Dylan C.

Berman
Dr. Emmett O’Leary
Interview
30 March 2017

“If the doors of perception were cleansed

every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite.
For man has closed himself up,
till he sees all things thro’ the narrow chinks of his cavern.”

- William Blake

I conducted an interview with my Friends Select High School

Instrumental Ensemble teacher: Heather Fortune. She earned her B.M. and

M.M from Boston University School for the Arts and continued working as a

freelancer until she ran into a friend at one of her gigs in Philly who asked if

she would be interested in being a private flute at Friends. After a week of

exploring the city and ruminating on the future of her life, she realized that

was enchanted with the city, enthralled with the school, and was becoming

increasingly in love with the man who later become her husband. Everything

was falling into place. It wasn’t before long before the instrumental ensemble

teacher quit and she was promoted to the position. When she arrived there

were seven students including myself; today, there are thirty-nine.

As the interview proceeded, we began delving, investigating, and

unpacking her philosophies on curriculum and lesson plans. “Everything a

teacher teaches should be drawn from a musical work, and the learners

should be able to recognize and unstained the relationship between the

concept being taught and the work from which it is drawn” (Wiggings 37).
Unlike Wiggins, Mrs. Fortune believes that the assigned repertoire is the

“Doorway In.” She asserts that doorways into new styles, techniques, and

technologies emerge from the rehearsal and practice of diverse repertoire.

She’s certain, even resolute on her stance, that all learning takes place

through practicing and because all learning takes place through practicing,

she will only choose works that will create more doorways, more

investigations, and more understanding. During my time under her tutelage,

she gave us Greensleeves. Everyone was excited, giving high-fives, and

doing jumping jacks for Jesus, because it was a simple piece and we had just

played a very difficult piece from a contemporary composer whose name

escapes me. Little did we know that Heather had chosen this piece as a way

to get us familiar with the program Finale and wanted us all to compose our

own versions of the piece. Whether it was through harmonizing, or inversion,

or re-wrote it backwards like a crab-canon. The goal was to familiarize

ourselves with new soft ware technology, get our feet wet with composing,

expand our intellectual capacity using the framework of a simple piece.

In assigning Kosma’s “Autumn Leaves” and Hancock’s “Cantaloupe

Island”, she threw us through the doorway into improvising. Each and

everyone of us had to compose a solo and in composing/creating a solo you

need to learn about chord changes, phrasing, control, and come to terms

with the reality that possibilities are infinite. Though you, the improvisor, are

supplied with a foundation; a bedrock of chordal changes; the classically

trained musician perceives the usual ubiquitous parameters of structure

and instruction as fading into black. It’s intimidating and overwhelming,

especially because the possibilities are infinite. We touched slightly on the

topic of scaffolding and she believed the success or failure of a rehearsal or

lesson was always fell on her shoulders. “Why didn’t we improve this hour?”

“Why am I not getting along with this student?” “Why is student X who is

usually so enthusiastic so indiscriminate today?.” “Why is this section still

struggling with intonation?” and etc. She was always evaluating and re-

evaluating. Clearly, Heather is a very compassionate and introspective

human being. She’s absolutely sedulous in the arduous of always improving,

and always learning. She told me that even while teaching full time at

Friends Select she was still doing freelance jobs which further demonstrates

her drive and her diligence. She said, “Dylan, look, I have a lot of friends

that I love, but I will block them on Facebook and maybe even delete their

number if they ask me to play Pachelbel’s Canon at their wedding” with a

huge grin on her face.

We then started discussing chamber groups. She said, and I think this

relates to the zone of proximal development, that you always want to partner

people up where there is a differential in skill. The difficulty is finding the

balance which is sometimes really hard to gauge. You want to put people

together where there is a differential in skill, but not so much that it is

demoralizing to the less talented player and just monotonous and mundane

to the superior player. The aim is always to inspire the lesser player to rise to

the occasion and to provide an opportunity for the higher level player to offer
advice when appropriate. I’m going to go out on a limb and surmise that

Wiggins might call this kind of support and help as scaffolding.

In his essay ‘Self Reliance’ Ralph Waldo Emerson said “Trust thyself:

every heart vibrates to that iron string. Nothing is at last sacred but the

integrity of your own mind. A man should learn to detect and watch that

gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the

lustre of the firmament of bards and sages... In every work of genius we

recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain

alienated majesty. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none

but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has

tried” Teaching is a non-lucrative thankless mutable arduous enterprise. Each

of us will inevitably extirpate, cleanse, and close some doors of perception

and create our own. While we must adhere to our “iron string”, not only to

retain resilience but to remind ourselves why we chose this profession. We

did it to bring joy to the world; to bequeath the knowledge we have procured

from our most influential, important, and compassionate pedagogues; to

become the person who you looked up to growing up. We all want to be the

hero of our own movie. We must always be learning, always improving,

always admitting wrong-doings, and never break. We enter the doors with

the truth and tell everyone about it. Perception is merely a consequence.