|
Could music be the key to success?
Multiple
studies link music study to academic achievement.
Condoleezza Rice trained to be a concert pianist.
Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, was a professional
clarinet and saxophone player. The hedge fund billionaire Bruce Kovner is a
pianist who took classes at Juilliard.
Multiple studies link music study to academic
achievement. But what is it about serious music training that seems to
correlate with outsize success in other fields?
The connection isn’t a coincidence. I know because
I asked. I put the question to top-flight professionals in industries from
tech to finance to media, all of whom had serious (if often little-known)
past lives as musicians. Almost all made a connection between their music
training and their professional achievements.
The phenomenon extends beyond the math-music
association. Strikingly, many high achievers told me music opened up the
pathways to creative thinking. And their experiences suggest that music
training sharpens other qualities: Collaboration. The ability to listen. A
way of thinking that weaves together disparate ideas. The power to focus on
the present and the future simultaneously.
Will your school music program turn your kid into a
Paul Allen, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft (guitar)? Or a Woody
Allen (clarinet)? Probably not. These are singular achievers. But the way
these and other visionaries I spoke to process music is intriguing. As is
the way many of them apply music’s lessons of focus and discipline into new
ways of thinking and communicating — even problem solving.
Look carefully and you’ll find musicians at the top
of almost any industry. Woody Allen performs weekly with a jazz band. The
television broadcaster Paula Zahn (cello) and the NBC chief White House
correspondent Chuck Todd (French horn) attended college on music
scholarships; NBC’s Andrea Mitchell trained to become a professional
violinist. Both Microsoft’s Allen and the venture capitalist Roger McNamee
have rock bands. Larry Page, a co-founder of Google, played saxophone in
high school. Steven Spielberg is a clarinetist and son of a pianist. The
former World Bank president James D Wolfensohn has played cello at Carnegie
Hall.
“It’s not a coincidence,” says Mr. Greenspan, who
gave up jazz clarinet but still dabbles at the baby grand in his living
room. “I can tell you as a statistician, the probability that that is mere
chance is extremely small.” The cautious former Fed chief adds, “That’s all
that you can judge about the facts. The crucial question is: why does that
connection exist?”
Paul Allen offers an answer. He says music
“reinforces your confidence in the ability to create.” Mr. Allen began
playing the violin at age 7 and switched to the guitar as a teenager. Even
in the early days of Microsoft, he would pick up his guitar at the end of
marathon days of programming. The music was the emotional analog to his day
job, with each channelling a different type of creative impulse. In both,
he says, “something is pushing you to look beyond what currently exists and
express yourself in a new way.”
Todd says there is a connection between years of
practice and competition and what he calls the “drive for perfection.” The
veteran advertising executive Steve Hayden credits his background as a
cellist for his most famous work, the Apple “1984” commercial depicting
rebellion against a dictator. “I was thinking of Stravinsky when I came up
with that idea,” he says. He adds that his cello performance background
helps him work collaboratively: “Ensemble playing trains you, quite
literally, to play well with others, to know when to solo and when to
follow.”
For many of the high achievers I spoke with, music
functions as a “hidden language,” as Wolfensohn calls it, one that enhances
the ability to connect disparate or even contradictory ideas. When he ran
the World Bank, Wolfensohn travelled to more than 100 countries, often
taking in local performances (and occasionally joining in on a borrowed
cello), which helped him understand “the culture of people, as distinct
from their balance sheet.”
Joanne Lipman NYTNEWS SERVICE
|
No comments:
Post a Comment