I mean, you know, I, I don't bring puppets out on stage. I, you know, I once have brought dancers out on stage when we did a discovery concert on Strauss's Blue Danube Waltz. And so, uh, the second time through, we actually had professional dancers dance the Viennese Waltz while we were doing it in front of the orchestra. But that's the only time I've had something else going on besides just listening to the music, because that, of course, is the most important skill to develop. I mean, most people in the world only think there is song. They, they, they, you know, things with words. I mean, if you asked a teenager when I was in high school, would you sit and listen to a 5-minute piece of music that has no words? They would look at you like, well, what's the point? It's gotta have words, man. You know, you know, so, you know, some rock and roll song or popular song, that's what they want to listen to. So the very idea of giving your attention to music that is wordless, strictly abstract. This requires an adjustment of the mind. And of course, we can only enjoy that if we're actually really present with the music and notice what's happening.

It's the art of listening, right? We don't, we hardly talk about that. We, even among our colleagues in the industry, we talk about art of playing out of technique, all these things, but we never talk about listening. Yeah.

Well, as we know, when we, when we train, we are taught as performers to listen in a different way. Am I in tune? Am I in rhythmic sync with everybody else? Um, you know, I'm in at the proper dynamic level for my section in the orchestra. You know, those— that kind of listening while we perform, our brain gets very used to monitoring what we're doing as we play. But the idea of listening just for the sheer pleasure of the experience. This is not something we talk about that much. Right.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So how do you attract these audience or drive them to come to the concerts? That's another challenge, right? Yeah, it's a huge challenge.

That is a huge challenge and it remains so. I mean, obviously when we were still giving live performances that were not recorded, um, you know, we did what everybody else does. You know, it wasn't beyond me to go around neighborhoods putting up posters in supermarkets. I literally— anything you do, we, we tried to get local news media, uh, newspapers were still being used. Of course, now it's the, it's the internet, but then you try to get a writer to do a feature on the concert that was coming up. In fact, I never cared if we were reviewed at the concert. I wanted someone to write a feature saying, if you go to this concert, you will be amazed at what you discover or learned or whatever, just to whet people's appetite in that fashion. Um, interesting story about music criticism. When I lived in Louisville, uh, I was in my first marriage and My wife's brother-in-law was a very fine amateur guitarist. His idol was the country music guitarist Chet Atkins. And so he was always at home after he got home from work trying to imitate Chet Atkins' style of playing. So anyway, I asked him one afternoon, have you ever been to a concert by the Louisville Orchestra, which I was a member of at that time? And he said, no. He said, have you ever read in the paper what they say about those concerts? And the reviews often were very negative. And, and that's when it hit me, boy, professional classical music do not need music reviewers. They need someone to hype the concert in the media before it happens so that people like my brother-in-law would want to go. So of course, I took him to a concert after he said that to me. I said, you're going to go to our next concert. And he came out transformed. He said, how can all those people play together like that at the same time? I mean, someone who was an amateur musician, he could well appreciate the discipline involved in what we were doing.

Anyway, uh, it's just—

hello. Yes, it's a— I know it's a lot, it's a lot of things. Yes, but I think we can be very creative in that part. Right, as classical musicians. Yes. So now, and I mean, talking about creative, and you have been doing a lot, and not just these concert series, but also, you know, as you mentioned, this is that one concert sometimes being featured in as a TV program, and then also those TV shows became like award-nominated, right? And or even receiving awards, right? Yes, that's incredible. So for example, not only Bach to the Future, but also Discover Beethoven's Fifth you did, and then also Discover Vivaldi's Four Seasons, that's Emmy nominated and also Telly Awards, several of them. And then Saint-Saëns, as I mentioned, Organ Symphony is also a Telly Award recipient. And then Discover the Firebird. Which is the— Yes. Mm-hmm. Telly Awards as well. So how do these programs contribute to your mission of transforming listening experiences? Are you reaching out to a much wider audience? Right, right.

When you think about the first Discovery Concert, which we gave at Princeton University in Alexander Hall, there were probably 600 people. This was in 1996. Alexander Hall holds maybe 900 people, and I think we had about 600 at that first discovery concert. As I mentioned earlier, when that same concert on the third movement of the Fourth Brandenburg Concerto was turned into our first production for American Public Television, it was viewed over its 3-year run by about a million people, which is more than a 275% increase in the individuals reached. We can't achieve that when we just play a concert one time in one hall, not recorded, that's it. And the board began to feel like that was an unwise expenditure of resources. I mean, if you think you're a donor, would you rather reach 600 people, or if we were at NJPAC, 1,500 people in Prudential Hall, or would you rather have your gift help 1 million people people learn about this. So you can see that it's a good mechanism for attracting donors as well by creating a televised production.

But you are such a pioneer that way. You know, these days, you know, we are using social media to promote and then, you know, different media, YouTube video clips and so forth. But you've been doing this for a long time. And then not only that, you have the radio show as well. And then recently you started the podcast. So you're my fellow podcast or two, and then I really enjoyed listening to— what's the title? Uh, is it Notes Under the Piano? Notes from Under the Piano.

Under the Piano, yes, that was, that was the brainchild of one of our board members. He said, you know, we have all these YouTube listening lessons up online. YouTube fans like to know something more about the person creating these YouTubes. Create some biographical stories about yourself. So that's, that was how Notes from Under the Piano came into existence.

Yeah, it's really entertaining. And then yours, each episode is very short, bite-sized episode. So it's really fun, fun to listen to. I already listened to several of them this morning. So, yeah, of course. You know, Discovery Orchestra also provides outreach programs and also educational resources for teachers and students. So can you tell us a little bit about those?

There are a number of organizations that we have joined forces with in urban settings such as Jersey City, Newark, Patterson, New Jersey, and also some senior citizen groups in the suburbs. And what happens is that these organizations, in some cases the the people that founded the organization knew about us, or for instance, the organist at my church teaches at the Newark Boys Chorus School, okay? He's one of the faculty members. So, of course, we had that connection. And actually, our former executive director, Virginia Johnson, was on the board of the Newark Boys Chorus School. And so, you know, it became early on a suggestion go to the school and work with the students there. And then as far as Patterson goes, it's been in— been running for quite a while now, but there's a thing called the Patterson Music Project, which is an El Sistema-based organization, and they sort of function now under the aegis of the New Jersey Youth Symphony and of the Wharton Arts Organization. It's a— Wharton Arts is a rather large, community music and arts school out here in the burbs. But, um, they have this huge support going for the Patterson Music Project, and it started out again with just a few dozen kids, and there are hundreds of students involved in that program in Patterson now. So again, the idea was take music listening lessons to them. So we still do this. Another group that we work with is Keys to Success, and the keys being referred to are piano keys. And this is an incredible organization in Newark.

Yes, actually, I interviewed Jihoon Kerska. Jihoon? Jihoon, yeah. Yes, she is incredible. Anyways, sorry.

Yes, she's again just an incredible force for good. And so she knew us, and we began inviting their students to come to our discovery concerts when we were still doing more of them live. And, you know, it's just we feel that we have to move and make ourselves available to people who might not otherwise find us wherever they might be. And so now we actually send a string quartet out to these situations. As well as even still doing leftover from COVID some Zoom sessions with these groups as well as with senior citizens. So how does this Discovery Orchestra work?

So you have a concert series like throughout the, the year?

Well, not really at this point. It's very interesting. Uh, before COVID I'm thinking this was like in 2018, we had a one of our 3-year strategic planning sessions starting. We used to do 5-year plans, but we realized that the world was changing too quickly. So we switched to 3-year plans. So we had started a 3-year plan in 2018. And the essence of that plan was because everyone seems to be living on screens at this point, at the end of this 3-year plan, by the end of it, gradually stop giving, give fewer and fewer live performances until at the end of the 3-year plan we would only be making electronic products for either television, the radio, or the internet. And that was again a, a scary thing to do. But of course the irony was that when COVID broke out, it was as though our board had some sort of clairvoyant moment. And because when we got there and no one could be performing live at that point, we were already set up, you know, to do our thing online and in other media electronically. So, um, at this point the only live things are our outreach programs for the kids and the senior citizens and the, uh, smaller events that we do. We still do an occasional what we call intimate afternoon in which some performance takes place either by a solo pianist or a string quartet or a clarinet quartet or whatever, and we make a discovery concert out of it. But it is also a social occasion in which people have a little wine and cheese beforehand and, you know, and get to talk to the performers and, and talk to me. And, you know, it's, it's a less structured event, but it does include a little discovery portion in which, you know, they play music, we take it apart, they play the music Hey there, TPP family!

The Piano Pod is now into our fourth season, and it's all thanks to you. Since 2020, you've been with my journey with the TPP, exploring this burning question: how do we make classical music resonate with today's audience in fresh and captivating ways? Four years in, and the journey has been nothing short of magical. The Piano Pod isn't just just a podcast; it's a movement, a space where pianists, composers, and educators brainstorm, debate, and reimagine classical music's place in our fast-paced world. We're together on a mission to ensure classical music doesn't just survive but thrives in our modern age. But here's the thing: to keep bringing you these insightful biweekly episodes, I need your help. Every bit of support goes into The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song. Every bit of support goes into the podcast essentials, from hosting to high-quality recording tech, and the countless hours behind the scenes. So do you want to be part of this journey? Click the PayPal link in the show notes or head to thepianopod.com to donate, and as a token of appreciation, I will personally mail you The Piano Pod's snazzy logo sticker. So hit the subscribe button, spread the word, and let's continue our mission and journey as classical musicians. Now let's continue with the show. And then not only the videos, you ventured into apps now, and it's called AHA Classical, and I follow you on Instagram, AHA Classical. And then also I just downloaded the app on my phone, AHA Classical app. Yes, yes, I haven't tried it yet, but I watched the introductory video. I think you are on the video and in various studio where you are and explaining about how to use this app, right? Yes. So tell us about this app. What is it and who is this for?

What's the purpose? Well, as I may have mentioned earlier, my wife is a pianist and a piano teacher. And so for years, her students have been coming to our home here in Bedminster. And I used to sort of get a kick out of watching siblings arrive at their lessons. There was always the question of who went first, you know. Yes. And the other would sit, the other would sit on our couch waiting for the lesson. And of course, I had seen this in my childhood. My mother was a pianist and a piano teacher. And I remember her students would come. She had more than a few sibling groups that would come for the lessons. And of course, in those days, there was nothing to do but either work on your homework for school or read something. But back in 2015, '16 or so, I remember that Marcia was giving a lesson to one of her sibling people and the brother was sitting on the couch totally engrossed in his handheld electronic device, as so many children are these days. Right. Okay. And I thought to myself, it's like a light went off and I thought, I wonder if some game could be created that would teach children, or adults for that matter, how to listen to music. Yet another way to get to them. And so at that time, our education committee of the Discovery Orchestra formed a subcommittee called the Game App Committee, and we met many times and discussed ideas. We downloaded all sorts of musical games that were already on the web, and then we even had consultations with a professor at Temple University in Philadelphia who specialized in creating things like game apps. And at the conclusion of all that, he said, you know, I think it's going to be too expensive to try to develop a game app. And besides which, you know, you should really create this on your website, not a separate thing to be sold to people. Forget any commercial value in this. You won't get it. It just won't happen. But if you want to use your website, so anyway, we abandoned the idea until last year. And last year, one of the organizations that we partner with, this is Social Impact Studios in Philadelphia. They were really excited about this idea of a game and they said, we will partner with you. We will do the technical end. They're the technical geeks and the gurus of internet technology and what have you. And they said, we will help you create this game. You supply the content. You've got all this content already online. Let's chop it up and turn it into a game app. So that's how it came to be. And we just released it this past week.

Really? Wow. Yes. Wonderful. Congratulations. And so it's a game. So they, how do you call it? Like it says quest. So one quests another and they pass and then they go to another.

And they could go on to the next quest. And if you get the right answers, you earn notes instead of stars or leaves. Coins. Yeah. You know, you get notes if you get the right answer. So, you know, we're anxiously awaiting some initial feedback from people to see how it's going down. We can obviously modify it, adjust it, change it as we need to.

And then how many pieces are in the app at the moment?

There are just two quests. Okay. And I think there are probably just two pieces of music, one in each quest that gets explored in more detail. Than the other things we ask of them. But, um, we are going to come out with a third quest sometime this month, and I don't— I'm not sure yet what they're picking as the piece.

And then they're like orchestral pieces?

Yes, they are orchestral pieces, exactly.

I think, you know, every era you go through, of time period you go through in life, it's just the way you reach out to the audience changes, right? Correct.

And you have to stay up with what's happening. Which you're doing. Well, I must say, none of us work in a vacuum, and I have such an incredible staff of people that I work with. Ginny Johnston left being executive director, but stayed on as chief finance officer of the corporation. Rick has a tremendous background in music. He studied at Juilliard Pre-College as a teenager, is a wonderful pianist. And then he got his master's degree in business and worked for music publishers, creating textbooks for use in classrooms, in public schools and what have you. So he was already in his life very much on the page of the kinds of things we do. So because my wife played classes for his mother, who's a cellist and a cello teacher, uh, we got to meet Rick. So when we found out who Rick was, um, we then asked him to serve on the Education Committee, which he did. And then when Ginny left, he just happened to be looking for a new job at that point. So it was a tremendous bonne chance. We just moved Rick right into the Executive Director's seat. And then other people who work with us include Christine, essentially our person who takes care of all planning and facility use. And she came from a business background in New York City. Wonderful, wonderful person. And then Michael, who is another one of our staff members, he was one of my concertmasters in the New Jersey Youth Symphony and is now himself also a conductor. And but he was looking for part-time work. He's just finishing his doctor's degree in conducting at Rutgers. And so You know, I'm surrounded by very talented, hardworking people. I mean, there are only the 5 of us, but we do a lot. And then the board members and the volunteers help to make all that we do possible. I mean, again, I don't do this by myself. I do it with the help of my friends, as the Beatles song says.

But, you know, that speaks volumes about you. They believe in your vision and they really truly see your hard work and dedication, devotion.

The more we notice in music, the more interesting we may find it to be. And to that end, we have found that providing a listening guide can be very helpful in noticing all sorts of things in music. So let's jump right into the Infernal Dance of King Kostya from Igor Stravinsky's 1919 Suite, taken from his ballet The Firebird, originally composed in 1910. At number 1 in your listening guide, it says the melodic pattern is played how many times? And also asks which instrument joins the French horns and bassoons. So here's the pattern one time. Would you like to listen Listen to that again. Here it is slower. Sing it with us on "da da da" as we play this pattern slowly at number 1.

Oh, hold on.

Let me get the orchestra going. Da da da da da da. Now I know that you can sing that with much more energy. Okay? Here we go again. Da, da, da, da, da, da. Yeah, much better. Now you fill in the gaps in your listening guide in the information before we get to number 2. Is something funny?

Okay, so how many times did the pattern occur?

Zero. Right. Some of you may have noticed that was not the same piece of music. And we played the wrong piece of music on purpose just to see if you were really listening. That music was from an opera about another legendary bird in Russian folklore. In this in this case, The Golden Rooster, composed by one of Stravinsky's teachers and perhaps his strongest influence, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. And Stravinsky found a lot of inspiration for his ballet score, The Firebird, in his teacher's opera, The Golden Rooster. Stravinsky also learned from Rimsky-Korsakov how to choose which instruments play which notes in the score, a technique called orchestration. But playing the wrong music also gives us an opportunity to briefly discuss the difference between hearing music and listening to music. The truth is we have all been trained to ignore music as a kind of sonic wallpaper. The electronically reproduced music that accompanies almost every activity in our lives—dining in restaurants, shopping at the supermarket, driving in our cars, waiting in waiting rooms. We could make a very long list of things we do every day while music is in the background. We have to make a conscious decision to actually listen to music, to make it the center of our focus, and to be completely present with the music. So, knowing that we must choose to listen. Once again, at number 1 in the listening guide, we'll ask you to keep track of how many times the pattern occurs before we get to number 2, and which instrument joins in at the end of this short pattern. We promise not to tease you this time. Well, the instrument that joined at the end of the phrase was which? Tuba! It was the tuba. The unique sound of each instrument is just one of the things that we can focus on if we decide to give music our undivided attention. Another aspect or element we can pay attention to is the form of the music, how the music is put together, as in How many times did the melodic pattern occur before we got to number 2 in the listening guide? And that was 3. Exactly 3 times it is.

Where does this passion come from? I really want to know your life, right? Are you sure? Are you sure? Oh, yes, I am very sure. You are, you know, obviously classical musician. You started out as a violist and then the conductor, an amazing accomplished conductor and then TV/radio personality, educator, and producer. So, can you share the story of how your journey with classical music began and what inspired you to become a musician and that led to be an educator and then a conductor? Fasten your seatbelt.

Okay. You know, the story began absolutely with my mother. Helen, who was a very well-trained and accomplished classical pianist and was the neighborhood piano teacher in my neighborhood in Philadelphia where I grew up. And I sometimes wondered, because I know that babies, while they are still in the womb, in the last month or so in the womb, apparently hearing begins to develop. And I've thought to myself, how many times did I hear my mother practice that Chopin étude? Or that Debussy Prelude, or that Mozart Sonata while I was still inside her. You know, it's like I was a captive audience because she would sit at the piano and, and of course practice every day. And then once I was born, you know, I— although I didn't understand or realize what was happening obviously at the beginning, there was music going on, it seemed like 24/7 in our house. You know, she, she would invite other musicians in, string quartet members to play with her, uh, or opera singers from the Philadelphia Lyric opera to come over and sing while she played for them. So the seminal event, because we talked about this, we all— you said we all remember that moment when we were first so moved by some classical music. Uh, I was 4 and a half, and of course living at home, just before I started kindergarten, the, you know, half a year before I started kindergarten. My mother had purchased an LP recording of Dvořák's New World Symphony. Now, we lived with my mother's mother, father, and aunt. So there were 7 of us in the house, including my brother, me, my mother, father, and these other 3 individuals. And so my mother was out shopping for groceries, and my great-aunt was babysitting me. And the mailman arrived with this LP record. So I didn't know what it was, but Aunt Enda knew what it was, and she got out our portable department store monophonic disgusting record player. I mean, the sound of this device was really inferior, and it even wasn't wired properly. It would— the tonearm could give you a little shock electronically sometimes. But in any event, Aunt Edna said, I will put this record on, and I was absolutely transfixed as a 4-and-a-half-year-old. I began crying. I was having goosebumps. I had never heard violins playing so high or, you know, crescendos that took over the room, even on this stupid little monaural record player. The sound of that symphony orchestra just really got me. And so I divide my life in two parts. There is before Dvořák, those first 4 and a half years, and then there's everything that happened after Dvořák.

Mm-hmm.

Now, my mother, of course, uh, began giving my brother and me piano lessons as little children, quickly realized that not probably a good idea to teach your own children music. They may not give it their best. So she farmed us out to piano teacher friends of hers. So we each were studying with colleagues of hers. And then my mother and father and grandparents decided to send my brother and me to an Episcopal choir school for boys. Called St. Peter's Choir School in Philadelphia. School had been started in 1836 or something as a day school for, for kids, co-educational, but in the early 1900s it then was switched. The, the organist who switched it, uh, was trying to model the cathedral choir schools of England, and so he made it only for boys. And so the education now would not only include a lot of academic preparation. I mean, when I was there, we had to stay— in addition to math, science, um, history, um, English, Latin, French, and, um, other things, we also had sightseeing class, mandatory piano lessons. Every day after school there was a rehearsal. So this was a very thorough saturation in music, and it was really— that was when I became a performer. I mean, all the boys in the choir felt like performers because we sang 2 services a Sunday, every Sunday from September through June, and with different repertoire. And during seasons like Lent, in the evening we would sing a different cantata, Bach cantata or something else, you know. So there was a lot of repertoire to learn. And in addition to the 45-minute rehearsal after school every day, on Friday Uh, after some playtime, you had dinner with the men of the choir in the cafeteria and then rehearsed with the men, uh, because of course we sang in four-part harmony in church. And, um, and then on Sundays there was a rehearsal before each service. So it was a lot of rehearsing. And there were special concerts. I mean, we would sing Messiah at the Academy of Music with the members of the Philadelphia Orchestra accompanying us. Uh, I mean, uh, when the Philadelphia Orchestra needed a boy boy choir. We were the choir that would perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra when they needed a boy choir. So, you know, we felt like we were something, right? We had a real identity. So obviously it was a tremendous shock to leave the choir school and begin 8th grade at my local junior/senior high school in Philadelphia. I went from having 45 boys in my school. So like my classes only had like 6 or 7 kids in them, 10 at the most. It was like being tutored in all these subjects. So here I get to a school that has 5,000 students, coeducational, and I was scared to death. But my mother knew that that public school had a really good music program. And so she felt that I would flourish there once I got over the shock of being with so many other kids every day. So it worked. And, um, and this was the next most important moment in my growth as a musician because, um, the choir director was very fine. She was a very fine vocalist herself and a very fine conductor. The director of the orchestra was not the greatest conductor in the world, but, you know, he was more than willing to lend me a stringed instrument when I finally got up enough nerve in 11th grade to ask if I could borrow borrow a stringed instrument from the school. They had all these instruments that they would lend to kids for free, and they would give you lessons on these instruments. But anyway, so in 11th grade, I asked the orchestra conductor if I could borrow something. He said, I have a cello and I have a viola. And I said, I think my grandmother plays the cello. I'll take the cello. Now, I had already fallen madly in love with the sound of the strings of the orchestra, and that was for just going to the Philadelphia Orchestra concerts as a Field. My mother would take us, and also some of the members of Saint Peter's Church would have subscriptions at the Philadelphia Orchestra. When they couldn't use the tickets, they would give them to the choir boys to go to the concerts. So I was listening to the Philadelphia Orchestra live all the time, and that sound of that string section just captivated me. So, um, at a certain point I got up enough nerve to ask this gentleman if I could borrow this cello. He said, come back this afternoon. And he said, I have a cello and a viola. And when, when I got back, and I know he did this on purpose because he didn't have enough violas in the orchestra, he feigned absent-mindedness and he said, oh, I gave the cello to someone else. Would you take this viola? That is how George Marinermohr became a violist, totally by accident. So, yeah. So in any event, the other really important thing that happened happened at this school was the first year there in 8th grade. It was, it was again one of the— they didn't have middle school in those days. They had junior high schools and senior high schools, and junior high school was 7th and 8th grade, and then senior high school, uh, was 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th. So, um, when I got there in 8th grade, uh, sitting in the cafeteria first week, I'm sitting and I hear coming down the hallway The New World Symphony, the finale, last movement. And I'm thinking, I gotta find out where this music's coming from. So I left my lunch and went down the hallway, and there was a separate wing for all the music classes and ensembles. There were two large rehearsal rooms and, uh, one smaller rehearsal room and several classrooms and offices for the faculty. But it was built in such a way that the noise pollution that musicians make did not reach the math classes and the English classes. They— we were walled off from the rest of the school. So I walked down this corridor to get to the music wing, and of course the music was pouring out of this room. And the first thought that I had was, why are the students not misbehaving? Because I, I grew up in a working-class neighborhood, and all my friends thought that my obsession with classical music was rather nutty, eccentric. What's wrong with this kid? No, because they, they, I mean, it wasn't that I didn't like rock and roll. I mean, I, I loved Elvis Presley. I loved the Everly Brothers. You know, I, I had my own 45 records of 45 RPM records of them, but most of them really poo-pooed classical music. And so I'm thinking, the teacher in that room, he must either have bound and gagged the students or, or something, because there's no peep coming out of them. They're just sitting there. So I sat down outside the classroom. Room. And after a few minutes, Mr. Feinberg, the teacher who ultimately got his doctor's degree— Dr. Feinberg— he came out and said, um, wouldn't you rather sit in a chair? Why don't you come into the room? Saul Feinberg's whole mission in life was to teach teenagers how to listen to classical music. Wow. Wow. And he, he had written his doctoral thesis on this subject. And developed a course which he called the Perceptive Listening Course. Really? I learned everything I know about teaching music listening from that man. Now, because I was in the choir, I mean, obviously coming out of St. Peter's Choir School, the choir director grabbed me immediately and put me into the choir because I could read music and all those good things. So I thought, well, I'm just going to have to come to this class on my lunch hour. And go as often as I can. So I began attending his classes, strictly auditing them, uh, not for credit, not for anything, because I did not have to take those courses. None— no one who was in a music ensemble had to take this music listening course, but everyone else in the school did. So he affected the lives of thousands and thousands of kids over the decades he taught there. And he was a very fine pianist and a composer. Eventually I asked him to be my piano teacher, and so I had 3 years of studying piano with him as well. But I just soaked in his methodology. You know, it's he who believed that answering problems, giving people problems to solve by listening, was the best way to teach this material. And, uh, and also to tease them and taunt them and, and make sure they had that aha about whether they were listening or not. He also, you know, he would set them up so that students would say, well, that's not fair, Mr. Feinberg, you know, because he would say, you know, I'm going to give you all the grade of C, just all of you. And they would say, that's not fair. And he said, of course it isn't. But why don't you say that when I ask you to give your complete attention to this next piece of music? Wow. I could say you're not being fair. And of course, adolescents are possessed, preoccupied with the idea that life is not fair. And of course, it only gets worse as we become adults, as we know. But we accept this idea somehow to some degree. But in any event, he was a genius. Now, the man is still alive. And when I got out of music school in Louisville, No one in Louisville who played in the Louisville Orchestra or the opera company or the ballet orchestra or whatever, none of them made enough money to live off it. So everyone had a day job and all professional musicians rehearsed at night. The Louisville Orchestra rehearsed at night. So you had people in the orchestra who taught music at a local public school, or like my stand partner in the viola section worked for the newspaper. He worked for the Louisville Courier News, you know, and Um, there were just all sorts of people in that orchestra who were very fine musicians, highly trained, but had other day jobs. And the principals of the orchestra were the faculty members of the University of Louisville School of Music. But when I got out of school, I realized I'm gonna have to get a day job now, after I got my master's degree. So I took a job teaching at a private school. And having had very little instruction in music education at the university, because I a performance major on the viola. I called Dr. Feinberg and said, I'm going to come up and visit my dad, uh, for a week in Philadelphia. Can I just hang out at your house all day long and talk to you? And so I did that. And he— well, before you get here, I want you to order a copy of my doctoral thesis, uh, from the University of Michigan, where they had copies of all these things on microfilm or something, and they would print you a copy of a thesis. He said said, before you get here, read my thesis and then we'll talk about it. So, uh, I did that, and of course it was an unbelievable week, and it only added on to what I had experienced as a young man in Lincoln High School sitting in his classroom, you know. Uh, and he really helped guide me into what I would do with the kids at that private school. So put that experience into George Now George Mull is married to a wonderful woman who's an opera singer, and I told her, if we don't move out of Louisville, you will never sing anywhere but Louisville, Kentucky. You know, it just— we have to move to New York City, we have to find you an agent, and then if things go well, you can have a career as an opera singer. So in 1975, we moved to New York City, and it was scary because I didn't know anybody in New York City. Very few people people, you know, just an occasional person here or there, someone I'd met at the Aspen Festival in 1970, um, whatever, you know, but no real contacts. Um, and so my first wife and I got there, rented an apartment, and of course I started playing the viola with anybody who would let me play with them, you know. In other words, I met someone who was a musician, I said, can we play quartets together? Because I wanted them to be able to tell the people who were the personnel managers and contractors for the freelance orchestras, this guy plays well, you know, hire him, hire him, you know. And of course I joined the union, all that sort of thing. Now my wife's career, we got her an agent and her career took off and she was away for 6 months out of each year for a few years running there. And, um, not all at once, but, and she, you know, she, she made her Carnegie Hall debut that first year we were there with the Oratorio Society of New York singing the Bach B Minor Mass as a soloist. And, you know, I was super happy for her. Problem was it was difficult for us to keep our marriage intact being apart from each other so much. And so at a certain point, we just decided that we would amicably part company. Not that that wasn't traumatic because we had been married for 10 years. So here began my life in New York. And it was challenging. We were constantly running out of money. And we would call her father in Louisville and say, can we please borrow X amount of money? And he would say yes, knowing we never would be able to repay him. And then the next month, we would call my dad and say, Dad, can we borrow some money for the rent or whatever, you know, long story short. You know, I finally began to be able to support myself as a violist. I got enough work, and when I was playing with the freelance orchestras in the city— and I, and I also, you know, my first wife said, hey George, you know, you, you sing very well, you know, from your training at the choir school and that sort of thing. I'm going to give you voice lessons, and I want you to audition for a church job where you will be the baritone soloist. So I got a church job at a church in New Jersey where I was the baritone soloist in addition to playing the viola. And, um, and I also, uh, auditioned for and became a member of the professional choir of the New York Philharmonic at that time, which was called the Camerata Singers. And that was when I got to sing under Pierre Boulez for the first time as a member of that chorus. So There were lots of very exciting experiences to go through. Obviously, I was totally bewildered and amazed and in love with New York City. It seemed like the greatest thing in the world. And I remember my friend from the Aspen Festival who had lived in New York for 10 years already said, enjoy it while you can, George. It will get to you after a while. But in any event, at a certain point, I became a violist for the Opera Orchestra of New York, which is conducted by a woman, Eve Queller, who had founded that ensemble. And they were giving concert performances of unknown operas by people like Verdi and Puccini and all the canon of composers, but operas that never get staged at the Met or anything like that. And they would do them just singing them, stand up singing them with the orchestra. And she would hire world-famous singers to be the leads. Uh, Montserrat Caballé, Marilyn Horne, people like that. It was just, it was amazing. And then the lesser roles, she would populate with young singers. She would go on trips to Europe to find young singers who were unknowns, so they would come over and sing the other lesser roles. And she was so good at picking singers often after a performance with the opera orchestra, the next year they would wind up being offered a contract at the Metropolitan Opera. You know, she launched their careers. It was just— it was incredible. But what a thrill. I mean, she was the first conductor to hire me, and, um, what a thrill that first January to be sitting on the stage of Carnegie Hall playing with this wonderful orchestra, this incredible music. And so I loved that life for quite a while, but I still wanted to be a conductor. That was something that had entered my mind in the choir school, watching, watching Philadelphia Orchestra, watching Eugene Ormandy conduct the orchestra. You know, it was, you know, I just thought I would love to do that, but I never told anyone for a long time. In fact, when I told my viola teacher in the Philadelphia Orchestra that I wanted to do this, just before I left for music school in Louisville, I said, I want to be a conductor. And he said, are you out of your mind? I just loved it. But I, I persisted. And of course, I was, I was very lucky in Louisville. Before I left Louisville, I had become the conductor of the Louisville Ballet and the assistant conductor of the Kentucky Opera and, and the conductor of a choral musical group there, as well as a theater that did Broadway shows. So I, you know, I was getting a lot of conducting experience, and it was a lot to give up to move to New York City to help my wife's career. And she had, she had a lot to give up too. She was already on the voice faculty at the university by that time, and, you know, it was hard to pull up roots again. But we struck out for New York, and, and it all paid off because Eve Queller mother asked me at one point to be her assistant conductor. This allowed me to sometimes prepare the chorus for the Carnegie performances, and it also allowed me to work on the parts for the orchestra. She needed help in making sure the parts— you talk about how the orchestra at my concerts are right on the button. You have to mark the parts for an opera incredibly carefully because there are often cuts. This entire section of music is left out. So you have to mark them so that the musicians are in no way tempted to play the music. And, and her rule was, if they can't see it, they can't play it. So whereas the usual method was to make a, a vertical mark and then make a slanting horizontal mark to the music that you want them to go to and put another vertical mark at the beginning of that measure, she would have me cut up paper, scrap paper, and paste it over, Scotch tape it over the parts you didn't want them to see. So they never played the wrong music in rehearsal or in concerts because we made sure the parts were absolutely prepared for that, that performance. And in any event, she liked me. And now that my marriage had ended, I remember there was an occasion when I told the personnel manager of the orchestra that I was dreading the next week. And he said, why, George? And he said, I said, well, I'm going with my first wife to tell her Southern Baptist parents that we have decided to divorce. And he says, boy, that sounds bad. Now, as it turns out, Marcia, my present wife, was a rehearsal pianist for The Opera Orchestra of New York. She'd been playing in rehearsal, piano rehearsals, with Marilyn Horne and Montserrat Caballé and all— Nikolai Gedda and whomever, you know. So she, she overheard this conversation. Now, I knew Marcia. I thought she was very cute.

She is. Oh, beautiful. I wondered about the photo.

Yes, that's Marcia. And, and, um, she was listening to this conversation. Now, I never anything to do with Marcia except professionally at the opera orchestra. But she seemed like a nice person. But she came out, she said, you know, George, I had this same conversation with my parents a couple weeks ago. My husband and I are divorcing. I said, oh. She said, when you get back from Louisville, why don't we go out for dinner and trade war stories? She asked me out on our first date. That was March August 11th, 1979. Wow, you remember exact date! Oh, I do. At a certain point, uh, I was told about an opportunity at the League of American Orchestras to study with an Austrian conductor named Richard Johannes Laert. Now, Dr. Laert had played in the Berlin Philharmonic under Artur Nikisch, who at the turn of 19th century, was deemed to be the greatest conductor in the world at that point. And Dr. Leaert not only played under him in the Berlin Philharmonic, but also became a conducting student of his. Dr. Leaert's parents had been friends of Johannes Brahms. And when Dr. Leaert was a little boy, Brahms had bounced him up and down on his knee when his parents would visit sometimes. So this man's— and he, Dr. Laird, had also studied conducting with Richard Strauss. So his credentials were unbelievable. And because his wife had a career that he felt was not advancing in Europe, he made the decision, because she was a Hollywood film script writer, to move— I mean, she was a film script writer— to move to Hollywood, California. California, so that she could have a bigger career as a scriptwriter. So he became the conductor of the Pasadena Symphony and stayed there for many, many decades. And at a certain point, his reputation as a conductor and guru and teacher began to spread. And so the League of American Orchestras said Richard Laird— Richard Johannes Laird, his parents had named him for Brahms, his middle name. Richard, would you teach 10 American conducting students each summer with an orchestra how to conduct? And he said, I will. So this program started, it went on for many, many years, and I heard about it, and, um, I had to ask for a recommendation. So I asked Eve Queller to write a recommendation, and then I asked Lukas Foss who at that time was the music director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic, which I also played in. He also wrote a recommendation for me. And so they invited me to audition for a fellowship to study with this man. And I did the audition. The audition was with the New Jersey Symphony on this East Coast. The people who auditioned were on the East Coast, and I was selected as one of the 10 people to go study with this man who held, held forth in Virginia. They had this ancient resort that it was built during the Civil War era. Big hotel, wooden hotel, little wooden cabins. And, uh, that's where they had this. And they, they would play in the ballroom of this hotel. It's where the orchestra would assemble and Dr. Laird would work with his students. So anyway, that was another total seminal moment in my life. He was the greatest conducting teacher I ever had, and he certainly was one of the greatest conductors I ever saw conduct. He, with his eyes and little gestures of his hand, could elicit the most unbelievable responses from an orchestra. It was quite something to behold. So anyway, after that, a year later, the music director of the New Jersey Symphony, who had watched me in the competition to get this fellowship, conduct his orchestra et cetera. He remembered me, and when he needed an assistant conductor, out of the blue called me in my apartment in Manhattan, said, uh, George— he was Polish— George, I might have some work for you. Come have lunch in Newark. So I go over to Newark, and I almost dropped my spoon in my soup when he outed with, I'd like you to be my assistant conductor. I thought, you've seen me conduct for like 10 minutes in this audition, you know. Anyway, I guess he liked what he saw, so wow. That was when I got my first real big with a larger ensemble conducting job, and, um, things have sort of progressed from there. Oh my goodness, it's been a wild ride. And I wanted for the worst way just to be a symphony orchestra conductor at that point. I mean, my first goal had been get a job in a symphony orchestra like my teacher at the Philadelphia Orchestra, play in a symphony orchestra. I did that, then and then get some conducting work, which I did. And it seemed like that was the main driver. But somewhere on the way to the forum, as they say in that play, I realized that the best thing I could do with my time, however much time I have left, is to try to help people be very moved by this music. What could I do to do this? And that's really what started us on this road The Piano Pod that we're on right now with the Discovery Orchestra. I just felt like I had to reach as many people as I could with what I call the good news of classical music. It's, you know, it's, it's, it's a life force that once you become entangled with it, it, it changes your life forever. Forever. Yeah, absolutely. I knew, I knew from age 4 and a half, remember?

But where was the turning point where you wanted to be the conductor, then in the end, you wanted to do this work?

Yeah, right. Well, we, you know, we had started the Philharmonic Orchestra of New Jersey. That began when at a certain point, I realized I wanted to have my own professional orchestra. And that's a very difficult thing to achieve. You can audition for those few jobs that come up, you can submit your resume and and go meet the board members and what have you. But without an agent, it is very difficult to get a really decent conducting job in this country. So I thought, I know the freelance players, I've been one of them, I know these people, I'm going to start an orchestra in central New Jersey where there is no orchestra, and we'll play symphonic concerts for the audiences out there. So that was the rationale behind starting the Philharmonic Orchestra of New Jersey. Now, I would tell any conductor who thinks this idea Don't do it. You're nuts. I mean, it was anguishing to create the, the Philharmonic Orchestra of New Jersey, but we did. I mean, there were rough patches, times when I thought we were going to totally run out of money but didn't. And, um, we got it going so that we were a respected concert series to go to at that point. And as I said, playing at Richardson Auditorium and also, uh, in Princeton and also at the Arts Center in Newark work. And, um, we, you know, we were going all guns blazing. I mean, the orchestra had a good reputation. We got wonderful reviews, although I said that's not important to me as much as hyping the concerts before they happen so that an audience wants to attend them. But it was all from starting that music listening class in response to people asking us, what can I do to learn about classical music? And then it was sort all that work with Saul Feinberg came blasting into my brain. And it was like, we have to do more of this. And the thing just snowballed until, you know, the board said, this is the most important thing we do. This is what other orchestras are not doing. We need to do this.

Wow. So since the start, the whole entire, let's say, concert series at that time Concerts were all like you are holding the microphone and say, oh, all Discovery. Oh, yep.

Everything we would do was a Discovery concert.

You know, you also have the, as a skill set, as a presenter, a TV host. Where does that come from?

St. Peter's Choir School. One of the courses that every child, every one of the 45 students who were there at any given time, had to take was a course in public speaking taught by the choir master who was also the headmaster of the school. Uh, he was a very fine public speaker, and he made the kids— first of all, there was a recitation contest every year sometime in the spring. You would be required to either recite prose or poetry from memory in front of your parents and your grandparents and all the other kids in the the school, uh, of— prizes would be awarded for what they thought were the best recitations. And in the weekly classes, you had to extemporaneously speak on a given subject. Dr. Gilbert would give you a subject to speak on, and then he would have you go out of the room. And while you were out of the room, he would point to various kids to do distracting things while you were talking. In other words, he would tell this kid to drop his pencil at a certain point on cue and this person to rustle a piece of paper or whatever, just to try to get you jolted while you were doing your extemporaneous speech. I never had training like that before or after in my life. It was incredible. Now, because I felt so comfortable talking to people, when I got to high school, I joined the debate team, which also put me in front of other people. But anyway, so it was the choir school. The choir school gave all of the students who went there an amazing education, not just musically, which it was amazing musically, but public speaking. How about Latin? You know, when you're in 7th grade, you know, you don't do that normally. The kids who went there, many of them were middle class or lower middle class. One scholarship. There were a few kids from the upper classes, you know, from wealthy families, but most of us were not. And so he had his hands full, you know, turning us into polished little kids who could function well in polite society.

But I guess you were prepared to be who you are today.

I think so. I think so. It made a difference. And it's interesting because many of the choir school graduates graduates also became professional public speakers in that many of the choir school graduates became Episcopal priests. So they had to speak publicly every Sunday and also had to be speaking in other situations as the rector of some Episcopal church. It affected many, many people. Lawyers. There were a bunch of lawyers that came out of that school.

I mean, life is long and then also beautiful, but also challenges and then so many unexpected twists and turns.

Yeah, I mean, you know, and the reason that my mother sent us to the choir school, my mother, my mother's mother and her father, my grandparents had a job as the servants of a wealthy family on the main line of Philadelphia. I don't know if you're familiar with Yukimi with the main line. There's this string of communities on the main line of the railroad railroad. That's where the term comes from. And these are, these are people who are incredibly wealthy, wealthy. They're the, they're the tycoons of industry and, and the CEOs of big corporations in Philadelphia. And they live incredibly extravagant lives in this area called the Main Line. One of the towns is called Bala Cynwyd. It's a Welsh name, Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. And they're all suburbs of Philadelphia. Suburbs of Philadelphia. And these people are on the boards of things like the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Lyric Opera and the Philadelphia Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet, etc. They, you know, they just— they're big, big people. My grandparents were the guard— my grandfather was the gardener and my grandmother was the maid for this family. The daughter of this family was married to the priest and rector of St. Peter's Church, St. Peter's Episcopal Church. And they said to my grandmother, your grandsons must go to St. Peter's Choir School, which she had never heard of in her life. That's how they found out about it. All these little twists and turns. It's, you know, you just can't—

I have to say, you're meant to be who you are. And I feel that way. Yeah. Maybe this is not something that you dreamed of as a child or as a young young person?

Well, my mother did not want me to become a musician. She felt that it was a very precarious life in which you were apt to have many disappointments. She, she definitely was disappointed that she did not have a career as a performer. You know, she did a lot of accompanying. She also played the organ for a church, but she was disappointed that she did not have a solo career as a pianist. She certainly played played incredibly well, and I could still hear her playing in my mind's ear. But, um, sadly, when I was a senior in high school, she contracted cancer and she died. Um, uh, and on her deathbed, we had these conversations in which I said, Mom, I know that Nana, my grandmother, my grandmother wanted both my brother and me to become Episcopal clergymen. That was her dream for us. And I, my brother actually went through with this and became one, although he left the church at a certain point, but he actually did what Nana hoped he would. And I was sort of on target to do it, but I said to my mother, I want to go to music school. I just, I want to be a musician. And she said, no, it's a terrible life. Don't do it. Finally, after enough of these conversations, she said, okay, I give you my permission to go to music school, but You must promise me you will never marry another musician because you will both be poor together. Can you imagine your dying mother saying such a thing to you? And of course, I've done it twice, Yukimi. I've married two musicians. But you know, what can I tell you? It's, um, I'm certainly glad I went to music school. School. It was definitely felt like where I wanted to be.

And I really can sense your passion and love for music through everything you do.

I, I would hope that comes through because it's definitely felt on my end. It's contagious.

That's why I was like in tears watching that video and really fell in love with music all over again. That's really fantastic sensation, right? Because I remember the first time when I heard the Beethoven Fifth Symphony in the music school and then fell in love with the— you know, you know, right? And how scary that triplet sounded, you know.

Yes, yes, it sounds, uh, really foreboding, you know. I mean, people have said all sorts of silly things about it. It's Beethoven knocking on some door or something, you know. No, it's a statement about Beethoven's feeling life, his internal life of feeling. And he was one angry dude. Yes. And I understand, I get it. I mean, what— I mean, here was a brilliant pianist, you know, capable of being out there on stage with the best of them, and now to lose the ability to hear sound in real time, you know, ouch.

Yeah. Such an— I must be such an isolating feeling too. Oh, not a lot of people would understand that.

Then that. Yes, exactly. Cut off from friends, circles and what have you. It just— because of his suffering, he is one of my favorite composers because he was so willing to bear his emotions to us. And we all suffer from time to time.

Yeah, yeah. But that's why this work is important. That's why music is important. That's why classical music is important. Absolutely. So what is your thought on keeping classical music relevant in this fast-paced, crazy world?

To me, the only way is to teach as many people as possible to listen. In other words, I can't tell them stories, I can't show them movies about the life of a composer, I can't, you know, I can't go down the street with a bullhorn like some campaign for office and say, come to the concerts, you know, you're gonna really— I mean, that's not practical. Uh, somehow I often say that if I were the king of the United States, which I am not and never will be. We will never have a king if I have anything to do with it. Um, the— but I would decree that every child would study the art of listening to music in school so that, like this, like the people who grew up in Hungary having been raised on the Kodály method— I mean, when I conducted in Budapest, the one time I conducted there, uh, conducting Carmina Burana, The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song. I will never forget the sensation of the audience because I knew that they were all trained to read music at sight and were very musically literate. I, I've never felt an audience so clinging to every sound that we made that night. And so it's not that it can't be done, but of course that was a socialist country with a dictatorship, and it was just decreed that everybody would study the Kodáy method in school, you know. So I don't know if it's I don't know it's still the case at this moment under Orbán. I have no idea. But it was definitely the case at that point. And that's what I would do to try to make it happen. Now, we can't do that, right? That's not going to happen in the United States. So the question is, what is the method by which we can teach the most people how to listen? And I'm convinced it's electronically. In other words, if we can somehow get someone to click for just a minute, You know, click onto something that catches their fancy or their attention. I mean, obviously, I'm always telling people, you will never have an experience like this. If you have this experience, you will become addicted to it. Although it's not a drug, it's completely addicting.

You know, why is this so important? Why is classical music so important to us?

Because I think it changes our lives in ways that we cannot even imagine. First of all, because we learn to listen to music and feel our own feelings very strongly, we also begin to feel the feelings of the composers, these other people. I mean, it's an amazing thing that someone who's been dead for more than 100 years can, through the goodwill of a bunch of musicians who are reproducing the score that they created It's like they're sitting in a room with us pouring out their deepest feelings about everything. So in terms of developing a sense of empathy in life, I think that's a very important reason to become sensitized to art, including painting and sculpture and poetry, all of the arts. But music, I've always felt, is the most direct route into our hearts. It's like an electrical force. You can't even see it. You can't touch it. As Saul Feinberg always said, it's invisible. And it's not like a painting that you can hang at the Philadelphia Art Museum and it will always be there. You can go look at it whenever you want. This thing occurs in time and then it's gone. Yes. So if you're not there with it every second, you're going to miss something important. I mean, when Brahms changes that one chord the last time that melody comes back, If you're there from the beginning, it will seem shattering, just earth-shatteringly emotionally moving to hear that one chord change. Same thing with a Bach chorale, you know, it's just, uh, but I think if you were severely emotionally disturbed in some way, uh, if you were filled with so much either self-hatred or I don't know what, sadly, uh, you might not not receive those benefits from classical music. But I think most people, certainly more than the less than 5% of the American population that regularly listens to classical music— and I mean listen, not hear, not have it on in the office while they're working in the office, or have it on while they're cooking in the kitchen. No, actually, you know, something less than 5% of the U.S. population sits down and listens, or stands and listens, whatever they do. Gives it their undivided attention. We need to— that percentage needs to grow somehow. That's right. Yes.

Maestro, I can be with you forever talking about wonderful—

wonderful— I won't tell Marcia you said that, but it's really nice to be with you.

So I know we have to really end our conversation soon, So before we go, I just want to say to my audience that the Discovery Orchestra is obviously available on YouTube channel, and also you have a podcast show, Notes from Under the Piano. And then also you have— so for Discovery Orchestra, you can go to discoveryorchestra.org, and then your app is AHA Classical app. App, so you can find them on any app store, correct?

And on PBS Passport, our television shows are there for— if you're a member of your local public television station, you get free access to PBS Passport. You can watch any shows, including ours, on that particular site online. And, um, trying to think if there's any other venue. Well, again, you can tune in to the radio online on second and fourth Saturdays of the 7:30, WWFM.org.

So before I let you go, we have one more thing to do, which is the rapid-fire questions where I get to ask fun questions. So no explanation is needed. So, uh, let's go. All right, all righty. What is your comfort food?

Comfort food is, um, chocolate. How do you like your coffee? With cream and artificial sweetener.

Cats or dogs?

I love both, but cats have been my pet of choice through most of my life. I've had both. Love dogs, but cats are it. Summer or winter? Neither. Fall is my favorite season.

Okay, yes. What skill have you always wanted to learn but haven't had the chance to?

I would say to play the electric bass or the acoustic bass in a jazz ensemble and improvising.

Improvising, yes. What is your word or words to live by?

Love one another.

Beautiful. What is the most important quality you look for in other people? A genuineness.

Someone who does not have pretense or some facade. That you feel like you're getting right to them when you meet them.

Name 3 people who inspire you, living or dead.

Well, obviously we're going to say Saul Feinberg, uh, we're going to say, um, Richard Laird, Richard Johannes Laird, and, uh, Marcia, my wife. Beautiful.

Name one piece in your current playlist.

In my current playlist, um, Bach Brandenburg Concerto Number Four.

Great. What do you believe is the key to a fulfilling life?

Learning to appreciate yourself fully and other people.

Last question, fill in the blank: music is blank.

Music is the world to me.

Ding, ding, ding! Thank you so much, Maestro. It's been a wonderful conversation, and this concludes this episode of The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song with Maestro Maal. Thank you, Mr. Maal, for joining my show today and sharing your stories, insights, expertise. You can learn more about Maestro Maal and his incredible work at the Discovery Orchestra. Please visit their website at discoveryorchestra.org, and don't forget to check out the interactive music appreciation app, AHA Classical, at aha-classical.com. All the links are listed in the show notes. And thank you to my wonderful audience fans for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate and review it on your favorite podcasting platform. Remember to hit the thumbs up, uh, and subscribe to my YouTube channel if you are watching this episode. Follow The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song on social media to get the latest piano news via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. I will see you for the next episode of The Piano Pod Thank you, Maestro, once again.

Yukimi, thank you so much for inviting me to be your guest. Thank you.