If you had musical inclinations at a young age or simply pushy parents, you may remember the pain, suffering and mental anguish that it took to get from Chopsticks to Chopin (if you made it that far). The persnickety, inevitably ancient teachers; the agonizing strain it took to connect mind to fingers; and the pained faces of everyone you lived with when you practiced. I got through six years of the piano before I fell off the wagon, and thank God—the sound waves of the world are far better off without my polluting them.Â
But there’s hope my struggles might not have entirely gone to waste. Hard work spent learning the piccolo, trombone, mandolin, whatever, isn’t just limited to skill in the musical domain; numerous studies over the years have added heft to the common-sense notion that the mental acuity sharpened by musical training translates into academic achievement. Recently a new wave of efforts has focused on the effects of group lessons on lower-income kids, and the preliminary results are encouraging—musical training seems to increase language perception, memory, attention, and communication skills, as well as classroom dynamics. Moreover, group lessons could be a key part of closing the achievement gap between poor and wealthy students, particularly as the effects of musical training as a child seem to linger into adulthood.
And musical study isn’t just correlated with academic triumph—a wide range of singular successes across the gamut of professions have linked their musical formations to their achievements in their primary field. Bill Clinton; Condoleeza Rice; Woody Allen; three fairly disparate figures, apart from the fact that each has studied and is considerably proficient in a musical instrument. Clinton studied the saxophone and attended band camp every summer (to out his second-biggest secret).  Condi is a classically trained concert pianist who played with the Denver Symphony Orchestra when she was 15 years old, and still plays in a chamber music quintet. And Woody Allen is an accomplished clarinet player who still gives concerts at the Carlyle Café in Manhattan. Nor are these isolated cases; across the full spectrum of professions, more than a few trained seriously as musicians before, or in tandem with, pursuing illustrious non-musical careers.  There’s Bernie Williams, the classically-trained-guitarist-cum-Yankee-center-fielder. Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, who was figuring his way through a tricky Chopin ballade as he figured out how to deliver WikiLeaks to the world. Paul Allen, one of the co-founders of Microsoft, plays guitar in his rock band; Larry Page, who like Clinton, studied the saxophone; Alan Greenspan, former Fed chairman and former professional clarinet and saxophone player; and the list goes on.
Musical education bears a remarkable correlation to academic and professional success; we don’t understand precisely how it works, and mastering the ukulele may get you no further than the ability to look comically large against your midget guitar. But the link is undeniably, solidly there. Yet in the poorest public schools, in which innovative solutions are needed most of all, arts education is the first program to be cut. And it’s in the poorest schools that the community is least able to pick up the slack—were the Scarsdale school system to be compelled to drop choir due to lack of funds, it would take about 3 determined PTA members and their checkbooks to get the program back up and running. Not so in South Central LA. We constantly evaluate and re-evaluate the imminent practicality of our curricula from pre-k to graduate school, weighing over and over again what elements will best prepare our students to be competitive in an ever-changing, increasingly borderless world. The STEM fields are important; the humanities are important; but so too is music, which, beyond its enormous intrinsic value, allows these subjects to be more effectively taught. Music is a prime example of a discipline that produces both abstract and recognizable, concrete results, one that should be a basic part of education. Bill Clinton, Alan Greenspan, Larry Page perhaps didn’t need the sax to get where they are today, but it certainly didn’t hurt.
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