- Arts + Music
- Upper School
Life lessons.
When you’re 68 years old, when you’ve conducted symphonies in front of U.S. presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, as well as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, but also spent a week teaching music “in the poorest place in the United States,” you’ve accumulated a lot of life lessons.
And so it was that Peter Boonshaft, one of the biggest names and brightest stars in music education, came to McCallie on Wednesday, March 18, as this year’s Vann Lecturer with a treasure trove of life lessons to share.
There was the story about the dog on a coast-to-coast plane ride from New York City to Los Angeles, a Bull Mastiff-Great Dane mix so large that, “I thought they were bringing a horse on board when he walked down the aisle,” recalled Boonshaft.
As luck would have it, the dog wound up under his seat, at one point baring his teeth to let Boonshaft know not to mess with this, well, dog/pony show. But then a small child, no more than three years old, came barrelling down the aisle and face-planted right by Boonshaft and the dog.
For a brief moment, Boonshaft feared the worst for the child. What if the dog attacked him? What if the dog attacked Boonshaft as he was trying to help the toddler to his feet?
Within seconds, the mother of the child arrived. The dog, which had sprung to its feet and did indeed growl when Boonshaft went to pick him up, immediately backed away and sat down as the mother arrived to wrap her son in her arms.
Boonshaft was stunned, relieved, intrigued. “How did that happen?” he asked the dog’s owner. He then referred to the dog as a “Cute little puppy” instead of a “horse.”
When the owner asked Boonshaft what had changed his mind about the dog, he replied, “Because I got to know him a little bit, I guess.” To which the owner said, “Isn’t that the way of the world?”
In other words, Boonshaft explained, “Sometimes it’s about us changing our attitude rather than changing someone else’s.”
There was also his visit to the "poorest place in the United States"—somewhere in Appalachia, though he wouldn't say where—to conduct a school orchestra in a storage building that had no indoor plumbing and the kids' instruments were carved out of wood.
He turned his attention to a handmade sign that hung in this spartan structure, a sign that had been hanging there for decades. It read: “Today, on this day, I will give everything I have for anything I keep. I will have lost forever.”
“I broke down in tears when I read it,” he said. “And I’ve never, ever forgotten it.”
In a later meeting with numerous music and choir students, he discussed his love of Brahms, his turning to the trumpet because he struggled to play the guitar at a young age, and how he loved the music of trumpet player Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. He also said he hated the tambourine.
Boonshaft also delivered a bit of wisdom we should all embrace when we are brought to anger. “Tact,” he said, “Is the art of making a point without making an enemy.” And to all the musicians, “Keep playing. Don’t waste your talent. What you share with others are the memories of your life.”
Boonshaft said he wouldn’t swap his remarkable, creative, globe-trotting life with anyone. “I’m the luckiest man alive to do what I’ve done.”
But as he reeled off the sage advice of such artistic giants as Michelangelo and cinematographer Federico Fellini, he left his Chapel audience with the wisdom of the cartoon character Ziggy, created by the former greeting card artist Tom Wilson.
Recalling Ziggy's words in one particular comic strip, Boonshaft quoted: "You can spend your life complaining that roses have thorns or you can spend your life rejoicing in the fact that thorns have roses."
It is indeed sometimes as simple as changing our attitude rather than changing someone else’s.
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