Jo Reed: From the National Endowment for the Arts, this is Art Works, I’m Josephine Reed

Eva Enciñias: What we have been able to do, in Albuquerque we're in the community performing free in fiestas and baptisms and community functions. So it isn't just something that you go to the theater to see, but it's something that's all around you, and I believe that that's what we have here in in New Mexico and Albuquerque because of the way that the foundation has been built, really starting from my mother's influence of community, community, community.

Jo Reed: That is flamenco artist and 2022 National Heritage Fellow Eva Enciñias. Eva Enciñias has devoted her life to flamenco as a performer, a teacher, and a presenter. As result, her hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico is now one of the premier international centers of flamenco, putting its own cultural footprint on this most emotive of dances. Eva Enciñias came from a flamenco family and she has continued the family tradition-- teaching flamenco in her mother’s studio from the age of 14….where she discovered her dual passions: flamenco and teaching. Eva went on to begin her own dance company Ritmo Flamenco as she studied dance at the University of New Mexico where she went on to teach flamenco for 43 years--creating a concentration in the art form on both the undergraduate and graduate levels—the only accredited dance program of its kind internationally. Eva then founded the National Institute of Flamenco, which houses several programs, including a conservatory, a performing company, and the internationally acclaimed the Festival Flamenco Alburquerque—which just celebrated its 35^th anniversary. Her aim was always to elevate flamenco while weaving it into the fabric of community-life. And she did this by dancing not just on stage but, as you heard at neighborhood celebrations of all kinds and by teaching generations not just the dance steps, but the history and significance of flamenco itself. And that was where I began my conversation with 2022 National Heritage Awardee Eva Enciñias.

Jo Reed: I'd like to begin with a very simple, very difficult question, and that is what is flamenco dance, and what makes flamenco flamenco?

Eva Enciñias: Oh, that's a wonderful question. Well, flamenco is a music, originally a music form that was developed, of course, in Spain. It's a mixture of various cultures because, of course, in Spain there was a lot of Moorish and Arabic and African influences. But, as well, with the extensive travels of Spaniards, of course, in different parts of the, the world, conquistando, conquering, they also had influences from many other cultures in many other parts of the world. So really flamenco is this incredible conglomeration of cultures and practices and conventions that have come together to create a new music form and that became very connected to the Gypsy culture in Spain, because a lot of the Gypsies were really developing this art form in a unique way, influencing with their very complex forms of music and dance. So it really did become very tied in Spain to the Gypsy community but, of course, it was developed in Spain, it's highly Spanish, it's highly Gypsy, but then it's also informed and influenced by many, many different cultures from around the world, and I believe that that's one of the reasons why such a broad audience of people can really connect to the art form because there are so many sounds, and through rhythm and tonality, as well as the physical expression of the art form that people can connect to, basically a song of oppressed, and marginalized people, and it became a very social outcry of people that had led very difficult lives. So I think that this is something that people connect to and relate to and want to know more about.

Jo Reed: It always struck me as a very emotional dance.

Eva Enciñias: Totally, and that's one of the reasons is that the earliest forms of flamenco cante were what they call the cante hondo, which was the deep song, and those songs were songs of death and oppression and loneliness and pain and fear, and so a lot of those original cantes, which had such an influence on the overall development of the art form, were very soulful and very personal, and so thus, the highly expressive art form.

Jo Reed: I also, and this is a little bit off track, but every time I've seen flamenco, probably more than any other dance there is such an eye contact between the dancer and the audience. Am I just making that up or is that really something that happens?

Eva Enciñias: No, no, I believe that that is true and, you know, whenever, as we do performances, people always ask, "Well, are the dancers telling the story that the singer is singing?" And I tell them no, there is no literal translation of what is going on between the cante and the baile, the singing and the dance, but its intention, and its expressive content is definitely inspired by and influenced by the cante. The cante is, in most worlds, considered the center of flamenco. So it's the dancers and the guitarists or other musicians opportunity and job to respond to the cante, and so that direct communication is going on constantly in flamenco, and I think that that's one of the things that encourages that very direct focus of the dancers, that there's a conversation, a dialogue going on, and so not only are they having that direct communication with the audience but as well with each other, and so it does have that urgency of expression that I believe affects that.

Jo Reed: I think urgency of expression is a great way to put it because that's what it feels like.

Eva Enciñias: Exactly.

Jo Reed: You're part of a flamenco family. So what is your flamenco family tree?

Eva Enciñias: Okay, well, that's a great question. My mother was a beautiful dancer, also did a great deal of cante, a great deal of singing. My mother's oldest brother, Antonio, was a self-taught musician and dancer. He traveled and lived in California for some time. He had quite a breadth of repertoire, of flamenco repertory, but not just flamenco, also other Spanish dance forms, which was very unusual in New Mexico to have that information. So he came back to his family here in Albuquerque; he shared what he had learned with all of his brothers and sisters. So by the time I was old enough to kind of know what was going on, so many people in my family danced, and I wasn't sure why, but I was luckily exposed to that art form through my mother. She was a beautiful dancer, she had an act that she did with her brother, Antonio, they traveled around the country and performed flamenco, other beautiful forms of dance as well. But I think that flamenco really kind of got a hold of my mother, and at the same time got a hold of me through studying with her. And in her studio, she had a studio in sort of the north valley area of Albuquerque, and she taught lots of different types of dance, ballet, and tap, and Mexican folk dance, and lots of the Spanish-related forms, Spanish classical and regional dances but she also taught flamenco, and flamenco just got a hold of me at a very, very early age. So in answer to your question, my mother was a dancer and singer, as was my uncle, and my aunts and uncles, consequently, but then I myself, my brother, and sister, all studied flamenco dance, I also later studied quite a bit of flamenco music, and I decided that that's what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. My two children are both beautiful, professional flamenco artists, dancers, and I have three grandchildren that also are professional dancers.

Jo Reed: Wow. Was there much flamenco in in Albuquerque, or even in New Mexico when you were growing up? Or was your mother forging a path?

Eva Enciñias: No, there was not a lot of flamenco, there was a little bit in Santa Fe, and there were a couple of people in Albuquerque who were performing Spanish dances/some flamenco, but there was no school. My mother was really the one that started a school where you could actually study flamenco and other forms as well, and so it was really wonderful because I was so formed in that kind of mentality of this is something, this is a serious study of music and dance and, you know, I danced every day, I mean, it was really an incredible experience. So my mother was very much involved in introducing the school of Spanish dance and flamenco to this area, and then we also used to travel, I remember I was her assistant, and we traveled to other neighboring communities and teach classes in different parts of the state. And so she had her studio for many, many years, and a lot of people studied there, and I was fortunate to be in that environment. I just loved it. I mean, from as long as I can remember I knew that what I wanted to do for the rest of my life was dance flamenco. And she encouraged me to be developing my skills as a teacher at the same time, so that was exciting for me, because I always love teaching.

Jo Reed: Well, you're absolutely leading me to my next question, so thank you very much. Teaching is pretty much as central to you as flamenco.

Eva Enciñias: Absolutely.

Jo Reed: And that was something that spoke to you right away, when you began teaching, you just loved it?

Eva Enciñias: It is. My mom was a wonderful teacher, she was a teacher, now as I see my kids and even my grandkids, they're all beautiful dancers, but we are all educators. That's really what, you know, it's interesting, we use the flamenco vocabulary to educate, but our total passion for all of us is educating people, and finding ways of reaching people with this incredibly dynamic art form that can be a little intimidating for a lot of people. Because of its high level of expression, you have to be, you know, it's not easy for people to kind of go in that direction, and so it's been a fascinating experience, not just for me, but for my children and my grandchildren to find ways of introducing this incredible art form to people in an authentic and effective way.

Jo Reed: You studied dance at the University of New Mexico. Tell me about that decision. Had you made a decision you were going to be a dancer?

Eva Enciñias: Yes, I did. I had made that decision, I think in my mind and my heart at a very early age. But because there wasn't a lot of flamenco outside of my mother's studio, when I graduated from high school I knew that I wanted to continue to dance, and specifically flamenco, but really I would have had to go to Spain, and I didn't really want to do that. I mean, I love my home, I love my family, I wanted to be close to them, I was very young. So I said, "Okay, well, I want to go to college, so they have a dance program at UNM. So let me apply for the dance program, and even though I won't be studying flamenco, I'll be learning more about dance, which will certainly inform my flamenco," and I was excited about that, and oh my gosh what a journey I had at UNM. I was just captivated by being able to study dance outside of my comfort zone, and I had fabulous teachers, and I had never done any contemporary dance, so that was a very new thing for me and, oh my gosh, I again fell in love with it, and I developed rather quickly because as I said I had a good strong foundation in dance. And so I developed some skills, and I got the opportunity to start performing pretty quickly. I danced in a number of choreographies of our faculty, and became a member of some of the contemporary dance companies that were here. While at the same time, I felt like I continued to develop my flamenco abilities, but it was kind of through a different lens, which was really interesting for me, and I don't know, it just sparked something, sparked a hunger for investigating movement on a greater scale, and it had a tremendous influence on my teaching, so it was exciting. That was one of the most incredible periods of my artistic life.

Jo Reed: Well, you formed your own company pretty early on--

Eva Enciñias: Ritmo Flamenco. Yes, I did, as actually pretty much along with me becoming a student at the university, I knew that I needed to keep nurturing my flamenco skills, and so I thought well, a great way to do that is to bring together musicians and dancers and start a company where I would have to direct the company, start to do some of my own choreography, and it would give me a chance to be performing. So we did that. My mother was the singer. We did regional performances, but most of it was right here in New Mexico, and we did some good work. I felt it was really an exciting time for me to experience choreography. Of course, at that time, it was being heavily influenced by these other forms of dance. So I was trying to marry these different styles and see what came from it, and some of it was fabulous, and some of it wasn't. But it was an incredible opportunity for me to grow on an artistic level. Then when they asked me to start teaching flamenco at UNM, ah, I had a very different kind of challenge to deal with, and so that took me on sort of another little journey where I had to figure out how do you teach an art form that would usually take, you know, be a long process of years and years of training? How do you how do you work in a four-year system. So that was an interesting challenge to have, and that took a lot of my time and energy. But again, I loved that part of the exploration and the experience, and a lot of trial and error, but I had a good time figuring it out and, you know, now we have a full-fledged flamenco program. So I learned a lot.

Jo Reed: Well, I know you, aside from teaching, exactly, created a concentration in flamenco that was really comprehensive, you really created a comprehensive program, and you've said to study flamenco you really need to immerse yourself in dance and music and history and culture.

Eva Enciñias: Absolutely.

Jo Reed: Yeah. Can you explain a little bit more about the importance of that? And how that might have surprised some people who were not perhaps expecting this.

Eva Enciñias: Totally, I mean, and it surprised me because it wasn't until I actually had the opportunity to share and start to teach a flamenco class in the university that I realized that in the study of flamenco it's very much culturally and socially based. And if you don't understand its lineage and its heritage, then you're learning movement for the sake of movement, and although that is not necessarily a bad thing, it isn't the intention behind flamenco. And so I started to realize that although the students were learning some great techniques and principles, and developing their stylistic approach to the art form, but there was something that was really missing. For one thing, I was just having a good old time taking a lot of conventional movement practices in flamenco, and combining them with very nontraditional use of the body because I was so excited about this exploration that I had going here with contemporary dance. So that was fabulous, I mean, it actually worked really well for a lot of the students because most of them had contemporary vocabulary. But what I was realizing is I was doing my students a bit of a disservice, because they weren't really learning the traditional conventions of flamenco, and that was my job to teach that. So I had to back up a little bit and say, you know, yes, I love this exploration, it's fabulous, and for my own choreography it's all great and fine and good, but in my role as a teacher of flamenco in a university, my role is to teach the authentic, traditional vocabulary and methods behind the art form. So I had to do some pretty big changes in the way that I was teaching flamenco at UNM. There was a curriculum that was needed to be able to really advance the students through this progression in an effective way, and so, you know, I mean, it was frustrating sometimes, it was scary sometimes, it was challenging. But again, I love flamenco and I loved education. So, and I had the forum and the format with which to be able to develop a curriculum that I felt was really working, and I thank the university for that because you don't always have that opportunity, and, yeah, you know, I mean I had a laboratory, basically, for decades, that I could really say, "Okay, that's working really well, but this part is not working quite well, so how can I reshape that?" And how wonderful to be able to have that opportunity, and it completely changed my life and my view of how can an art form like flamenco work in a university setting, which is a big challenge.

Jo Reed: As you said, the university was supportive, and that's great, but I wonder if there was also pushback.

Eva Enciñias: There was some. Most universities, most of them, have the ballet, contemporary, sometimes jazz is in their format. That is the way that these dance programs generally are, they're formed around those styles of dance. When flamenco started to be introduced, I don't think they had any idea what kind of community response was going to be developed through that art form. don't think any of us could, because we didn't know, we had never been in that kind of situation. So there was a lot of buy in from students, quite a bit, and so I think that pretty early on there was a little bit of what is it about this art form that is different, and why are people drawn to it? And I think it comes back to the earlier part of our conversation is that there's an emotional-- in content and intent-- in flamenco that captivates people. Whereas sometimes some other art forms can be a little austere and removed from who we are as people, whereas flamenco is more-- it's raw, it's real, and people love the experience of trying to find that. And so I think there was some pushback, and a lot of it was because the faculty at that time didn't really understand at all what the art form was about. They didn't understand how it was developed, they didn't understand why it practiced certain conventions, the non-spoken vocabulary that goes on between the musicians and the dancers, and how do you teach that, and why can't a flamenco dancer approach choreography in the same way that a contemporary dancer does? Just lots of things that, had they known more about flamenco, they would have understood more, but they were kind of reluctant to go there. But nevertheless, flamenco continued to gain presence and notoriety at a steady level and, I think maybe had they known where this was going to go, I don't know that they would have opened the door, you know? It's great, it's fantastic. I mean, people come to take advantage from all over the country, different parts of the world, to take advantage of the incredible flamenco concentration that we have at UNM now, we have a visiting guest line, we have our festival, they all study at the festival.

Jo Reed: And it's the only place in the world that offers this, correct?

Eva Enciñias: Yes. I mean, there's a university in Spain that has flamenco cante, and there are universities that have flamenco courses, but as a concentration of study where you get an undergraduate or a graduate degree, this is the only one.

Jo Reed: And that's you.

Eva Enciñias: Well, I had a lot to do with it. There were a lot of people that that really helped, flamenco artists, but as well UNM professors and the administration, there was a lot of work that went into making it happen. And, you know, I'm proud of the work that was done there, and it's been a real resource for the university, but as well for flamenco artists in general, New Mexican, American, Spanish, and the world of flamenco has benefited by this unique program.

Jo Reed: Yeah, well, and the festival is the Festival Flamenco Albuquerque now, though, it went through a couple of iterations of names.

Eva Enciñias: Exactly.

Jo Reed: But that brings me to the National Institute of Flamenco, because you're dancing, you're teaching at the university, and then you create the National Institute of Flamenco, which houses several programs, including the Festival Flamenco, a school, and a performance company, and many other programs.

Eva Enciñias: Yes.

Jo Reed: You're already, I would think, a very busy person.

Eva Enciñias: Yes, totally.

Jo Reed: What were you thinking? I don't mean like what were you thinking, but like--

Eva Enciñias: What were you thinking? Well, sometimes I think what was I thinking? But--

Jo Reed: What was the vision for the institute. Why did you think it important?

Eva Enciñias: Let me give you a little history on that. So the nonprofit that I created was actually for Ritmo Flamenco, for the performance company, because we needed to write grants and try to get support for that idea. But by the time I was teaching full time at UNM, and I was developing this festival, and it was going really well, The first many years of our festival it was all American artists that were living in different parts of the United States. I felt, okay, things are things are moving along nicely. but on the fifth anniversary I wanted to make a special celebration and invite a couple of Spanish artists. The university supported me through that experience, but then they told me after that, you know, they said, "The international aspect of this, if you're going to continue to go in that direction is.." At that time there were there weren't a lot of international Programs at the university, so they were a little nervous about how that was going to work, and so they said, "We want to be able to continue to support this festival and flamenco here at the university in every way that we can. We'll give you the studio space, we'll give you theater space, we'll support in every way that we can on an administrative level, but we don't want to be in charge of the finances." And I understood that, you know, I mean, I respected that, I said, "I get it." It starts to become a little a little precarious, I mean, because it was much more expensive, and that meant we had to broaden the audience. Albuquerque is a big, small town, you know, so it was not a place by itself to support an international festival, so this had to start going out to a larger audience. So I said, "Okay, well, what I'm going to do is I'm going to take that 501(c)(3), and I'm going to change its mission to become an umbrella organization that will support the festival." The institute could be the umbrella organization for Ritmo Flamenco and the festival. And for many years, for quite a few years, that was kind of what it was until 1999 when we realized, okay, so the university is a wonderful program, and it's incredible for our community, but we don't have anything in the community for people who aren't university students, and there was a lot of people who wanted to be able to study flamenco but weren't going to go to the university. So my children said, "Let's open a school," because they were already quite developed as teachers. And at the first thought of it I got a little dizzy and almost wanted to pass out because knowing it's not easy to run a private studio, and it takes a lot of time and energy. But I had a special interest in teaching children because since my mother's studio there had there had not been a formal place for children to study, and I know that flamenco really you need to start as a child. So I said, "Okay, well, we'll open a conservatory." But initially, the Institute which was at that time Institute de Flamenco was really-- its responsibility was the festival and Ritmo Flamenco, and it wasn't until 1999 that it started to grow these other programs, and those other programs have become very central and important to the flamenco community here in Albuquerque.

Jo Reed: And, of course, the festival has just had its 35th anniversary, so congratulations.

Eva Enciñias: Yeah, I can't believe it, right? Wow, how time flies.

Jo Reed: And it just needs to be said that the Festival Flamenco Albuquerque is one of the premier flamenco festivals in the entire world right now.

Eva Enciñias: It is, it is. It's actually we were acknowledged from the festival in Jerez, which is a very important flamenco festival, we were given an acknowledgement as the most important flamenco festival outside of Spain. We have actually been in existence, the festival has been a longer running festival than many of the festivals in Spain, and it's really quite, you know, it has a really good following, and both on the artistic level of the artists from Spain, as well as people from all over the world who come and take advantage of this particular festival. And, you know, it's interesting because I think that one of the most wonderful things about it is, obviously, we have these incredible performances and workshops and lectures, and all of these things that happen during the festival. But one of the unique things about it is that in this festival the artists that come, we have anywhere from 50 to 60 artists that come from Spain, they're together here for the whole festival. In Spain, what they do is they go in, and they bring in a company, and they perform, and then they go back to wherever city it is that they live in Spain. They don't stay for the entire festival. But here, the artists and the students and everybody is here for that entire 8 to 10 days. So everybody's there, and they're hanging out, and they're visiting with each other, and artists that maybe they all know each other but they rarely get to visit with each other. So it's kind of like a flamenco camp. The social dynamic of it is incredible.

Jo Reed: You know, it's been said you have woven flamenco into the culture of New Mexico, and Albuquerque certainly is now noted as a place, one of the places if you want to see flamenco.

Eva Enciñias: Absolutely. And you know, I mean, I really believe that the reason that that has happened, because there's good flamenco in lots of your main city centers, in L.A. and New York City--

Jo Reed: New York, that's what I thinking.

Eva Enciñias: Yeah, you know, there's some good flamenco in Chicago, there are pockets of flamenco in different parts of the United States. But I think that what we have done, what we have been able to do, is that kind of multi-tiered way of infusing flamenco education, from children to young adults, to college age students, to seniors, that we're in the community performing free-- free-- in fiestas and baptisms and community functions. So it isn't just something that you go to the theater to see, but it's something that's all around you, and I believe that that's what we have here in in New Mexico and Albuquerque because of the way that the foundation has been built, really starting from my mother's influence of community, community, community. And that's what I've always been about, it's very much about what my children are about, and my grandchildren as well. And that has been a tremendous resource for the development and access of flamenco in Albuquerque.

Jo Reed: When did you stop performing, and was that a difficult decision for you, or did it just make sense at the time?

Eva Enciñias: Hmm. When did I stop performing? Gosh. Okay, I would say it was probably in the mid to late 90s, and it was not a difficult thing for me. I think that by that time there were so many young, upcoming artists, my children being two of them. And I just felt my energies were more important in the studio because there were so many other people that were performing that were wonderful artists. So I was like, you know, really is that where my energy should be going? Or do I need to spend my energy in the studio creating opportunities for people to study? And that's where I felt my strength was, so that's what I did.

Jo Reed: And you stopped teaching at the university last year, although you continue to teach at the National Institute of Flamenco, and you're teaching, sometimes the grandchildren of children you've taught, which has to be really gratifying.

Eva Enciñias: Ah, that's so great, because I get people who studied with me at the university in my early years there, and now I'm teaching their grandchildren at the institute, at the conservatory. So that, to me, is just like so incredible because I’ll look at a child and say, "I know you," there's familiarity there, and then I'll look up and see the parent and say, "Oh, my God." I'll say, "Is this your child?" They say, "No, this is my grandchild." So I've been teaching long enough that I've taught three generations of people, and that's pretty cool. I love that.

Jo Reed: That is very cool.

Eva Enciñias: Yeah, I mean, it's really, really wonderful. And, you know, I always tell my students, the reality is, is I know the percentage of people that will continue to do this professionally is very, very small. But you need to jump into the deep end of the pool and have a realistic experience so that you can really find out what it means to study this art form, and it will be a part of your life forever, you'll never be the same. It'll inform you in the way that you raise your children, in the way that you approach your job, in the way that you function in your home and your family because it teaches principles that are so important, and discipline, and respect for tradition, and just endless number of things that will stay with you throughout your life, whether you continue to dance or not. And so that's why I believe that so many of these people that studied years and years and decades ago realize it's so important for their children and their grandchildren to have that experience because it's something that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

Jo Reed: That's a legacy.

Eva Enciñias: Yes, it is.

Jo Reed: You know, you have won so many awards, and I'm not going to list them all, but dance teacher of the year, an award from the King of Spain, and now a National Heritage Award which is the highest award in the United States for traditional artists. And I wonder what the Heritage Award means for you.

Eva Enciñias: Wow. When I was told that I was going to receive this award, the first thought that I had was thank you, Mama. We called my mother Mama, and I don't know that many days have gone by in my life when I haven't thanked my Lord for the presence of flamenco in my life because it had such a tremendous influence, obviously, I've spent my entire being doing it. It's given me such opportunities that otherwise I don't know that I ever would have had, and obviously has given me the opportunity to share this beautiful art form with thousands of people. I've spent my entire life as a dancer and a teacher, and I haven't had time to develop many other parts of who I am. But I've developed that part of who I am as fully as I think I have been able to, and to be given that acknowledgement which, as you say, is that I highest award that a traditional artist can receive in this country, how can you beat that? I mean, people will ask me, "Did you have any idea that it was going to go in this direction?" I had no idea. All I know is that I saw needs, and I tried to answer those needs as best I could, and then that created other needs that needed to be answered in another way, and then I would answer that as best I could. I don't know that I ever had an ultimate goal in my mind's eye ever. I just knew that there was a lot of work to be done, as I still do, and will continue to help as much as I possibly can until I can't anymore. But how wonderful to make the acknowledgement as a very young child that I wanted to be a dancer with everything that was in me, and then to love teaching so much, because there's a lot of beautiful dancers that don't really enjoy teaching that much, but I don't know which I love more because for me they're the same, and so my life has just been blessed. I mean, I've spent it doing what I love to do, and I still see students that I had 50 years ago, and I just can't imagine a better way of coming to the end of my career than having this acknowledgement, and I'm so grateful-- I'm so grateful to the NEA, I'm so grateful to my family, and I will honor this as it has honored me for the rest of my life and continue to do the best work that I possibly can in every way that I can.

Jo Reed: And I think that is a good place to leave it. Eva, thank you so much. And, again, so many congratulations for this well-deserved award. It really has been a pleasure to talk to you.

Eva Enciñias: Thank you so much.

Jo Reed: That was flamenco artist and 2022 National Heritage Fellow Eva Encinias. You can keep up with her and the work of the National Institute of Flamenco at nifnm.org and here’s a heads up: we are celebrating all of the amazing 2022 National Heritage Fellows on November 17 when we’ll premier a film that documents their extraordinary work. Check out our website arts.gov for more information as the date approaches. You’ve been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a rating on Apple, it helps people to find us. Let us know what you think about the Art works podcast and suggest someone we should speak to by emailing us at artworkspod@arts.gov For the National Endowment for the Arts, I’m Josephine Reed, Thanks for listening.

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Eva Enciñias: I think that what we have done, what we have been able to do in New Mexico and Albuquerque, is that kind of multi-tiered way of infusing flamenco education, from children to young adults, to college age students, to seniors, that we're in the community performing free in fiestas and baptisms and community functions.  So it isn't just something that you go to the theater to see, but it's something that's all around you, and I believe that that's what we have here in because of the way that the foundation has been built, really starting from my mother's influence of community, community, community.  And that's what I've always been about, it's very much about what my children are about, and my grandchildren as well. 

Jo Reed: Welcome to "Quick Study," the monthly podcast from the National Endowment for the Arts. This is where we'll show stats and stories to help us better understand the value of art in everyday life. Sunil Iyengar is the pilot of "Quick Study." He is the Director of Research and Analysis here at the Arts Endowment. Hello, Sunil.

Sunil Iyengar: Hi, Jo.

Jo Reed: What's on your docket today?

Sunil Iyengar: Well, that's of course it's the thick of September. We're back to school. So I thought, you know, we could look at some research that's out this week about arts education, specifically research about who has access to it in our public schools. And this is according to a report commissioned by arts and music education advocates.

Jo Reed: Well, that's, you know, obviously, arts education is such a robust division for the Endowment. We just support it in all its ways.

Sunil Iyengar: Right. It's really kind of an endless topic. I mean, at the NEA, we support programs such as the Arts Education Collective Impact grants. You know, the goal of that is to rally communities together to ensure that every child has access to a quality arts education, that's their mission. We also work with the Department of Education to sponsor the arts education partnership and they also have a similar mission. And, you know, we in our office, we routinely fund research about the social, emotional and cognitive benefits of arts education.

But you know what? Despite all that, you know, those investments, you know, contrary to what you might think, Jo, we actually lack a consistent national picture of how many kids in this country have access to an arts education. And how many take part, you know, whether it's visual art, you know, music, theater or dance or media arts. You know, when I actually got to the NEA several years ago, it really kind of blew my mind that we don't have any means to track this in the government. The U.S. Department of Education does do a survey every few years but now it's' been more than a decade since they did one.

Jo Reed: Wow. That blows my mind. That blows my mind as well. I had no idea.

Sunil Iyengar: Yeah. You would think, you know, the numbers would be ready to hand. So we've since all that, since, you know, learning all this, we've worked with the organization called Education Commission of the States to release a toolkit and several case studies that can help arts organization in each state work with their state education agencies to try and pull those data. Because the data are available it's just that they're not very visible. So this isn't currently being done in any centralized way. However, for many years now, the team at a group called Quadrant Arts Education Research, it's led by someone called Bob Morrison, has been working with arts staff at state education agencies around the country to try to fill this data gap. So this endeavor is called the State Arts Education Data Project.

Jo Reed: Okay. Well, tell me a little bit more about it. How does it gather this information?

Sunil Iyengar: Yeah.

Jo Reed: It seems really kind of like a daunting task.

Sunil Iyengar: It is. For the whole nation, it's really, it can be-- it's very challenging. So they've had remarkable tenacity. Steadily, this group, Quadrant has teamed with community arts organizations, educators and funders to acquire data from state education agencies and then to publish state by state how many K through 12 public schools offer arts education in which subjects for how many students and how many students are actually participating in these opportunities. So they don't-- they're not 100 percent national yet but, you know, it's highly promising. We're talking about 17 states represented, but that's more than 30,000 schools, these particular states. That represents 18 million students, which as Quadrant notes is 36 percent of the total public school publication in the U.S.

Jo Reed: Okay. So you know what's coming.

Sunil Iyengar: <laughs>

Jo Reed: What have they found? <laughs>

Sunil Iyengar: Yeah. So, so the rub. Okay, so the new report captures data from the 2018 to 2019 school year, so that's definitely before the pandemic. But even before COVID-19, you may recall, Jo, we've talked about this, there had been concern about school arts education budgets being slashed and kids not having equitable access. So the analysis finds that in 2019, 96 percent of students in their sample of states had access to some form of arts education in the schools. So 96 percent, that sounds good, doesn't it?

Jo Reed: I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop because I know you, Sunil.

Sunil Iyengar: Yeah. <laughs> So what I'm going to really emphasize here is that still leaves 694,000 of K through 12 public school students in that study sample alone who lacks access to any arts education in school. So the researchers applied this mathematical weight and they estimate that if you apply these study rates nationally, we may be talking about upwards of 2 million kids who don't have access. The report finds that kids who lack this access, not surprisingly, I guess, come from schools where high percentages of students are, you know, eligible for free or reduced price lunches. Also these students are more likely to live in cities or very rural areas or actually to attend charter schools. There were a lot of charter schools that didn't have this kind of access according to researchers.

Jo Reed: Whoa. That surprises me.

Sunil Iyengar: Yeah. And a couple of other points, Jo. Although visual art education and music education were available to about 91 or 92 percent of students in the sample, theater was available only to 35 percent and dance 15 percent. Also we're talking about access, as you know, but when it comes to actually taking part in such classes, we find that although 86 percent of elementary school children actually benefit from this access, that is to say they participate in those classes, only 46 percent of high school students do, which means that more than half do not take arts education as an elective.

Jo Reed: So how do we interpret this information? I mean, what do we do with it?

Sunil Iyengar: Yeah. And then so asking always, you know, why are these findings potentially important. So this is one of those cases where the methods being used in this research may sort of surpass in importance the findings themselves. So what I mean is, you know, we're talking currently about 17 states, but Quadrant and its partners are still recruiting and working with other states to try to achieve the goal of a truly national portrait. And then by creating these user friendly data dashboards and making them available to parents, educators and local policy makers, the team can enable annual reporting of these numbers so we get a read on how COVID-19 affected arts education. So a question to ask, you know, is did access and participation retreat at all after the pandemic as many of us suspect. Incidentally, Jo, just a couple of weeks ago as it turns out, the U.S. Department of Education released test scores from its long-term trend assessment of 9-year-old students' math and reading ability. The results are from earlier this year, 2022. And for the first time since these tests began in the early 1970s, 9-year-olds saw a decline in their math scores for the first time ever. They also saw the largest decline in reading scores since 1990.

Jo Reed: Well, that just makes sense, doesn't it, given the impact of the pandemic and long distance learning--?

Sunil Iyengar: Yeah.

Jo Reed: That it's just so difficult for students.

Sunil Iyengar: Yeah, this is kind of like the first tangible indicator that things have dropped off in terms of academic performance since the pandemic. And so the Commissioner of the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics has attributed this performance to students falling behind during the first two years of COVID. But what I want to point out here is that we've seen through research how arts education could help to augment student engagement and learning in other subjects. So, you know, it's logical to ask whether greater exposure and access to arts education during the pandemic might have complemented students' capacity for learning in general. So, you know, Jo, this is a line of research that's very much at, you know, something we're all interested in here at the NEA in the Research office, exploring, you know, how social and emotional benefits of arts learning may help students and schools overcome traumas including isolation and associated mental health issues, particularly arising out of the pandemic. So a lot more to come here, I'm sure.

Jo Reed: I really do look forward to hearing about it. Arts education, as far as I'm concerned, has super powers. And it's nice to have the research to back that up.

Sunil Iyengar: Thank you, Jo. I agree.

Jo Reed: <laughs> Good talking with you.

Sunil Iyengar: Of course I would, though. <laughs>

Jo Reed: Of course you would.

Sunil Iyengar: Thanks.

<laughter>

Jo Reed: Sunil, I'll talk to you next month.

Sunil Iyengar: Yup. Take care, Jo.

Jo Reed: Okay.

Jo Reed: That was Sunil Iyengar. He is the Director of Research and Analysis here at the Arts Endowment. This has been "Quick Study." The music is "We Are One" from Scott Holmes Music. It's licensed through Creative Commons. Until next time, I’m Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.

###

Music Credit: “NY” written and performed by Kosta, from the album Soul Sand. Used courtesy of the Free Music Archive.

Jo Reed: From the National Endowment for the Arts, this is Art Works, I’m Josephine Reed.

Today, we’re speaking with award-winning composer and educator David Serkin Ludwig about his work in both fields especially his recent post as Dean and Director of The Juilliard School’s music division. David comes to music “honestly” as he says… his grandfather was pianist Rudolph Serkin, his uncle pianist Peter Serkin, and his great-grandfather pianist Adolf Busch. And David himself has had a rich and successful composing life. He has written orchestral, choral, solo and chamber works—in fact, in 2022, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center awarded him the Stoeger Prize which is given every two years in recognition of significant contributions to the field of chamber music composition. Named by NPR as one of the world’s top composers under 40, David’s work has been performed by acclaimed orchestras internationally.

As an educator, David Serkin Ludwig worked at the Curtis Institute for nearly two decades, where he helped to shape the artistic direction of the school, and its engagement with local and global communities while cultivating a vibrant culture of new music. He is known as a committed advocate for diversity and inclusion in new music and programming, and has actively worked with organizations that create opportunities and encourage a more diverse and equitable music community.

David was appointed Dean and Director of The Juilliard School’s music division in 2021—Juilliard’s music division has about 700 students from 45 countries, a distinguished faculty of some of the country’s finest musicians as well as many performance opportunities for its students. In fact, the school’s new performance season is just underway. But David Serkin Ludwig also came to his position in a remarkably fraught time because of the pandemic and because of the racial reckoning the country was undergoing. And I wondered what he thought his charge was when he took up his post.

David Serkin Ludwig: Well, it's a really good question, and it was a fraught time before and continues to be a fraught time now. You know, something that Juilliard talks about quite a lot is the idea of EDIB, or equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging. For me, the B of belonging is very, very important, and really a kind of goal of the E, the D, and the I, to have a community where everyone feels like they belong. So during COVID, you know, we've all been pulled apart, figuratively and literally, and so part of my charge has been to bring people together to have dialogue, to have conversations, to be vulnerable and feel safe together as artists.

Jo Reed: It's been so difficult for performing artists of all stripes, and musicians of course. I've spoken to violinists in small chamber groups, and you would expect that to be the least stressful because of the size. But, no, they're having to come up with -- the difficulty of reading somebody's face when everybody's wearing a mask, for example, as they're playing together.

David Serkin Ludwig: Right, right. It's true. Well, you know, I had an oratorio performed just a few months ago in Tacoma, Washington, about the saving of this kind of primeval forest, and the choir had to sing with masks on, and little hard to hear the words <laughs> when everyone's singing with masks on. But you know, the playwright Edward Albee said, "We do what we can." And that's kind of how I felt during this period. My wife is a wonderful violinist, a soloist named Bella Hristova, plays all over the world. But during COVID even for very accomplished, successful musicians like Bella, that was it. Everything kind of dried up. So she's been very fortunate that her career has kind of come back together, but I have friends and colleagues, again, very accomplished people who've really been struggling, and it's hard, and like I said, we do what we can, and we're all trying, I think, to help each other come back in some way.

Jo Reed: You were at Curtis before you came to Juilliard, where you had very prominent positions in the music department, and I was wondering both at Curtis and at Juilliard, did online classes even work for musicians? I would imagine that would be really difficult.

David Serkin Ludwig: Yeah, it's challenging. I was at Curtis for about 20 years. I went there, then I came to Juilliard as a student, then got my doctorate at UPenn while I was at Curtis teaching, and I was the head of the composition department, but I also ran the new music ensemble, and really started a lot of initiatives with the help of some great colleagues and students. COVID gave us an opportunity, of course, to try some new things. Teaching lessons over Zoom is very challenging, especially an instrument like the contrabass, the violin, piano, an instrument that makes a lot of sound, or a lot of very low or very high sounds. So I worked very hard with some colleagues on faculty to basically get the best result that we could so that they could at least get halfway there in their teaching. I will say, though, that teaching composition online, that's something I've been doing, I don't know, for a couple of decades, and composition can work pretty well online because you can share media so well. I would markup students' scores right there in front of them, and so, of course, nothing beats being in person, especially when it comes to making art, but we had to keep trying. So that school, Curtis, which is my alma mater and very dear and close to me, had to close down for a year and a half almost. Juilliard has managed amazingly to keep an in-person performance calendar, and we had performances all last year, and we just managed, and had a great team of people to just try to get through the pandemic. We're all very, very hopeful about this upcoming year.

Jo Reed: And as you mentioned, Juilliard has an emphasis on diversity, on inclusion, on belonging, and let's face it, classical music really isn't known for this. But you yourself, you're not new to this work, you've done a great deal of work like with the Primavera Fund, with Sacred Women's Music Project. So, you've been committed to this work for quite some time.

David Serkin Ludwig: I have. It's always been a really important part of my work. I think that artists not only can speak out but should speak out about things that are important for them, and should be able to advocate for people who don't look like them or who come from a different background, beliefs, whatever it is, we all really need to be able to advocate for each other. Classical music is in a very transitional space right now. First of all, we call it classical music. I mean already that's very alienating, and the classical era, that means Mozart and Haydn, and of course we're not just talking about those two people, but also it's a tradition that comes from Europe, and that really grew there, and when we talk about these composers we love, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, they are from a certain group of people, and we live in a country that is incredibly diverse. And so there is an almost necessary conflict that happens when you take an art form that emerged in a very homogenous European society, and we bring that over to the United States. And I think what we're all discovering, I hope we're all discovering, is that that investment in racial diversity, the investment in gender equity, that some of us are making, and that we're increasingly seeing in programming, is something that pays off over and over again, unquestionably. So, yeah, these organizations you mentioned, there's some others, the Adolf Busch Award, I'm on their board, it's named after my great-grandfather who was a very strong anti-fascist musician that award is named after him, and it's for organizations that believe that a progressive social change can come through the arts. So, yes, I'm involved in a lot of these, and it's just -- it's what I believe in, and I hope other people sign on to that as well.

Jo Reed: And it's just ongoing work.

David Serkin Ludwig: The work is never finished, it's never finished.

Jo Reed: You've just announced the new season at Juilliard, or a reminder that Juilliard offers not just an extraordinary education, but also just fabulous performance opportunities. And before we go through that, I'd like to talk just a little bit more about your job because the music division at Juilliard, I swear David, I read this five times thinking oh my, how do you do this? It's orchestra, vocal art, historical performance, jazz, chamber music, contemporary music, conducting, piano, and composition.

David Serkin Ludwig: Yep.

Jo Reed: How do you keep up with all of these, and what's your role in guiding them?

David Serkin Ludwig: Well, what a privilege it is to be in this position as dean and director of music at Juilliard, and it felt very natural for me to come from Curtis, but Curtis is a very small school with a much more narrow purview, and it does that so well, but there's about 150 students there. Here at Juilliard just in the music division alone there's 650. There's a preparatory division, an extension division for continuing education. Then of course dance and drama divisions as well. For me, what I heard from a lot of people when I took the job was how are you going to keep composing, because I have a very active career as a composer, I’m traveling all the time, I'm writing music all the time, and commissioned for years to come. But part of what makes Juilliard really very special is that it's a community, and it's an incredibly supportive community. So I work with a team of staff that helps me oversee from an artistic point of view, artistic leadership, the entire program. And then in all those programs you mentioned, we have Dr. Aaron Flagg, and someone named Winton Marsalis overseeing the jazz program. I mean, the people that we have in place to work together in this community are all some of the greatest artists and professionals that I've met in my life, and so I feel like this program's in very, very good hands, and it makes it very manageable for me as well. There's less administrative and more room to dream, perhaps, and share vision. So I think this school's in excellent stead.

Jo Reed: Are you still in the classroom? Do you still have students yourself?

David Serkin Ludwig: I have private composition students. I wanted the first year here to be one where I'm just deaning and learning the ropes because I knew that that would be, well, as Aaron Flagg said to me early on, it'll be like sipping from a firehouse. So that was very apt, but, that said, I do have my own private studio of composition students, and I will be teaching a class next year on performing contemporary music. Teaching is just part of who I am and what I do, and it'll never leave me, and my involvement with composition here and in the world will continue.

Jo Reed: Well, that was actually my question too because you are such an acclaimed composer, and I'm wondering what led you to teaching, and whether teaching and composing revitalize one another, or are they very separate spheres for you.

David Serkin Ludwig: Hmm. It's such a good question. I find teaching very energizing, and I feel like it's a way of staying connected to young people, and I have students I've known now for decades, and just seeing them kind of come up and have their own accomplishments and teach themselves, it's very rewarding, that's the word for it. I can't think of a better word, it's incredibly rewarding. So my teaching without question feeds into my composition, and vice-versa. What I'm working on, what I'm discovering, people I'm collaborating with, all of that can certainly influence my role as a teacher, and I would say that the majority of successful composers I know teach. Not all of them, but there's something very, very vital about passing on the information that you've gotten to kind of help a younger person not make the same mistakes <laughs>, and get further as young artists.

Jo Reed: Yeah. You mentioned your great-grandfather, Adolf Busch, and he is not the only musician in your family.

David Serkin Ludwig: That's true, that's true.

Jo Reed: Tell me a little bit about your background.

David Serkin Ludwig: Sure. I'm, I think, seventh generation musician in my family, and it goes far back. I am mostly of Jewish descent, my father was Jewish, and actually he had a lot of musicians in his family. The other side, my mother's side is the Serkin side. So my mother's father was a pianist named Rudolph Serkin. My mother's younger brother who is my uncle, very dear to me uncle, Peter Serkin, he passed away just a few years ago. So Rudolph, my grandfather, married the daughter of Adolf Busch, Adolf Busch was his mentor. So it's kind of like, I don't know, marrying your teacher's daughter and becoming part of the family, that's kind of exactly what happened. And so that kind of extends the generations back even further. I guess the short of it is I come by it honestly. Music was always around me, I grew up with it, I grew up going to my grandfather's concerts and not thinking that it was strange that there's my grandfather playing in the middle of Carnegie Hall, with a line of people afterwards all wanting to speak to him and touch him and connect with him. It just was kind of what I grew up with, and I didn't think any of that was weird. Now that I'm older, it's something I really cherish, that heritage.

Jo Reed: Were you encouraged to pursue music?

David Serkin Ludwig: You know, I kind of was and kind of wasn't, and it's a really interesting question. I think in some families with musicians, that encouragement or discouragement, it's a sticky wicket. It's the idea that if you're a successful musician it's something that you're doing all the time, 24/7, it's always on your mind, it's not like you finish at five and you can go home and let go of it. It's something you are constantly involved with and interacting with, that's hard for people. I don't even know that Peter had all the encouragement. I was very good at art history in high school, and very much encouraged to be an art history major. I went to Oberlin for my undergrad. So I started at Oberlin as an art history major which a lot of people don't know, I don't know why art history is considered a more viable career than being a composer, but that was the encouragement, and I pretty quickly transferred to the conservatory, and just became a composition major. You know, on the other hand it makes it very clear to me and others that this is the thing that I should be doing because I have friends who were playing violin since the age of negative one, and they never really did anything else, and then maybe get into adulthood and say, "Well, what did I miss? What should I have done?" For me, I have all confidence that this is the path that I was meant to choose.

Jo Reed: What instruments did you play when you were young?

David Serkin Ludwig: I play a lot of instruments badly. So I played guitar for many years, classical guitar, I can kind of plunk around a piano, I played a number of wind instruments so I could play in funk bands in college, played in a lot of bands actually. I thought it would help me get a date, it didn't, but it's part of being a composer, I always compare to being a playwright, right? You're creating this script, and you need actors to play it, and they're interpreting, and so if you have a sense of what that character, how they might sound, you're a lot more ahead of the game. So if I can write a piece for bassoon, and I know what bassoon music looks like, you learn how a bassoon speaks, what's in its culture, what's in its language, then that helps me a lot. And so growing up playing many different instruments, albeit badly, has been actually very, very helpful to me as a composer, especially in writing for orchestra and larger ensembles.

Jo Reed: Was music composition always where you were going?

David Serkin Ludwig: Well, I had a lot of different interests, but I started composing when I was 8 years old, and it was always the thing that most drew my attention.

Jo Reed: And do you remember the first time you heard a piece of yours played in public?

David Serkin Ludwig: I do. It was a solo guitar piece that I wrote, and it used Arnold Schoenberg's 12 tone method which on guitar it's kind of curious. I was 16 years old maybe. It was life changing, and still though whenever I hear a piece played and go to that first rehearsal there's always a mix of excitement and fear and energy, and a little self-loathing, and all the different emotions that you kind of have to keep in check to be objective and to really listen to what it is you wrote. I feel like if I ever go into that first rehearsal and I don't feel a lot of emotions about it that it's probably time to hang up the pencil.

Jo Reed: Well, I would imagine the music has to change when you first hear it played out loud by an ensemble, from the little notes on a page, and of course you're hearing it in your head, but suddenly the room's exploding with it.

David Serkin Ludwig: Yeah, you're absolutely right. And that's part of the emotional response that there's this necessary and sometimes difficult transition from the two-dimensional space of your inner ear, and when as a composer when I look at a score and hear it in my head, it's the same voice that reads to you when you read a book, right? So but instead of words being read, I'm hearing music. I guess to continue the playwright analogy, you know, maybe you hear an actor say a line in an unexpected way, maybe they change a word or two and you like it better. So that happens all the time in rehearsals where the clarinetist, violinist, come forward and say, "You know, actually this works a lot better," or they make a mistake, but actually there's a little serendipity there. So that's part of the great fun of being a composer is that very vital interaction with performers, and I've been so lucky to work with such incredible performers.

Jo Reed: How do you begin a piece? What inspires you? Is it a sound, a mood, an idea?

David Serkin Ludwig: Yeah, it's a great question, how do you start a piece? And it's a question a lot of people have, including student composers who are trying to figure out their own answer to that question. I think for me, I'm always thinking about storytelling in my music. Every piece I write has some motivation or idea behind it, sometimes it's political, sometimes it's responding to events, other times it's about other art or, you know, sometimes, I'm a big science fiction guy, I have a number of pieces about outer space, I have music with Hebrew Jewish themes as well, exploring my own identity. So for me it's a journey of storytelling. There are many composers who just kind of write music, you know, string quartet in D major, number one, number two, number three, and that's what it's about. It's just about the music. I'm envious of that, honestly, in a lot of ways of people who have that kind of output. But for me, every piece is a new project, a new sculpture, with its own identity, and the language of the piece will adapt to whatever the demands are of the topic or theme.

Jo Reed: A lot of your work is commissioned. Is that daunting knowing you're going to have to write something by this date --

David Serkin Ludwig: Deliver it, yeah.

Jo Reed: -- and present it, and deliver it.

David Serkin Ludwig: Put the dead in deadlines, right?

Jo Reed: Yeah, exactly.

David Serkin Ludwig: Well, in a way there's nothing more inspiring than a deadline honestly, and I think almost all of my work is on commission. Every now and then….. there's an organization that asked a number of composers years ago to write little pieces for its 25th anniversary, I did one of those. One of my colleagues, Jennifer Coe, asked some more kind of established composers to donate pieces and then help to get commissions for younger composers. So she just won a Grammy for that album, I was very honored to be a part of it. Aside from those kinds of things though, everything's on commission, and one is inspired by, you know, September 1st, you got to finish the piece, and you work toward that. I think it's actually very natural, it's a good thing, deadlines, it's a good thing having limitations because if you didn't, in some ways the piece would be perfect if it's never written, in other ways it'll never be written. So if someone just said, "Write a piece, you can give it to me any time in the next 40 years," I probably would never write it. So it's part of the profession, it's part of being a composer, we are commissioned in the same way a portrait artist might be commissioned. We're commissioned to produce a piece, we're usually given a rough duration, and the ensemble we're writing for, and then that's usually it, you know, so this is a commission from this chamber music society to write a 20-minute piece for this string quartet to be premiered on this day, and that's it. Most organizations don't get involved in what you're going to write, or the tenor or tone of it. Of course, if you're writing a piece to commemorate the opening of a new hall, you're not going to write like a funereal march or something, you know? So but for me it's very, very helpful to be given at least those guidelines to help with the idea of inspiration and discovery.

Jo Reed: Although your choral work, “The New Colossus,” which was performed at the 2013 presidential inauguration, that wasn't commissioned for that, you had written that previously, and it was chosen for that occasion.

David Serkin Ludwig: That's true, and the thing about commissions, you know, for many composers a first performance is not nearly as hard to get as a second performance. You can get a commission, but then getting the piece to have legs and to live on its own and to get performed many other times is a challenge for people. I'm very fortunate with that piece. That piece “The New Colossus,” for those who don't know, that's the poem that's on the Statue of Liberty, and it's a poem that President Obama quoted many times, especially the most famous part, of course, ”give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free, your wretched refuse,” basically saying we would like to welcome everyone into this country, the wretched refuse that people who are tempest tossed coming through storms, everyone is welcome here, and that's what the Statue of Liberty, and that ultimately is what our country should be about, about welcoming. And so I wrote it in 2002 as a 9/11 memorial actually, as a way of kind of embodying the things that were important to me as someone from this country, without getting into some of the kind of jingoism we were seeing at the time. Years passed, it was performed many times by many different groups, and it got the attention of the conductor of St. John Lafayette, who he's passed away since, Benjamin Huto and the person who commissioned it, Judith Clurman, who's been a great advocate for my music, she kind of whispered in his ear, and it got programmed, and next thing I knew my piece was being performed for a presidential inauguration as the very first piece that the Obamas and the Bidens heard that morning.

Jo Reed: That had to have been such an honor. I can only imagine.

David Serkin Ludwig: Oh, I about fell over, Jo, and I just kind of, yeah, I thought okay, when I heard that I thought, “okay, I'm done, you know, I'm done, I'm good now, nothing else to prove.” So, yeah, no, it was one of the great, great honors of my life and it really was very meaningful to me.

really pleased about it. Yeah.

Jo Reed: You have so much going on, and so much on your plate, and there is this very ambitious upcoming schedule for Juilliard this season, more than 700 events, not all music obviously, but clearly you all have to be working together, the school wants to present a coherent picture, there's you're working across genres together. So how do you piece a season together, and especially one with student performers?

David Serkin Ludwig: Yeah. Well, as I was saying earlier, Jo, I mean it takes a village, it really does. So we are always having programming discussion, we are always working with the faculty as well, the faculty are really the artistic custodians, or the custodians of their students' artistic lives, and so we are always working together, so it’s really a balancing act where we have to think “and.”. So of course we are going to play the Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Boulanger, Bartok, all the great B's, all the literature, just as if you were a drama major perhaps, you would perform Moliere, and you would perform Shakespeare, but also contemporary works, and also to think in an inclusive way to really broaden our definition of repertoire, and bring many, many more people onto the platform who haven't been represented here before. A lot of that comes with the composers that we’re performing, the students themselves, the faculty, we all work together on that to create programs that are inclusive and contemporary but definitely rooted in this work that we're very passionate about, the kind of core repertoire where a technique, and artistry, is built. With all of this in mind you can then come with really fresh ears to thinking about what will a year of programming look like? So Juilliard… it is a huge a program, there are 650 music students, so we have doctoral students, we have artist diploma, we have jazz, I mean so many different departments, and they all operate independently but there's a lot of advising and consenting as well. So we come together, we have 12 orchestra concerts, the team that's in charge of the orchestra could be a team that worked with any professional orchestra in the country. We together put together a really, really interesting slate of conductors and programs, and the students rotate through this so they all get an experience, to be in Alice Tully Hall, to be at Carnegie Hall performing, and part of that is being in New York, that's a tremendous advantage that we have as a music school, and also just culturally we really feel very fortunate to be in the center of things.

Jo Reed: One thing I'm very much looking forward to is the special concert featuring Winton Marsalis' “A Fiddler's Tale” with Stravinsky's “A Soldier's Tale.” Do you want to talk about that just a little bit, because it's so unusual, and I think it's going to be terrific.

David Serkin Ludwig: It is unusual. So I'm starting a new series at the school which will be, you know, where I'm going to co-curate with guest artists, different programs, and many of them will be cross-disciplinary. So this one is with our extraordinary conductor, one of the great American conductors, David Robertson, who goes all around the world conducting some of the biggest orchestras in the world, and we're very lucky to have him teaching here as well. He'll be leading that concert, and we'll have Winton's “A Fiddler's Tale,” and Stravinsky's “A Soldier's Tale,” which is the Stravinsky is this kind of morality play, he wrote it in 1918 right after World War I. He was writing, these gigantic ballets before, he had to cut way back and write for a septet. And there's a story that goes with it, and it's kind of the soldier gets tricked into selling his soul to the devil, and the soul is in his violin, and then he gets the violin back, yada, yada. Winton's piece is a commentary on the devil as a kind of aspect of commercial, corporate culture which is really, really fascinating, and of course it's Winton Marsalis, so the music is amazing. We'll be presenting both of those, they both have narrators, so we'll ask our drama department -- division I should say, we'll have dancers with costumes. It's going to be an incredible double bill, those two pieces, and that's an example of something we can do at Juilliard that would be kind of impossible to do just about anywhere else.

Jo Reed: You can't go into everything, but obviously you're going to be there at the opening of the David Geffen Hall, which is a huge, big deal. And then there's Chamber Fest, a three-day festival which I think also is probably marked on music lovers' calendars in New York.

David Serkin Ludwig: Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, the opening of Geffen Hall is very significant for us. It's of course even more significant for the New York Philharmonic, but they're adding new venues in there. It's actually right across from my office so I'm looking at it right now and seeing workers in there, getting the thing together. It's going to be really transformative, an incredible addition to Lincoln Center. W e're already finding ways to work closely with the New York Phil, and hopefully do things in their venue. We're helping to open the joint by having a side by side with them as well. So many members of the New York Phil are connected to Juilliard, either as alumni or teachers. They're right across the street, so it's very natural partnership. The other thing you mentioned, Chamber Fest, every year our students find time before the school year restarts after winter break, they come early just to spend a week to just really be invested and committed to playing chamber music and studying chamber music, and that's core activity. If you want to learn how to communicate with people, and to express yourself, and leadership, and all of these real fundamental skills play in a string quartet. For me that's chamber music and lessons, ensemble playing, that's really core to what every conservatory student should be doing.

Jo Reed: And I think it's important to just note that many of these events are free or at a very reduced rate.

David Serkin Ludwig: Yeah, that's right. I think Juilliard's pretty much the best deal in town, and people can come here and really hear the future, and really the present of music. I mean all of our students have at least one foot in the world as professionals, and they are learning and developing. Our orchestra's I think the best young orchestra on the planet, and so coming to those concerts, the excitement and energy is just unparalleled.

Jo Reed: And there's also a lesson learned from the pandemic that streaming on-demand programming opens doors for people who might not otherwise have access. So you're really also offering on-demand programming with “Juilliard Live.”

David Serkin Ludwig: Yeah, that word you use is so important, access, because having streaming, being able to use technology to leverage sharing our music with the world, that's so important. In some ways it's very locally important that a student can play a recital and their parents in Korea or Thailand or Spain can hear them, can tune in and actually watch them in real time, that their own communities can be connected. But for us an institution, it's a way of really broadening out our community so that you don't have to go to Juilliard as a student to be let inside of some of the teaching, and all of the incredible performances happening here. I think technology is something that it's just a tool, it's not good or bad, and when used for good to share art, I think it's an incredibly powerful tool.

Jo Reed: When you're thinking ahead, say the next five years, what's your vision for Juilliard over that time?

David Serkin Ludwig: Well, a lot of it is to continue doing what we're doing, with even more commitment, with even more ardor. So really the three values, the core values of this school, EDIB, thinking about who is here, who is teaching here, what our community looks like and the diversity of that community. Thinking about creative enterprise as we call it, this kind of intellectual and artistic curiosity, how can we respond to what's happening in the world in an inventive, imaginative way, And then excellence, and excellence is a very hard word to define, it's a little bit I know it when I hear it, but just continuing our commitment to a very rigorous, very serious music education for our students so that they have time in the practice room. Their excellence as artists is going to be their vehicle to their careers. So you need to have something to say, and you need to have the technique to say it, and we're committed to all of that. In terms of five years in the future, the technology that we use to share the work is something that we're going to have to grow with, and we're going to have to push ourselves to keep up with and, in fact, get ahead of, and establish ourselves as leaders. To think really globally about where are people making music in the world, and how can we come to them is very, very important. And then to continue our commitment to new music and contemporary music because this is a living artform, and if we want to think more inclusively we need to think about living composers, and American music as well, and maybe kind of curb some of the Europhilia that we've had in classical music to be much more inclusive, and expand that base.

Jo Reed: And what about for your own musical composition? What's coming up for you? As you said, you have commissions for years. What's ahead?

David Serkin Ludwig: Oh, I'm so fortunate in that area, Jo. So I just finished recently a piece for the Pittsburgh Symphony. Coming up will be a piece for a violin and wind ensemble, for University of Kansas City, Missouri, wonderful violinist there named Benny Kim. I'm writing a piece for the Imani Wind Quintet and Orchestra, it's actually the Curtis orchestra, they are the best and I kind of came up with them.

Jo Reed: They're lovely.

David Serkin Ludwig: They're amazing, just amazing. So a lot of really fun and interesting challenges, and several others. Those are upcoming ones that are on my mind and all kind of burning on the -- hopefully not burning too much, but being heated up on the stove.

Jo Reed: Well, and I hope sleep somehow is a part of your life in this because I --

David Serkin Ludwig: Sleep, what was that for?

Jo Reed: I have no idea how you do it, David. I swear to God I don't, but my hat's off to you. And thank you, thank you so much. Thank you for the work you're doing at Juilliard, and thank you for your own musical compositions. They've been a real gift.

David Serkin Ludwig: Oh, thank you so much, and thank you for that kindness, Jo. It's the opportunity to speak about this is very, very special to me, and I have a wonderful life, I'm very grateful for it.

Jo Reed: That was composer David Serkin Ludwig. He is also Dean and Director of The Juilliard School’s music division. You can keep up with David’s composing life at Davidludwigmusic.com. You can find out more the Julliard School at Juilliard.edu where you can also see a full calendar of the school’s performance schedule. You’ve been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a rating on Apple. It helps people to find us. I’d love to know your thoughts about the podcast—just email us at artworkspod@arts.gov. We’ll have a link in the show notes. For the National Endowment for the Arts, I’m Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.