This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

How did the quartet form?

SYM: I wanted to do competitions, specifically the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition because I had never done it before. When I transferred from Juilliard in January 2022, I was looking for a group, but I didn’t know anybody. I asked Drew, because I knew we had mutual friends from social media. Originally, we were going for a piano trio, but we found Jasper and Max, and we got together to play. We all agreed on competitions as a group, and we did the Advanced Quartet Seminar together in our first semester.

At what point did you recognize your success as a group?

SYM: After performing at the St. Paul Competition we listened back to our performance, and that was the first time I really thought to myself, “Oh, wow, we actually have something good.” And I remember before that I would listen to our recordings and always have a problem with it. I would think that we would never win anything. After the St. Paul Competition, we won the gold medal, and the BIPOC/Female Composer prize, which we did not think we would win.  But when we listened to it back, I felt like there’s something. There’s an energy here that I never had before in a chamber group. And I was interested in it. And I started exploring it more in rehearsals. I still — even to this day — think all four of us have doubts about ourselves as a group; we still question whether we could work together. But we are all committed to getting to a point where we feel secure in that.

What makes the Poiesis Quartet so special?

SYM: I don’t know whether we have a concrete answer for that. I feel like a lot of quartets have a very specific path they set and we don’t really have that — we are all interdisciplinary people.

Drew is double-degree, Max is doing jazz, and Jasper is doing everything. I guess we diverge from the traditional ensemble in that we are always exploring things that would give each of us a voice. We really want to do commissioned works, like placing priority on new music or diverse composers and repertoire that isn’t usually played in a quartet setting. I personally would really like to work with visual art and other types of art that can be collaborated with string quartets.

DD: We also want to be a queer group when we play. Not only with how we dress and present ourselves, but more for the idea that we are spontaneous, we like being very stylistic and so on. We like to bring that approach to the music.

SYM: I think that is really inherent to who we are. We are all queer, and I can’t think of many ensembles that have openly queer members, like the Attacca Quartet.

Can you tell me more about being a queer classical string quartet? 

SYM: The programming and traditional classical music do not prioritize queer repertoire, queer music, or queer performers. They don’t really talk about queer approaches to music, or any marginalized approach, because there’s an ethic to the way marginalized people perform. The way we play is that we find a collaboration that is inherent to us because it is sort of how we always found belonging as queer people. I think us being a very openly queer ensemble, with the way we dressed at finals of the Fischoff Competition as well, is a big part of who we are. It is not something very purposeful, our identities give us a specific approach to music, and we play music in a different way because of that. The majority of the groups that I am inspired by are comprised of marginalized performers. And there’s a reason for that. I think it’s because of their approach to music being rooted in something community-based or the value that isn’t really seen in this standard representation of classical music.

What does the future look like for the quartet?

SYM: After Fischoff, we spent five months deciding what we were going to do in the future because Drew won a job in Cincinnati. But, a week ago, we all decided to move to Cincinnati. Starting in January 2024, me and Max will graduate early, and I will have to drop my double-degree. I am just going to get my Bachelor of Music and two minors. We are going to pursue an Artist Diploma at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

DD: Yes, that is a two-year program. So we’re thinking it’ll be a really good opportunity for us to rehearse intensively, especially when we first get there, giving us some breathing room to learn a bunch of new rep, whatever we might need for competitions and performances in the future. Hopefully from there we can do more tours and find some management for it.

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

Why were you interested in soundscapes and what has your work with soundscapes consisted of?  

As I mentioned in the talk, I’m very sensitive to how we exist in spaces, and I found that I often wanted to integrate environmental sound into my compositions. That led me into a deep exploration of different diverse habitats and how closely related we are to them. I then studied and derived four math equations that we can use to calculate the rhythms of water in oceans, streams, and glaciers, and to look at the resonance and echos found in natural canyons. 

With glaciologist and geographer Michele Koppes, I sonically mapped glacial runoff in Alaska, Greenland, and the Himalayas. Everything recorded becomes a memory because the water’s changing, and it won’t sound like that ever again. I think everybody has a connection to water, right? So recording these changing rhythms is really part of a larger dialogue about the changing climate and our relationship with it. Telling stories through audio; it’s a great way to bring people to a place.

How do different natural landscapes inform the instruments and music genres from their respective regions? Have you experienced that in your own field research and travels?

Some of the forests that I’ve been in are mostly bamboo. That sound is just amazing. There’s a lot of  traditional music that’s interdependent with forests. I teach a course on forest rhythms from the northern Philippines. It’s really about community – unlike in Western music, where you’re asking, “Where is the downbeat?” With interlocking rhythms you’re asking, “Where’s my neighbor?” You don’t have to count, you just have to find your neighbors and play your part to your neighbor and so forth. Then you become one instrument, just like how underneath the ground, trees share their roots and resources.

In your masterclass on Tuesday, you used the phrase “sonic meditation.” What do you mean by that?

It’s about a sense of place and presence. Not everything that I play is quiet, and my music can be very developed, but the process of playing and listening to this music is meditative, just as you can have moving meditation. 

I was invited to The TANK Center for Sonic Arts in Colorado last year, where I played and recorded solo in this resonant tank where you play a note and it lasts for 40 seconds. It changes how you feel music and sound, in regards to time. For this landscape opera that I’m writing, I started traveling around in canyons and I played on these 50 million year old lithophones, recording echoes. It was just so special, the sound, and reflective in nature.  

What do you think about the practice culture seen in many conservatories?

I think practice is very personal. It’s crucial that practice integrates into your personal daily routine and you’re not told to practice a certain way. College is an opportunity to focus and lean into areas that you never had an opportunity to. Finding a way to absorb these things as you nurture your creativity and development is entirely personal. That doesn’t mean you’re not going to be learning certain fundamentals for your instrument, but I think the way you approach those fundamentals is up to you. 

In a lot of traditional cultures in the Philippines, for instance, people learn music in their dreams. There’s a certain friction when entering a new community. How do you integrate different cultures within your own artistry and self? What do you receive and take in, and what are things that maybe you don’t own and yet still have an understanding of and are open to learning?

What does being an interdisciplinary artist mean to you? 

I’ve always been collaborating with scientists, but it’s not as if I searched them out. We find ourselves in those moments. There are a lot of parallels between environmental science and music, but there’s a point where they diverge: music is very product-driven, whereas science is really based on inquiry, not necessarily about any results. That’s how I feel about my research, “Rhythm in Nature.” I feel like we’re making these certain inquiries with other artists and asking, “How do we connect that with an ecosystem and take it even further?” We’re all part of a larger ecosystem and we’re researching it and developing it. And it really takes all of us, because nature is massive.

Some people have an idea that they’re going to be a sound artist, but it’s not as if I ever said that until I realized that field recording was as important as me being in the studio, or being on stage or sound mapping. They’re all different and I like to investigate the sound in all of these different disciplines; I don’t think one is more important than the other.

Originally from Brazil, Maíra Vianna studied at Berklee College of Music. The multi-talented singer and instrumentalist works as an audio engineer for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Prior to their Wednesday “Engineering Techniques and Career Chat,”  they spoke to the Review about their musical journeys.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What initially sparked your interest in sound engineering, and how did you take your first steps in this field?

MV: I came to the United States to be a musician. While I was in Brazil, I tried to record my own songs and my friends’ songs. I didn’t know much about it, but I did it anyway. When I got to Berklee for the Jazz program, I started talking with producers, and my interest in being on the other side of the window started to grow. I got an internship at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an audio visual technician, and that was it. I’m living the dream right now because I get to do my own music, and I get to do music for my friends. I do live music for a bunch of bands that I would never get to know if I wasn’t working at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

DA: I started out as a kid in a band with my three sisters. We wrote our own music when we were 8, 10, 12, and 14. It sounds funny, but we got a record deal in Nashville 15 years later, already experienced with making our own music. I observed so many different producers and studio situations. I was always soaking it up, but didn’t ever expect to be the one eventually working with Pro Tools. After my band left Sony in 2012, I had all this time to work on my own solo stuff, and that’s just what happens. I learned on my own, taught myself Pro Tools and Logic, and then I got deeper into the engineering side of frequencies and plugins. My music is pretty acoustic, so I always experiment with how both electronic sounds and real instruments can play together.

Is staying up-to-date with recent technology and software an important aspect of sound engineering?

DA: I have a friend who is an amazing multi-instrumentalist, musician, songwriter, and producer. He works with big acts, and his home studio only has tape. He records to cassette tapes and sends them off — very analog and pretty cool. He’s not resistant to working with the latest, newest technology in a studio setting, but at home, it’s fun for him. Sound engineering can look so different.

MV: I agree. That’s the cool thing about music and producing and being an audio engineer, because you can make good things with just your phone nowadays. If it’s a grungy project, you can go to your basement and do this really dirty song, and there will be an audience that finds that awesome. Technology does not necessarily dictate whether your product will be good or not. 

What are your favorite projects you’ve worked on?

MV: One that came to mind was my first physical CD. I didn’t mix or master it, but I recorded, composed, and played some of the instruments. It’s called The Fool because I felt like a fool for pursuing my dream and coming to this different country where I didn’t have any money or connections. But it paid off. I’m very proud of that project.

DA: I don’t really have a favorite project per se, but you have to be proud of that first time that you go out and make your own self-composed and self-produced project. That takes some guts. I have a soft spot for my first EP release, which was a collaboration with my husband. We were just friends then, so it was a really fun time getting to know each other in the studio. 

What is one piece of advice you would give your younger selves as you were starting out on this career path?

DA: The word ‘play’ comes to mind — just having fun with it. When you start out in the business so young, it can be difficult. And it is a job — I was working at 12, 13 years old. It was just what I did, and I didn’t have lots of years of experimentation. Everything we made was being assessed. I was trying to get to the next step, get those relationships going. Now I’m in the phase of my life where I’m able to just play and enjoy music for the fun of it. And I wish I had done that more in my younger years, but hindsight is 20/20. 

MV: Music is worth it if you’re doing it just because you love it. Somehow you’re gonna end up in a good place. Doing it just for fun takes Wthe pressure away, and you might be more creative or explore more things. Another thing that I would say to my younger self is don’t compare yourself; everyone is on their own journey. There’s so many ears on this planet; there will be someone who wants to hear what you have to say. Just go — keep swimming. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

When did you first get into music cognition studies? Why? 

I’ve always been into music. My parents were rock ’n’ rollers; they named me after the singer from Van Halen. Eventually, I found myself in college, and I hated it. I didn’t like my theory classes, didn’t like any of my music classes, and I felt like it didn’t help me, didn’t explain why I enjoy music. I’m a pretty voracious reader, and as I discovered music cognition literature, I found that it was the best description of how I was experiencing music. At music school, I had no one to talk to about the music I was interested in. Everyone was like “Beethoven and Bach, the gold standard.” 

I suppose, in some sense, I probably should have done a Ph.D. in psychology or neuroscience, but I’m really committed to the humanities. When you work in a humanities department, rhetoric matters. What you say matters. While I am deeply an empiricist and run experiments, how we present that to people is really important. I’m trying to persuade people that there’s a lot more to music than we think, and it can encapsulate a lot more styles of listening than we think. I started to feel a bit more at home with myself through studying music and cognition — I’m not as different as I was made to feel.

What has your research consisted of?

For my doctorate, I was focused on how our hands help us and others think about music. I put myself in motion capture suits, made gestures, and asked the participants questions based on this avatar that was created. I found that, when performing, people develop specific musical expectations depending on those movements. It’s still heavily enculturated, however; it only really works with diatonic music, not with any other styles of post-tonal music. 

This other track that I’ve been taking lately is concerned with how people process music and some of the differences in how they think about music depending on their background and situatedness. Andrew Goldman, assistant professor of Music Theory at Indiana University, found that people with improvisational skills are more willing to be flexible with traditionally out-of-place harmonies, whereas people without that training are more rigid in how their brains process chord changes.

I’m currently running another experiment with bigger gestures to see if the magnitude of the gestures matter. And why is this research important? Because I like to go to concerts. I like to see people on stage and people acting in really specific ways. In what ways does that influence our perception of music?

How are you incorporating music cognition research into your own curricula? 

I have to take a lot of different approaches when I teach a class. If someone isn’t getting something, it’s because they just have a different musical diet. I ask myself, “How can I take what they’ve built their expectations on and get them to where they want to go?” In terms of the classroom, what if we can use our hands to help sing and dictate melodies better? 

If you take my Music and the Mind class in the spring, we spend the first two weeks talking about positionality. Basically, who’s conducting the research and who’s being studied? Most people that are being studied, not just in music, but in psychology in general, are late teenagers: college-age kids from the West who are doing it for course credit. That’s a heavily biased sample, so we talk about what more inclusive data might look like and the ethics behind music cognition studies.

In Music and the Mind, we also talk a lot about monkeys and babies, and that tells us about what aspects of music are evolutionary. One of the big arguments for the origins of music is that it’s for social bonding, but there’s much more to it than that. Monkeys can be trained to recognize octave equivalents at one octave, but not at two octaves, and they can’t do any other intervals. Babies value contour more than specific interval relationships for a while, and that lasts until about age seven. At that point, they start to really value specific interval relationships in order to differentiate the music they are hearing. 

Why is scientific research important, particularly in the context of studying primarily Western theory at a conservatory? 

Once you’re looking at music cognition research, particularly from a bird’s-eye view, you start to see how incredibly specific music theory is in a Western context. The development of musicality is so different for a lot of cultures, and it gets different really, really fast. It’s okay to study one genre of music, but there’s a lot more out there. We become better citizens of the world around us when we listen more, and research can help us do that. 

What classes do you wish to teach in the future? Are there    other research questions that you are interested in pursuing?

I would really enjoy teaching a specific cognition and performance class where people show up with their own repertoire. We do a lot of reading and we find ways to play pieces in a way that’s most well received — basically, how can cognition directly influence your performance with the repertoire you’re already doing? It would be a very active class, a class on empirical musicology.

For my own research, I am very blessed to be at Oberlin. I get to work with some really cool students. There’s a couple experiments in the pipeline that I won’t say because it will ruin the hypothesis testing, but just in general, I love to research. It’s a vehicle for shared understanding. Research to me is less about sitting in a library and reading books and more about working with other people. We learn more about everyone around us when we start asking questions together.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

What’s your background in fiddle and folk music?

I’ve loved folk music my whole life. After graduating from Oberlin, I started an indie rock band. We played with tons of folk musicians. I did the folk festival circuit for about 10 years and loved it. I love the atmosphere behind it and around it; it’s extremely inviting. It really encourages you to be yourself as a human being. 

Then I started teaching here in January. One of the first things I did here was a folk and baroque duo faculty concert titled Fire and Grace. I was hired specifically to teach baroque violin, which is a different style of playing and a different instrument than regular violin.

What prompted you to create the Fiddle Ensemble course?

All of the classes I teach are very Conservatory-centric, and you have to be at a very high level in terms of technique. I really wanted to have a course or an ensemble where I could invite anyone with some sort of proficiency, whether they’re Conservatory or College students. One thing that’s been hard to verbalize — at least in my tiny course description — is that it’s not just for fiddles, but “fiddle ensemble” is the best descriptor of the vibe I’m trying to create. I’ve already heard from people that want to play cello, claw hammer banjo, bass. I think the rule is that it has to be a melody instrument, but what is a non-melody instrument? I don’t know if that exists.

What are you most excited for with the Fiddle Ensemble?

I feel like this ensemble is going to be so amorphous, like it’ll be different every single semester. My goal for the first semester is to cover five or six unique styles of fiddle playing, folk music, or traditional music from places like the Balkans, Scandinavia, the United States, and the British Isles. I’m also gonna set everyone up at the very first class with a questionnaire that says, “What do you really care about?” because I’m hoping that every student will lead 30 minutes of one class in a tune that they believe in the most. I keep asking my students here, when they play random repertoire, “Why are you playing this? If you don’t know why you’re playing this, how am I ever going to want to hear you play it?”

Could you say more about the importance of improvisation for a classical or baroque musician?

In a way, everything you do is an improvisation, it’s more about the level of the improv. Even if you’re reading a piece of music by Mozart, you’re still improvising the dynamics, phrasing, time, and rhythm. In baroque music, you start actually having to improvise notes and ornamentation and stuff like that. And jazz is also so much about improvisation, with certain parameters of course. Folk music is kind of the same. There’s a tune that’s really simple, usually it’s just eighth notes and quarter notes. Then you fill it with ornaments, trills, turns, shakes, everything with your bow and your fingers.

What are the differences between “regular” classical violin and folk music for the fiddle?

Well, harmonically, “regular” violin play is just more complex in general, in the sense that if you’re playing a big concerto, it goes through unbelievable amounts of chords and key changes. Generally, if you take a fiddle tune, it’s just a few chords that loop. But whenever people ask me, “Are you playing violin or fiddle?” I say they’re the same. The most noticeable difference is that the fiddle players all have bow hairs that are broken, but in classical violin you take the hairs off. It’s just a different vibe. 

Folk in general means how people are playing that music now. There is no such thing in my mind of historical folk music, because that’s then the traditional music of that time, and folk music is what people are doing now with that music, with that tradition. I like to use the word “folk” because it has a very positive and welcoming connotation for so many people. “Oh, folk music, I think I can do this,” you know? 

How does improvisation tie in with the Fiddle Ensemble? 

Without calling it an improvisation class, every class is going to ask, “How do we turn that tune into something of our own?” I think some people have tunnel vision here, in terms of improvisation, and that’s always gonna be the case. But for the people that are looking for more, looking to expand their horizons and musical voice, I want to provide that.

Another thing I’m not sure if we’re gonna get to in this course is writing your own tune from scratch, which is another form of improvisation. Over the course of a few weeks, I’d like to find out from people what they really gravitate toward from what we’ve learned so far. Maybe they just love klezmer music and so they spend a couple of weeks immersing themselves in klezmer — figuring out the general structure, modes, keys, and rhythm that makes it klezmer.

The thing about improvisation is that you’re just drawing from your own toolbox. If you’ve never done it before, your toolbox is pretty small. If you play jazz, or if you play classical violin and you’ve done it a little bit, your toolbox is larger. And the best improvisers in the world have just tried the most amount of different things. That’s what it comes down to.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

How were you introduced to protest music? 

There was always a lot of music around the house growing up. My dad listened to a lot of reggae — a lot of Bob Marley, my namesake. A lot of Bob Marley’s music is protest music, so I was aware of it at a young age. Also, growing up biracial, my identity wasn’t something that was ignored. I knew I was Black, I knew I was born Black, I knew I was staying Black. My dad was like, “Life is unfair. You are going to get used to it.” So that was also kind of around me from a young age, and then I think it started getting incorporated into my music. I realized I had a knack for finding more obscure songs about these things that I related to in some way. Nina Simone was also played a lot in my house growing up, and she also performed a lot of protest music. She and Billie Holiday, who sang “Strange Fruit,” which is about the lynching of Black people in the South, really got me into jazz — or Black American Music, the more correct term. It wasn’t until I was about 17 or 18 when I started to experience very harsh or blatant racism, sexism, misogyny, and harm in ways that I hadn’t experienced growing up. So then I really dove into protest music, and I found a lot of power in listening to it and singing it. 

How do you go about incorporating activism or protest music into your art and performances? 

I feel fortunate to be here at Oberlin because you don’t get much pushback. I feel very fortunate to be in the position where I can sing a lot of protest music right now, and no one’s gonna tell me no. So really, it’s just finding the songs that I really connect with or think could be really powerful. It’s a lot of listening — it’ll be three o’clock in the morning, and I’m just listening to song after song from just this one person’s discography, and then it’s like, “Oh, I found something.” It’s not like I look up “best protest songs to sing” or anything like that. With visual art, it’s a slightly different relationship, because I feel like all of my art is inherently political, not that it’s always protesting something, but I think it’s political for me to put Black bodies on an art piece. I don’t draw a lot of white people. It’s just not something I’ve really been interested in doing. I think we’ve all seen enough white people in art, and I’m sure there will be enough people making white people in art. Especially growing up, I don’t think I saw Black people or Black representation in visual art. I also sometimes use text from songs in my art. Sometimes I’ll write things and put it into my art. Sometimes I have a hard time writing because I have so many things I wanna cover. It’s really just a matter of picking the issue and then being like, “Okay, I’m gonna do it and I don’t care what anyone thinks.”

What topics or themes do you discuss in your art? 

Generally, I talk about womanhood and what that has looked like for me as a Black woman; mental health and having PTSD, anxiety, and depression; sexual harm and harassment. I can’t make or write about anything I haven’t experienced, so everything that I make is coming from a brutally honest perspective. These are the things that have happened to me and that I’m dealing with, and sometimes they are not pretty or cool. It’s a way of processing, I think. 

Can you talk about the statement you made at Jazz Forum last Friday? 

I wrote all the words we ever said and sang at that Forum. I was in a vocal quartet, so there were a lot of amazing musicians and we all helped pick the songs. I feel like I see a lot of white men playing Black American Music, which in and of itself is fine. This music is so important to me and the history of it is so important to me, but sometimes I feel like other people don’t care as much about the history of it, which is sad to watch. It can be really draining week after week to watch that, and so I think when we talked about making a statement, we wanted to say “We are here; we are taking up space.” When is there a chance to really say that to this group of people? There really is no other moment. I guess the statement of the piece and poem is, at least in my life, the people that have helped me get through the most difficult things in my life have mostly been not men — they’ve been women, nonbinary, and trans people that have said, “Okay, we got you.” I wanted to honor that and show that when we are together, we can dismantle things and create a more peaceful place. That’s protest music. We had the band members walk off the stage while we were still speaking the poem, and we put the mics down and kept going with the repeated line. It was a statement. I wanted to make sure everyone was listening. 

Why is activism important to your art? 

I think we have a society that’s constantly in a capitalist, workaholic state that dampers people’s creativity. Some people’s brains don’t work like that — my brain does not work like that. So I feel like to make art, you are inherently protesting society in that way. I also think protest in art is so important because if no one’s talking about something, you feel like you’re alone when that’s really not the case. If you’re experiencing it, so is the person five feet away from you. And I don’t think it’s meant for everyone to do, but I need to talk about why I am constantly being objectified or hypersexualized, or about sexual assault and how it has impacted me, or how racism has affected me as a mixed person, or how I feel like I am not accepted in any space because of my identity, or my mental health and PTSD. There was once a point in my life where I was like, “Why is no one else talking about it?” It’s so nice to see someone make art about these issues. You feel seen as an individual. I think what’s important to me in my art is that other people see themselves in it.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What’s it like to work alongside your former teachers? Do you ever feel out of place as a faculty member who is a younger musician and also an alum?

It’s strange, ’cause these people are like masters. They’re heavyweights, you know? And over the years, the more I understood this music and the more I got into the New York scene — you hear all of these big name people, you know, Danilo Pérez, Geri Allen, all the people that Associate Professor of Jazz Percussion Billy Hart talks about, people that Dan Wall talks about — and it’s like, whoa, they know our teachers, they studied with them. I sometimes feel like I don’t belong here.

But the cool thing about being in the role as a teacher is that I actually get to be a student again. That faculty concert we did back in February was kind of surreal for me ’cause it took me back to my first year. I’m not necessarily a teacher as much as I am an older student hanging with some younger students and my teachers. And we just sit there talking about stuff that my few years of experience has taught me, and I’m just passing it on. I’m definitely honored to be here.

What are the differences between teaching and touring, and have you faced any challenges in maintaining your touring life while teaching here?

One of the hardest things for me is “teaching brain,” where you’re constantly in analysis mode. And in some ways that’s really healthy, because as you sit back, you guys come in with a bunch of questions and I’m like, “Okay, well, how do I answer this? What is it that I do? Can I even do this?” So when you spend a lot of time in that mindset of constantly analyzing and breaking things down, when it’s time to actually get on stage and play, it can be a difficult thing because you gotta let all that go and just play. It’s hard for me to play without breaking myself down too, but it’s okay. Nobody else knows all this, nobody cares. All the important s**t was there. If you screwed up, doesn’t matter. You’re just making music.

So teaching and then going out and playing gigs makes me want to go back and practice, in a cyclic kind of way. They definitely feed each other.

What’s your favorite part about teaching?

I think my favorite part about teaching is saying something and watching you guys just look at me like the wheels on the bus are spinning. You know what I mean? Almost like, “I’m not sure if I buy it.” And then you’re like, “Wait a minute, maybe there’s something to think about.” That’s my favorite thing — when there’s a dialogue, and then you guys are feeding off of something that I say, and you don’t like it at first, but then you get it.

If there’s one thing that I learned from my teachers, it’s that a lesson has never been a lecture. It’s never been about spitting out this information, giving you these sheets, come back and get my packet done next week. It’s more like, “Okay, what do you have to show me? What are the questions that you have?” And that leads into a whole dialogue and sometimes an argument. And hey, we’re not supposed to agree.

Is there anything you wish you did differently or pursued more when you were a student here?

If I had to do it all again? Try to get your hands on everything that Oberlin has to offer. When I was a student here, I didn’t use the Conservatory Library like I should have. We didn’t have the archive that y’all have. But beyond the recordings, any teacher that you want to study with, no matter what discipline, take advantage of them. I never did any of that. There’s more to being in school than being in the practice room and playing with people. Explore different things, explore the reasons why you play.

Were the connections you made at Oberlin impactful on your career? 

That’s 90 percent of the battle, really — being aware of the resources that you already have and finding those people you really connect with. When I started playing with Roy Hargrove after college, that was really just an extension of playing with Theo Croker, OC ’07, at Oberlin. Theo was always tough on me at school, in a good way. He played a big role in preparing me for New York.

Do you have thoughts about eventually becoming a full-time Jazz professor, at Oberlin or elsewhere?

I really like teaching. It’s definitely been fun for me. I mean, there’s still a lot of things that I want to do before I settle down in a place like this. My dream is to come here after like 30, 40 years of touring and do what Dan did. Take my wife and my kids, get a little farm, raise some chickens. I’ll have earned some more stripes by then, not just a couple gigs at Smalls or playing as side man, but when I’ll actually have something strong that I can offer. But it wouldn’t be a bad idea to drop in to Oberlin every now and then. If something happens or if they ask me to, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to just spend a few days back at home.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Where did the idea for Virtu.Academy come from, and how did it come to fruition? 

Ben Steger: Originally, I was thinking that we have so many really talented musicians here, and for people who want to teach a little bit more and gain that experience, there’s not a ton of opportunities to teach around Oberlin. At the same time, through LaunchU, we were talking to schools in rural communities around Ohio where the nearest music teacher for any instrument was two hours away.

We thought, well, we have all this talent at Oberlin and all of these students who don’t have access to music lessons. Originally we called it ObieTeach, and it was just going to be some students at Oberlin who would teach. Once people graduated, it spread around different conservatories, and we now have people all over the world teaching.

Does Virtu.Academy offer any other resources besides private lessons? 

BS: Yeah, something newer we’ve been experimenting with lately is virtual classes. All of our teachers have different passions and things that they’re super excited about, so it’s an opportunity for them to just come up with an idea for a class. There’s been classes around marketing — the business side of music — as well as jazz history and all sorts of subjects. We also have a blog section, which is still in progress. Hopefully we’ll have some more interviews with well-known musicians and some of our own teachers.

How did Oberlin prepare you to be business owners?

Bryan Rubin: We wouldn’t be here without Oberlin. Especially with the LaunchU program, which is one of the reasons we’re coming back to talk — because they’re rebooting it. I think Oberlin really helps because you get this liberal arts education, so you’re not focused on just one thing. When we started the business, I came from more of the arts side of things, and Ben had a finance and mathematics background, so we really worked well together. I was able to use things that I did from my photo and video classes at Oberlin and translate that into marketing in creative ways that I thought I would never really be able to do.

BS: Another aspect of it is when you’re running a business and it’s just two people, you have to be the marketing person and the developer and the finance person. You have all of these different roles that you have to play before you can afford to actually hire people. I think the liberal arts experience at Oberlin helps prepare you for all the crazy stuff you have to learn really quickly, versus if you went to a business school and only knew the finance side of it.

BR: This is something we’ll touch on in the talk we’re giving, but when we won the grant from LaunchU, we didn’t give up everything and go full-time with Virtu.Academy. We went down our paths that we were going down at Oberlin already. I worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, doing photo and video work with the Environmental Studies degree that I had. I think there’s a misconception that you have to drop everything if you have a business idea and go all in, whereas we slowly worked on it over the weekends and nights after our actual jobs that provided our income. That allowed us to continue to work on it without having to stress out about getting funding.

Do you think that entrepreneurship is important for Conservatory students in particular?

BS: Well, there’s just a lot of different career paths that I think people don’t know about. You could graduate with a music degree and want to do some performing, but then you have some ideas for something like an arts nonprofit, or maybe you want to work with another company. Having a more entrepreneurial mindset where you’re willing to start things and run with it gives you a lot more options as a professional artist.

Is there anything you wish Oberlin had better prepared you for?

BS: I definitely think there should be more focus on the music business side of things. We only really got that side of it from the LaunchU program, so I’m really glad to hear that they’re starting to launch more entrepreneurship stuff, because that’s essential. Unless you graduate and get, say, an orchestra job right away, you probably need some networking skills.

What advice do you have for starting a business with a music degree?

BS: As Bryan said before, if you have an idea, grow it out organically. Now, there are so many resources out there for starting a business without spending a ton of money. You can build a website and register a company for under $100. Also, being resourceful and willing to figure out some other ways to start up, rather than taking the traditional entrepreneurship route, is helpful.

BR: This allows you to take more risks with it, too. Because again, it’s not your life yet. If something doesn’t work, oh well, try again. That’s what it was like in the beginning for us. We would spend late nights trying these different ads or different weird ideas, and it didn’t work. That was fine because we still had our jobs. Once we kind of got into a groove with trial and error, we knew what to expect if we could just jump off a ledge. But it’s no longer a ledge, you know, it’s just a little hill.

Any goals for the future of Virtu.Academy?

BS: We just want to keep growing it as much as we can. We’re now starting to work with school districts and big tutoring organizations. That’s definitely one of the big focuses now — expanding from just selling lessons to individual families to working with school districts and larger strategic partnerships like that.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What does it mean to you to play a 2,000-year-old instrument? What do you consider to be the most salient historical points of the pipa’s history? 

Holding that instrument is like holding history. I’m holding a very modern version of my instrument, which is a very different version compared to 2,000 years ago. It’s very interesting to see how things have developed through all those years. The instrument came from Central Asia 2,000 years ago from Persia, and somehow it traveled and landed in the place that today they call China. So to me it’s not only the music, but also the history.

You mentioned that there are different materials for the modern instruments versus the traditional ones. What is the difference? 

Well, the shape is still the same pear shape, but in ancient times they held it very much like a European or Middle Eastern lute, like horizontally. Also, the material of the string used to be silk. Now it’s metal. In the old days, you’d hold an animal bone to pluck the strings. Later on, they used natural fingernails, and now we use plastic-like fingernails. You have to put fingernails on all five fingers to play the instrument. There used to be less frets on the instrument. Now we have 20- or 30-something frets. 

You also play pipa in non-traditional settings. Can you talk a bit about your introduction and inspiration for starting that sort of work?

I grew up with traditional music in China. The first repertoire for the pipa was notated in the 19th century, so we have less than 20 pieces because a lot was taught through oral tradition. After I learned all those 20-something pieces, I was like, “What’s next? What can I do if I want to play with other friends from different cultural backgrounds?” That’s how I became inspired by music from Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and of course Western classical music.

Does doing that kind of work influence the way that you play in more traditional settings? Does it change your relationship with the pipa in any way? 

I don’t think it changes, but it adds up. It’s like when you have different kinds of nutrition instead of only having one kind of food you eat every day — you become more rich, musically. You learn the different styles and you learn the different rhythms, intonation, ornamentations, and languages. So when I come back to do my own tradition, a lot of the time I feel like now I have more language in my body. 

I know that you did a documentary where you went to different towns in China and learned from their folk music traditions. What was that process like? What was the most surprising or inspiring thing that you learned?

Many people have asked me, “Tell me about Chinese music. What is Chinese music?” And it’s like I’m asking, “What is American music?” So, what is Chinese music? It’s not only the pipa. There are so many kinds of different genres and different art forms. So that’s what began my curiosity to visit the northern part of China. 

There’s a lot of music rooted in their daily lives. They’re not what we call concert musicians. Some are farmers, but they’ve grown up with a family that plays music for the funeral, weddings, or the local festivals. There are a lot of traditional practices for funerals. If someone passes away in the wintertime, they will put the body in the coffin and keep it in the home until the funeral season or until winter passes. And then in March or April, they can do the ceremony. They start up the car and put the coffin in there and then there’s a whole ceremony with music. 

To me, it’s also fascinating watching those instruments for the first time. When I was there, my eyes just couldn’t look away from them. I had to ask a lot of questions. That also tells me that the music, the culture, even in the same land, are very different. 

I know you work a lot with string quartets. What is that process like and how has the process been with the Verona Quartet in particular? 

I’m very much looking forward to working with the Verona Quartet. I have not met them personally yet — we just met them from a Zoom meeting — so I’m very excited. It’s going to be brand new.

Working with string quartets or with Western instruments in a chamber music setting or even improvising with other instruments is a part of my passion. I really enjoy it. Sometimes I don’t like to just play by myself. I want to work with them in some way. It’s like: How can we make a Western string quartet sound combined with Chinese traditional form? That’s a challenge. But to me that’s also great. I take that challenge. 

Do you have any advice for students who want to broaden their musical experiences or get out of their musical comfort zone? 

I think you have to know your instrument well. You have to know your instrument’s history, the language of the instrument, and the repertoire. And then once you have those foundations, you can fly. I think, especially for the younger generation, if you only play one kind of music, you will not survive as a musician in the future. That’s my experience. 

Are there any genres of music that you haven’t explored that are on your bucket list?

Rock and roll. If you’re talking about musical performance, that’s the area I haven’t done. You know, like pop. I listen to pop songs and kind of try to understand the musical arrangement, the instrumentation, the colors of the instruments, the sound. Pipa is like a guitar, like a bass. It could definitely do a lot of the same kind of material.

Inayah Raheem is a double-degree third-year majoring in Classical Voice and Africana Studies. She is the president of the Oberlin College Black Musicians Guild, a student-led organization for Black musicians in the Conservatory. The organization will be performing at the Black History Month “Woven, Worn & Reborn: A Sustainable Black History Month Fashion Show” this Saturday.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

What is OCBMG?  

OCBMG is an organization that was founded years ago but has recently been revamped. It serves as a place for Black musicians to gather in the Conservatory and in the College. Its purpose is to help combat some of the issues of lack of diversity in the Con and just blatant racism that you face as a Conservatory student. There are racist things that I feel like, specifically in the Conservatory, students experience, and it’s basically unchecked. So OCBMG serves as a space where Black students come together and speak on these issues. That’s what we’re really trying to cultivate this semester with the Sunday dinners: a space where students can come and voice their grievances and talk about what they want to change in the Conservatory, and also, very realistically, a safe space where we can share things like, “My professor said this.” 

What challenges does OCBMG face as an organization? 

I think the main problem with OCBMG is that everyone is so busy. I mean, Conservatory students take like six classes a semester, so you barely even have enough time to do your homework and practice. It’s hard to be able to tell somebody to go to this event hosted by OCBMG when they’ve already had all these concerts, performance obligations, and auditions. Basically, the culture of the Conservatory makes it hard for people to join OCBMG as an organization. 

Do you think that some of the responsibility falls to the institution when it comes to racism in the Conservatory? 

Yeah, I think the Conservatory could at least try harder, specifically in curriculum. I think they could make it a lot more inclusive and bring in more faculty — Black faculty — because it’s currently very European-structured and the mindset in the Conservatory can be toxic. There’s this stigma because all of our professors have had some sort of professional career. Students think if they report their teacher on something they said that was wildly racist, it’ll be the end of their career, so they just don’t report people, especially private teachers. It’s just that we really have to think about how these people and the Conservatory itself can create a racist environment — especially the Classical department because it’s based in a European classical mindset. Before this year, we did not have much diversity in the Classical department, and I think it’s because they didn’t care. So even with the Music Theory and History courses starting to get more inclusive, it fully starts with the music. 

Is OCBMG pushing that need for diversity within the Conservatory?

I think it’s a mixed bag, but in some ways it pushes us to do more. Our organization is not associated with the Conservatory which means we’re not getting institutional funds. Everything’s coming through the Student Finance Committee which is kind of unfortunate because it’s taking away things that should be funded through the Conservatory. It’s not necessarily to say that the money isn’t there for students to support themselves, it’s just to say the Conservatory should try harder. 

What does it mean to you to be in OCBMG?

This is my second year within OCBMG. Last year I was treasurer, and this year I’m president. It’s a time commitment, but  to me, it is a labor of love because I really do care about making the Conservatory better for first-years. I had a really rough time adjusting and feeling like I belonged in the Conservatory as a Black musician. There’s just this institutional pressure to feel like you don’t belong and you can’t really be yourself in Conservatory environments, so I think the OCBMG community is really important because it serves as a space to let Black musicians in the Conservatory and the College embrace the Blackness in their music.

What kind of events does OCBMG plan?

OCBMG typically plans events with guest artists and community events centering Conservatory students. We are trying to plan some events surrounding professional development for musicians and also trying to bring together Black musicians on campus. 

What are some of the events the Conservatory should put its energy into promoting? 

I think the Conservatory has been doing a decent job with the events right now because there is a lot going on, but most realistically, the Conservatory should try to include more Black events in months other than February.