GRAMMY WINNER EMANUEL AX JOINS FACULTY MEMBERS FOR CONCERT, CONVERSATION ON CREATIVITY AND CAREERS

Professor of Chemistry Frank Mallory, clarinet; Emanuel Ax, piano; Professor of Mathematics Paul Melvin, cello

"I don't think it's necessary to decide too early or too definitely, 'I will do this and not that for the rest of my life,'" world-renowned pianist Emanuel Ax advised students Tuesday afternoon at a discussion of creativity and career choices in Goodhart Music Room. The piano superstar also told the audience that he had never conquered preperformance nerves and confessed to a fondness for the Dave Matthews Band and Fiona Apple.

The seven-time Grammy winner charmed an audience of students, faculty and staff with an unassuming manner and a wry, self-deprecating wit after performing a Brahms trio with W. Alton Jones Professor of Chemistry Frank Mallory and Rachel C. Hale Professor of the Sciences and Mathematics Paul Melvin. Mallory played clarinet and Melvin cello; Provost Ralph Kuncl turned Ax's pages.

After their performance, the members of the ad hoc MMAX trio talked briefly about their own career choices in relation to music before opening the floor to questions from the audience.

Mallory began playing the clarinet at about 10 or 11 years of age, he said, and during his early youth spent much of his time in musical pursuits. He characterized his eventual choice of science over music as "morals-driven."

"It was at a time when the world appeared to be in a pickle — it always does, I guess." But as he graduated from high school in the aftermath of World War II, Mallory said, the emerging threat of nuclear weaponry seemed urgent enough to trump his love of music: "I thought I should help the world not to destroy itself." He played little in college and less in graduate school, and when he joined the Bryn Mawr faculty, he put his instrument aside for about 25 years.

Melvin, the son of a physics professor and a concert pianist, described several critical points at which he had been faced with career choices; he argued that no single choice was final. He chose college over conservatory, he said, "because the life of a musician is hard, and I'm not YoYo" (famed cellist YoYo Ma frequently collaborates with Ax). But part of the reason he chose Haverford College was that it allowed him to remain close to his cello teacher, who was on the faculty of the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.

A fellowship at Berkeley led him further in the direction of mathematics, but he continued his training in the cello as well. While in graduate school, he had a rare opportunity to play with a local orchestra when a soloist who was scheduled to perform fell ill, and he switched his focus back to music and put his career in mathematics on hold for a brief period. When he joined Bryn Mawr's faculty, about 25 years ago, he sought out other faculty musicians, and the Bryn Mawr Chamber Music Society was born. Mallory, Melvin and several other members of Bryn Mawr's faculty and student body have given semiannual concerts ever since.

Upon hearing the professors' histories, Ax said, "I don't have much of a story. I started playing piano at seven. That's what I wanted to do, and that's what I'm doing."

"I also went to a regular college as well as conservatory," he said (Ax graduated from Columbia University). "That was my dad's influence — music is a pretty iffy career. I knew what I wanted to do, but I didn't know how I could do it. What you need is luck."

His lucky break, Ax said, was winning an important competition. "There is a lot of luck involved in these things," he insisted when an audience member protested. "You have to hope that you will play well that day. You have to hope that the people who are judging the competition will like the way you play — there's a lot of luck involved in that. I've been to Horowitz concerts and heard people afterwards say, 'That was disgusting!' I thought they were foolish, but it's a matter of taste."

Avocations, Perfectionism and Balance

An audience member told the group that her son, once an accomplished musician who had invested much of his young life in music, had abandoned his instrument altogether when he chose a career in philosophy. If he couldn't play three hours a day and as well as he did when he was in top form, he said, he didn't want to play at all. How, she asked, did the amateurs on the stage cope with the loss of facility they must have experienced when their academic careers deprived them of practice time?

Both Mallory and Melvin responded that their musical lives tend to progress in spurts motivated by the knowledge of upcoming performances.

"It's a painful process, getting back into shape," said Mallory.

"And no, you're not going to be as good as you were when you were practicing all the time," said Melvin. "I had to get my ego out of it."

"It's like athletics," Ax said. "There's a certain physical discipline involved. If you learn tennis when you're six years old, you're always going to look pretty good on the court. But I think that discipline sometimes drives people into careers in music. You're very good at it when you're seven or eight years old, so you're guided in that direction. Nobody asks, 'Do you really love doing this?' I've known some musicians who were very unhappy and probably would have been better off doing something else."

Ax agreed with audience members who suggested that musical performance is valuable regardless of skill level. "The important thing is to play," he said. "You can find people to play with at any level. There are some people who play chamber music and are dreadful musicians, but they have a great time." Anxiety about skills, he urged, shouldn't stop amateurs from engaging in activities they enjoy.

"I love to play tennis," he said. "I'm terrible at it and I look awful, but no one minds."

The Science-Music Connection

The pianist also spoke of a lifelong interest in science and mathematics. He intended to major in mathematics at Columbia, but gave up after about a year, he said. He speculated that the often-noted interest of mathematicians in music can be attributed to the fact that that both math and music deal with "arbitrary, closed symbol systems." He noted, too, that he has a close friend who is a scientist with a musical avocation and another friend who chose a career in music over a powerful interest in science.

Another audience member suggested that both musicians and scientists are problem solvers.

"Yes!" Ax said. "My father-in-law spent his entire career researching one thing: the permeability of the membrane of red blood cells. He could focus on this one topic for his whole life, and he never got bored.

"I'm the same way. There are pieces that I've done for 30 years, and there are problems in them that I still haven't solved. I play the concert, and I mess up, and I practice, and I play the concert, and I mess up. But I keep working at it, and I don't mind. I like it!"

Mallory and Melvin chuckled at the notion that Ax, who is renowned for his virtuosity, "messes up" in concert, but Ax modestly insisted that he does. "I keep waiting until I'm 60," he said, "when everybody will say, 'Oh, he's old; of course he's going to make mistakes.'"

In response to a student's comment that mistakes are what makes music human, Ax said, "Nobody wants to be a machine, and there's no danger of that."

Ax's visit to Bryn Mawr was sponsored by the Roberta Holder Gellert Lecture Fund, established in 1986 by Donald Gellert in memory of his wife, Bryn Mawr alumna Roberta Holder Gellert '61, to support lectures on topics of interest to students. The panel discussion marked his second visit to Bryn Mawr this academic year; he also played a solo concert in Thomas Great Hall last fall.

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