Q: How did you become involved in the performing arts?

I'm a violinist by training. I started when I was five. When I was born, I was given up for adoption and was pretty much immediately adopted by a white Jewish couple who already had a birth son. They were behavioral scientists. Fast forward thirty-one years, I was reunited with my birth parents. My birth father is a black Jehovah's Witness, and my birth mother is white Irish Catholic. They ended up getting back together and getting married and having another child who they raised: my full sister. So basically, in the end, I'm a black, white Jewish Irish Catholic Jehovah's Witness who grew up with a big afro playing the violin. Because of my background it is no big surprise much of my life has involved the arts and diversity. It's literally in my DNA.

I grew up in New York. When I was ten, we moved to Hershey, Pennsylvania which was a drastic social change, definitely tough at times. I went to Peabody Prep on Saturdays, and then, for my junior and senior year of high school, I went to the Interlochen Arts Academy. That arts institution saved my life.  It was the first time I was surrounded by everyone who was in the arts and it was an extraordinary experience. I went to University of Michigan, and that's where I got my undergraduate and graduate degrees. It was while I was at Michigan that for the first time in my life, I really started thinking about issues of diversity.

Even though I’ve spent my life as a black violinist, I never really thought about what that meant until I was at Michigan. I noticed that when I went to concerts, there was no one who looked like me onstage or in the audience. I went into a lesson one day and my teacher said, “Do you want to play music by black composers?” And I was like, “What do you mean? I'm a serious violinist, there are no black composers.” He laughed, and he started pulling out volumes of work by black composers, and it opened my mind up to the reality that there were these incredible black composers throughout history going back to the contemporaries of Mozart, that I never even knew about. None of my teachers ever taught me about them and so that led to this thinking of, you know, is there something I can do about this? I thought to myself: how can I try and make a difference? How can I add to the world and somehow make it a better place?

So, that's where the idea of the Sphinx Competition came from, a national competition for young Black and Latinx musicians, where we could come together, play music by composers of color, build a peer network, and gain resources so that we could build professional careers. I thought that if I just had this competition, that'll solve the whole problem, and classical music would become totally diverse and the world would be at least a little bit better. And then, of course, as with many things in the world, you realize it's a lot more complicated than that. This led to founding the Sphinx Organization. I led the Sphinx Organization for about twenty years. Then, Michigan invited me to come back and serve as Dean of the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance. During my time as Dean, I was hopefully able to bring some change, especially with what you're delving into: arts leadership and entrepreneurship. I saw these aspects as lacking in our school in terms of curriculum and focus areas, as well as opportunity for students. That's where we developed the EXCEL program. I spent a couple of years as Dean and then stepped down, and of course now, I'm a professor teaching entrepreneurship and arts leadership (at Michigan).

Q: What has the performing arts taught you that you have applied to your everyday life and how you engage in the world?

Overarchingly I would say that it pretty much defines everything: the way that I look at life and approach it. Overall, I'd say I’m almost constantly informed by the performing arts. The violin is the greatest constant in my life. But in terms of specifics, I would say for one, creativity. I tend to walk around and observe things, kind of like the notes of a piece. I think about how they fit together to create something—a melody or a dissonance—and I tend to look at that and want to kind of investigate it and think about how I could somehow bring creativity to that. That's led to a host of projects that I've done over the years, including Sphinx. When I went about building an organization, I did that in a creative way. In other words, I viewed the Sphinx organization as my primary instrument. I looked at it the way I looked at playing the violin: What are the scales that I needed to do? What are the etudes? What are the exercises? What are those core things I need? How do I build a structure? What's the tempo? What's the chordal structure of this piece/organization that I'm working on building? I think it's just infused, and it’s kind of the way that I look at everything.

I would also say I need the arts. It's how we express. I was having trouble in my early teens and then hit a pretty rough rebellion period. Often, the way that I could speak the best was through my violin. You can sometimes express anger, resentment, and bitter things that otherwise might be negative and potentially damaging to express in other ways. You can express those things in the arts in a way that's beautiful.

I would also say identity. A couple of years ago I wrote a book of poetry and the title of my book was, “They Said I Wasn't Really Black.” Especially when I was younger, and especially in Hershey, friends would say, “Oh, you're not really black, right?” because I didn't talk in a certain street vernacular that they assumed is what defines whether you're black or not. And of course, stereotypically, you can't be black and play classical violin. There's just all these things about searching for one's identity and understanding that.

Q: How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected you as an artist and in your career?

First and foremost, I'm appreciative. Thankfully, so far I've not had to fight direct health issues related to it, and because of my role at the University, which didn't stop with the pandemic, I haven't had to undergo the financial hardship that many people have had to go through. I am appreciative, because literally tens of millions of people have been affected by this, either directly or through loved ones (health wise), and of course, financially. In terms of addressing it and dealing with it from my teaching, in the midst of the semester I was able to translate to remote teaching. I felt like I was really still able to communicate ideas and knowledge and information to my students. I was able to do that through the end of the semester. I'm always working on various ideas. For example, one key thing is that I had a movie project that we were already looking at doing. I'm doing a series of movies where we're trying to give voice to those who otherwise would not be heard, but instead of doing documentaries, we're trying to do it in a way where we give them an artistic voice. They actually become the actors, the deliverers of an underlying script, as opposed to a documentary where they're interviewed. With the rise of the pandemic, we had these amazing frontline healthcare workers who often either didn't have a voice, or their only voice was a newsgroup coming in and saying, “How are you treating people?” We realized that we could help give them a voice, and so we evolved the film project to be able to provide them that opportunity. We're in the midst of that, and hopefully we'll be going into post production here in a couple weeks. And then of course, Arts Engines, which is this opportunity that we've been thinking about. Detroit Public Television kind of came together and said, you know, we want to be able to have a show where we can delve into not just the human story, but also the operational mechanics of the arts industry, the arts field, and those who are the engines of the arts. So, we got together, and now we have this weekly show, and that's been going really well. I’ve been interviewing people and giving light to how they are leading in their particular sector in the arts. Some people have been talking about sitting at home being bored, but I’ve been doing all this stuff. I found that my life has actually been very fulfilling during this period, and I’ve been able to be active with work.

Q: What does a daily routine look like for you? What have you been working on during this time?

I probably have a little bit of a unique routine. I am a huge proponent of architecting a life that fits well with you. I keep in shape with a treadmill desk. That was how I had it as Dean, and I've had one ever since. I actually had one long before serving as Dean. So every day, I get up and I start my day at my treadmill desk and work, and that way, no matter what, I'm always walking five miles a day.

Then, I have a little concoction called my “deep breakfast,” which is really one of only two meals that I eat a day. I use a Nutribullet: it's arugula, flaxseed, goji berries, orange, and habanero peppers. It's a nice little thing and hopefully it gives my body most of the stuff that it really needs to thrive for the day. Then I get into another kind of work session, that's the balance of the day. I’m doing a variety of things these days. There are a lot of Zoom calls. I'll often hop back on the treadmill desk and work some more.

My wife and I are big foodies. We actually have a weekly blog, SonoGrub, where each week, we put out a new dish recipe and we pair each dish with a piece of music. We’re spending time with our son too. It's fulfilling in family, in work, and in trying to be physically active even in the midst of a pandemic. I will say that all of the work that I do isn't really work to me, I very much have tried to architect a life where I don't really have to feel like I have to work. I love everything that I do.

Q:  How do you see the pandemic specifically affecting DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) in the arts, now and moving forward?

In general, the pandemic has magnified DEI. It has augmented things that already exist in terms of the health sphere. You know, African Americans especially have had to bear a much heavier burden related to the pandemic. That's not because the pandemic picks out African Americans, it's because of disparities that exist on a host of levels. I think that the pandemic has been a magnifying glass and has augmented a number of those things. One of the things I hope that we will learn is that philanthropic political efforts will see that, and not just let that pass, but have policy changes and think about what we can do that will help address those underlying issues that existed long before COVID.

So with that said, I think that that is also the case in the arts. Obviously, I think that concert halls and live concerts are coming back, it's not going to stop. But there will be a difference, and it will take time. There are performing artists and there are organizations that won't make it through this, unfortunately. Or, they will have to drastically rethink themselves, because of a huge financial hit. All of the presenting organizations are going to be under much more rigorous financial circumstances than they were prior to this, and that will affect who they book, for example. So, where you have a lot of presenters who otherwise might have been able to experiment, say with 10 or 20% of their season, (oftentimes to engage new artists—specifically artists of color or artists where maybe there wasn't as much of a proven track record of ticket sales or revenue), may not have as many of those opportunities, and so now what happens? I think that this is a time for innovation. I've been thinking about it in all of the work that I do. I would really be encouraging people to be considering and thinking about how they can innovate, and how they can utilize this time to provide innovation that enables them—to not just survive, but to ultimately thrive as we move forward.

Q: How do you think that arts organizations and institutions can stay committed to DEI, while rebuilding their own organizations due to money loss and changes after the pandemic?

Hopefully—and this is something I've been working on pretty much my whole professional life—organizations won’t just be doing DEI as an initiative as a special one-off, but rather as part of their underlying structural core, operating budget, core programming, core staff, all of those things. The reason why you want your DEI work to have that infrastructure is exactly for times like this. But what I would say, is that there are absolutely organizations that did not do that. And for many of them, their DEI work is going to dip if not disappear over the next couple of years. They are going to contract their budgets, and as they do that, all initiatives, temporary things, and non-core activities are going to have to cease. So it's not that they're going to attack DEI, it's just that DEI is not part of that core. I think that's deeply unfortunate and I would obviously hope and encourage and advise them not to do that because restarting is hard. It’s just like a train: keeping it going even at a slower pace is much easier than trying to restart it from a dead stop.

There are a lot of organizations that really did incorporate core DEI into their infrastructure as well. As Dean, that was one of the things that I felt was so important: that DEI was in the leadership structure and in actual leadership positions. I would ask, “do we have DEI? Do we have it as a core part of the budget and not just as an attitude?” The hope is, and what I would advise certainly organizations to do, is to look at that and make sure that the DEI is part of their core operations. If it’s not, they should look and see to it that DEI is not just something that is nice and politically correct and it's decent for humankind, but as something that is actually also good for business. Because when times are tough, you need to expand your constituencies, whether it's students, your revenue base, your board, your customers, your audiences, etc. A way to do that is by bringing in new audiences. There are ways, if you will, to bolster and to build strength in what you're doing with DEI. It's not something that should just cost you money because it's something good to do. Overall, it should go to the direct bottom line for an organization. I encourage them to innovate and to think about how we can look at DEI as a way to strengthen our organization, programmatically and financially.

Q: What advice do you have for young people just coming out of college or pre-professional arts programs students in this kind of time of mass uncertainty and change in the artistic world?

I just spoke about this. I gave the commencement address at Interlochen and the focus of my address was resilience. Resilience is really defined as how we can adapt to change. It is unfortunate because the world decided to change right as you're entering it professionally. Not ideal. But, be actively resilient. In other words, don’t just react, but say, “Okay, this has happened, am I going to be resilient? How am I going to respond? How am I going to adapt to this change that's taking place?” Second is to act. A lot of times with something like this, people will just pull back and almost go insular: “The world's terrible, I'm never going to get a job, no one's hiring, everything's done. I just need to curl up kind of in a ball.” And I would say that if we look at history, so many huge leaps in innovation occurred during times of crisis.  Look and say, “What do you want your role to be?” Because while you cannot control what's happening in the world around you, you absolutely have 100% control over how you respond to it. You cannot control the pandemic or the virus and where it's going. But you have 100% control over how you respond. Some people will just curl up and go internal and not do anything. They are not going to have opportunities and they're not going to build professional lives until they come out of that. Those who don't [curl up and go internal], and who go out, success is inevitable, even if you fail at first. At some point, something will work. That's why I say to act, to go out and do something. Now, you become so focused on the work that you're doing, instead of just sitting around and thinking of the devastation of the past eight weeks.

With the one film project I've had the opportunity to be in touch with a lot of frontline health care workers currently. They aren't sitting around moping, they get up every day and they literally go to war in a battle to save other people. Yes, it's their job, it's their mission. But the goal of their job is to help other people and impact other people. And I think that our job in the arts is to impact other people. The role that the arts play in society, especially with the insane divisiveness that's going on, even in the midst of a pandemic, the role of the arts is so critical. I think we need to be out there, bringing our art front and center, because we play a critical role in addressing this divisiveness issue. The arts connect people. People who have completely opposite political views can sit and watch the same dance production or the same theater production or the same orchestral music concert and have a shared experience that bridges those political differences. The impact of the arts is such that when they come back together and have to debate, or discuss those issues, it will have an underlying sense of shared humanity that might not otherwise exist without the arts. We are critical. I think we have a responsibility to not sit back, not curl up, but be courageous and to bring our art forward.

Q: Using the idea of “worldmaking” how do you imagine the performing arts world after the pandemic?

Obviously there's a number of things that I'd love to see shift. Across the board, I think that all classical nonprofit artists should not just say they value diversity, but demonstrate that in their budgets and in their organization. That they should know and be able to say what percentage of their budget is dedicated to DEI. Too many organizations don't even know, or it’s not even a percentage. We could say “I'd love for it to be 10%”. If the 100,000+ arts organizations in the United States had 10% of their budgets dedicated to DEI, the art scene would be completely different. Chimamanda Adichie loves to talk about the danger of the single story. She says the danger of a single story is not that it is untrue, but that it is incomplete. The stories we weave in the nonprofit performing arts are incomplete. And the reason they are incomplete is because we, as a sector, lack the appropriate level of attention and resources towards DEI.  One of the other things that I would definitely like to be able to see is a better understanding and awareness amongst the general population of the value of the arts. We look and we see agriculture. We value it, we understand it. We don't have to be farmers ourselves to understand where our food comes from. We don't have to sit and think about how the food gets from the farm to our table but we understand there is a value. As a result, we have a Department of Agriculture where we commit tax dollars significantly to support this sector, same with transportation, etc. Now, while we have a National Endowment for the Arts where I sit on the council, I personally believe that we don't have enough understanding and awareness and valuation of the arts amongst the general population. I think, if people understood the role that the arts play, everyone can appreciate every aspect of our lives that the arts touch. For example, the movies, TV, video games, architecture, etc.. So, just this understanding I think would bring a change in the way we value it from our public sector point of view. And I think that would potentially come in evolutionary change of how we budget to support the arts in our society through government agencies, ultimately serving as a catalyst for the private sector. And then finally, last thing I would just say is, entrepreneurship in the arts. It has definitely been growing and many schools and universities like Michigan now have arts entrepreneurship and arts leadership as part of that curricular offerings, but often usually as electives. And I think that it is a travesty. To send any art student out into the world, without the added component of how to navigate the real world [in positions that lie outside of their primary discipline], leads to broken hearts and lost opportunities for people to serve our sector, to serve our country, and to serve humanity through their art making. It’s not because they don't have extraordinary discipline of how to deliver the art, but they don't know how to engage it in such a way that it can actually be sustainable, keep a roof over their head and actually engage communities. That skill set is critically important and I think should be part of the core curriculum of any arts preparatory institution.