and dependant upon the wisdom of the school administration. As mentioned, my son was
fortunate to not only attend a school system that values the arts, but had an extraordinary
music teacher and music program director. Many, these days, are not so fortunate. Music
and the arts, despite their proven benefits, are often the first things cut from the budget
when money gets tight.
Here comes the obligatory anecdote. I took music theory in high school. I figured it
would be a breeze. Boy, was I wrong. It made calculus look like a walk in the park. It
was, without doubt, the single most difficult class I took that year or any year during my
high school career, for that matter. Transposition from piano to a Bb clarinet? Conso-
nance and dissonance? Serial composition and set theory? Huh? I was utterly lost.
But, there was a bright side. Our teacher took us into Manhattan, back in the early
1970s for a field trip. You know ... when New York was New York. Gritty and dangerous.
Here was this delightful young blonde music theorist towing, en masse, a group of ado-
lescent pseudo hippies through the streets of Manhattan, in the dark of night, to listen to
Michael Tilson Thomas perform John Cage.
For the unenlightened, Michael Tilson Thomas is an American conductor, pianist and
composer. He is currently music director of the San Francisco Symphony, and artistic di-
rector of the New World Symphony Orchestra. John Gage was an American composer
and a pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of
musical instruments. Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde.
Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential American composers of the 20th
century.