Leah Swann: Violist, Polymath, Blogger
Meet Leah Swann, NEC Today’s first blogger.
A violist studying for her Graduate Diploma with Martha Strongin Katz and one of NEC’s two Albert Schweitzer Fellows, Swann is a multi-talented dynamo in the process of creating a life in music that encompasses all the building blocks of her many interests. As she describes herself, “I am currently a student at the Conservatory, a violist, and dreamer trying to balance performing with teaching, volunteering with paying the rent, planning projects with seeing them through to completion."
A native of Houston, TX, Swann came to NEC last year after completing a Master’s degree in viola performance at the State University of New York, Purchase, and a Bachelor’s degree in English at Yale where she also studied neuroscience. For her Schweitzer fellowship, she is teaching an all-boy class of middle schoolers at the Paraclete Center after-school program in Dorchester. Her experiences with that class, which reflect some of the realities of the musician’s working life, are the subject of her blog.
“In high school, I was fairly serious about music but also about academics and other things," Leah said during a recent conversation. “I played a concerto with the Greater Houston Youth Orchestra at the end of high school, but then lost some momentum. In college, although I played in the orchestra, I wasn’t doing much music at all. I began Yale with the idea of eventually going to medical school or doing research or becoming a writer or doing something Englishy. School was crazy and overwhelming with everyone around me doing a million things—working, going to class, competing in sports, saving the world. I felt I wasn’t doing enough and I didn’t want to spend three hours a day practicing," she continues, her words spilling out at the hectic pace of the life she was describing.
However, Swann began to miss music. “I thought maybe I had made a mistake. I missed that person who played music. But I thought it might be too late to go back to it." However, in her junior year, she joined a string quartet of friends. “It was fun and inspiring and the other players showed me you could be at Yale and do 100 million things and still be a musician."
Even as she returned to playing, she continued to pursue her interests in writing, working one summer at a publishing house in Manhattan and entering a writing competition sponsored by The Atlantic Monthly, for which she won an honorable mention.
Encouraged by an uncle who is a pianist, Swann resumed viola lessons during her senior year, studying with Ira Weller, a member of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and part-time faculty at several music schools in Manhattan. “I would go into the city on Friday and attend a concert, then take a lesson on Saturday and then go to another concert. My teacher was incredibly supportive and took me under his wing."
During that last year at Yale, Swann applied for and was accepted into NEC’s Master’s program, but decided to go to SUNY Purchase as an interim step. She needed a place where she could practice, focus, and regain her lost momentum in what she thought was a less visible, more protected environment.
Having earned her M.M., she felt she was ready for NEC. Although she had taken exploratory lessons with a variety of teachers, she was “floored" after her audition with Martha Katz. “I was sitting on a bench outside the Conservatory talking to my mother on the phone. The lesson I had with Martha was completely different from anything I had ever experienced. I didn’t have the words to explain it. But I said, ‘If she wants to teach me, I can’t refuse."
What was so staggering about that initial lesson? “It was very abstract. She [Martha] had me improvising, singing improvisations as I was playing the viola. I had the feeling she would really challenge me and grow me and send me in new and different directions. She was very intuitive, and somehow both reassuring and unpredictable at the same time."
Despite initial doubts, Swann feels she made the right decision in renewing her focus on music. “Now I’m very encouraged that I can find a life that involves music and the other things that interest me." One potential direction she might pursue is playing in an orchestra. “I’m on an orchestra kick these days," she says, pointing to her time at the Tanglewood Music Center last summer and her occasional performances with the New World Symphony this year. At NEC, she plays in the conductorless Chamber Orchestra. Playing in an orchestra “might stabilize my life a little. It could be a great place to perform, but also to serve as a jumping off place."
That jumping off place could be some kind of music education, although she doesn’t think she could be a school music teacher. Significantly, Swann has been involved in musical outreach since she was an undergraduate. When she invited a Yale classmate to attend an orchestra concert she was playing, the friend confessed that “’classical music bores me. I’d go to the concert if I knew what was going on." Challenged, Swann began giving informal music education classes in her dorm room before orchestra concerts.
“Everyone would sit on my bed on a Saturday afternoon. We’d eat cookies and I would give them a little spiel. When we were performing Pictures at an Exhibition, I printed out photos of the pictures that inspired the piece. After that concert, one of my friends told me, ‘That was the first time I didn’t go to sleep in a concert." Swann succeeded in converting several non-musicians. “One signed up for the Musical Appreciation course at Yale. Another started taking piano lessons--at age 24!" It convinced her that while “a lot of people don’t connect to classical music, it’s still possible to build the connection."
Swann’s current target for building that musical connection is her class of 10-year old boys at the Paraclete Center. Unlike her Yale friends, these kids are not necessarily interested in the links between music and Kandinsky, for example. But, as her blog demonstrates, she is discovering what works, what doesn’t and how to engage a group of lively middle-schoolers in listening to and playing music. To follow her progress, read her blog.