On Being a Classical Musician Right Now

Recently, I had a long conversation with a friend who’s a retired psychologist. Someone who has spent decades thinking about the mind, the body, and the ways people carry experience — and who also has a deep love for music and musicians.

We weren’t talking about careers or institutions. We weren’t talking about what’s broken in the field. We were talking about something simpler, and maybe harder to name: what music actually does for people.

At some point, they said something that stopped me for a moment:

“The concert hall can be a place for healing.”

That landed more deeply than I expected.

What We Train For — and What We Offer

As classical musicians, we’re trained to pursue perfection. We learn to refine everything: intonation, balance, rhythm, articulation. We spend years narrowing our attention, sanding down edges, trying to get closer and closer to an ideal.

That work matters. I don’t want to romanticize away the discipline. Craft is the foundation.

But it’s not the end.

The older I get, the more I feel that technical mastery is really just preparation. It’s the work that allows us to show up fully present — not just accurate — when we step onstage.

Because what audiences carry into a concert hall is rarely neutral.

People arrive with grief, with exhaustion, with uncertainty. Sometimes they’re in the middle of something they don’t yet have language for. Music gives them a place to sit with that — without having to explain it, solve it, or tidy it up.

That’s not something you can perfect.
It’s something you hold.

Music Lives in the Body

One of the things my friend kept coming back to was how music moves through the mind and body at the same time. It bypasses language. It works on memory, sensation, breath. It connects people to something internal, and also to everyone else in the room.

When that happens — when a performance is truly alive — the concert hall shifts. It becomes less about presentation and more about shared experience. About being together in something that’s unfolding in real time.

Especially in moments of collective or personal trauma, that kind of space matters. Music doesn’t fix what’s broken. But it can help people feel what they’re carrying without being overwhelmed by it.

That’s a form of service we don’t talk about enough.

The Responsibility We Don’t Always Name

Whether we like it or not, musicians carry responsibility.

Not in a moralizing way. Not as pressure to be perfect or profound. But in the sense that what we do affects people — sometimes quietly, sometimes deeply.

What are we asking of an audience’s attention?
What kind of space are we creating for them?

If we only train musicians to execute flawlessly, without helping them understand the human impact of what they’re offering, we leave something important untouched.

Why This Shapes My Work

This conversation brought me back to why VIA Academy exists in the first place.

Yes, it’s about access and high-level training. But it’s also about helping young musicians understand that their artistry doesn’t exist in a vacuum. That it lives in relationship — to community, to culture, to the moment they’re living in right now.

We talk with students about craft, of course. But we also talk about meaning. About voice. About the fact that music can be a way of contributing to the world, not just navigating it.

When young musicians begin to understand that — that what they offer can matter to others — something shifts. Their relationship to music deepens. Their sense of self steadies.

They’re no longer just trying to be good enough.
They start to understand that they belong.

Holding On to What Matters

Classical music doesn’t need to abandon rigor. But it does need to hold onto meaning.

It needs space for musicians to connect technique to purpose, and performance to presence. It needs room to remember that the work we do reaches beyond the stage.

Because being a classical musician isn’t only about getting things right.

It’s about showing up honestly.
Holding space.
And offering something real — especially when people need it most.