12/6/22 You Can Take the String Player Out of the Conservatory…

As much as I love traveling around the world to play music, we all know that international air travel has plenty of moments of stress—flight delays, luggage mishaps, annoying passengers, etc.

But one of my fears was never whether I would remember how to speak English when I got home.

It was usually the opposite, that it was so nice to come home to my own language where I didn’t have to think so hard to understand and make myself understood.

So, why would classical string players think that playing jazz or rock would make them forget or lose their classical technique?

You don’t forget your mother tongue.

My daughter lived in Ecuador for almost 3 years. She was completely fluent in Spanish. When she got back to Nashville, she never once hunted for a forgotten English word.

She added to her vocabulary, she didn’t lose anything.

Having control over new ways of bowing and using vibrato doesn’t erase the control you already have. It adds to it.

The challenge will not be to keep pop music from harming your classical habits, the challenge will be to hide your “classical accent” when speaking jazz or pop dialects.

You can take the string player out of the conservatory, but you can’t take the conservatory out of the string player.

Groove on!

—Tracy