A HEALTHY COMPULSION

BY MARK HARROO  |  MARSHALL ORCHESTRA DIRECTOR

Reprinted from The Hilltopper Magazine, Spring 2023

 

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By definition, passion is a strong emotional response toward a specific object, person, or experience, in such a way that the individual feels compelled to engage regardless of perceived rationality or importance. When I think of passion, a view of healthy compulsion comes to mind.

Some say they felt their passion call out to them; I would go a step further in saying that the defining characteristic of finding your passion is that you have to then respond to that call. Some may argue that a behavioral response is not required. However, if we are to get to the core of passion—how it fuels us to challenge yesterday’s version of ourselves—we must view this topic with an atmosphere of action. Responding to the echoes of passion forms a contract of acknowledgment between one’s desires and their own deeper willpower. We walk forward along the path, finding feelings of excitement, fear, insecurity, and accomplishment at various times in the exploration. This is inherently the point.

Passion gives us the courage and permission to journey to a place where we are different from those who may simply just like something.

I sometimes hear the phrase, “close your eyes and think about what comes naturally to you... and if you look a little closer, you will find your passion.” This statement raises multiple questions: Am I born with a passion for something, or do I find it? Does my aptitude dictate where my passion will come from? Does my passion have to be the thing I am the best at? Perhaps there is a random sprinkle of each of these components.

Passion could exist in the same realm as aptitude. However, I reflect on the many colleagues I met while in youth orchestra fifteen years ago who were extremely proficient on their instruments, and yet chose to pursue something completely different. My best example to challenge the idea of aptitude is my youth orchestra stand partner, Marie.

Marie was probably the most technically proficient and seemingly passionate violinist I ever met. To this day, I have never met another person who became one with the music in the way that she did. In hindsight, that’s probably what all of the adjudicators saw whenever we competed against each other in various music festivals over the years—she beat me five times. You would believe that her aptitude was going to turn her into a successful soloist. Except it wasn’t her passion.

Marie’s passion was helping people. She was always encouraging, kind, empathetic, and went out of her way to make sure that everyone who knew her was treated fairly. She was the type of person who would make everyone in a room feel seen and heard. It took me a while to get over the shock of her telling me she was going into medicine instead of music with me. I thought we were passionate about the same thing because I made the error of conflating proficiency with desire; music was my world, but the well-being of others was hers.

In regard to the question of needing to be the best at something, this story continues. Marie and I rode in the same social circles in high school, and she was never the highest scoring student in any of the prerequisite courses for medicine. Actually, she was slightly below average in most of them. She struggled to make connections between biology, chemistry, and math, and was cautioned against any field with those emphases by her teachers.

Here is where her passion proved people wrong. In the midst of opinions, she worked harder than I had ever seen her work in her entire life. Music was her gift, but her passion for helping others was so strong that every aspect of her behavior shifted in support of actualizing that goal. Fast forward years later, and she is Dr. Marie Guissepi. Her passion never allowed her to quit. Her conversations with her heart affirmed that she was exactly where she needed to be.

The point of this discourse is my view on passion. What is it? How does it manifest itself? The definition I began with is correct, but clinical. We are not clinical beings—not all of the time anyway. To that end, passion is the driving force that gives us strength and courage to make the choices that ultimately bring happiness.

My own quest to explore this topic over the course of a lifetime and career brought me into the music program at Marshall School. This year, the program has further developed in the hands of three new faculty members: Band Director Grant Studer, Choir Director Iris Kolodji, and myself, Marc Harroo, Orchestra Director. The music department currently offers a curriculum that gives students a firm grasp on making music, and the three of us share a vision of seeing the program evolve to deliver a holistic music education experience.

As both performing professionals and music educators, we each want to foster a culture of musical excellence that is rooted in accountability, authenticity, community, and empathy. Music is for everyone and we want to do our part to ensure that it is accessible to all students and shared with our surrounding communities. We’ve seen our students participate in honors band, choir, and orchestra with neighboring universities, and in local events, such as the Christmas City of the North Parade. Last semester, we staged a well-received winter program for both the middle and upper school divisions, and have planned multiple concerts for this second semester.

We were grateful last semester to see a consistent rise in student enthusiasm within each of our programs. This success should not be understated, as it can be difficult for students, particularly in the arts, to change teachers and be comfortable with something new. The phrase “trust the process” comes to mind, and that’s what the students have done.

We want students to receive instruction that meets them where they are, to get them to where we know they can be.

We are in the process of creating more opportunities for honor program tracks and student mentorship experiences. We are examining the creation of new ensembles that group students according to experience level rather than age and grade to promote more cross-grade collaboration. Additionally, we are in the early stages of planning both domestic and international tours to allow our students to expand their perspectives as they nurture their musical curiosities.

Growing this music program is an exciting task that requires two main things: support from our immediate community and a feeder program. Our first step has been to create “buy-in.” It’s one thing to convince a student to pick up an instrument or choose to sing, but they have a higher chance of staying with it long-term if we create a community that celebrates artistic achievement. It has been extremely comforting to hear the kind and supportive words of fellow teachers and parents reminding us that our musical seeds are being nurtured just as much outside our classrooms as they are within.

Our community outreach and performances have significantly improved the appeal of our ensembles and are generating more interest in students to join, especially within the upper school division. I am a firm believer that community and collaboration are the keys to creating a strong ensemble experience. I have implemented this in my string program by creating a joint Marshall String Orchestra that comprises students from fifth grade all the way through twelfth grade. The first version of this ensemble premiered in winter of 2022, and the student body is excited to see it become a mainstay at the school.

As for our feeder programs, each teacher acts as a beacon for recruitment within our professional performing careers outside the school. Furthermore, the creation of the Forest School gives us a batch of young, enthusiastic, and creative students to guide through music education experiences at Marshall; these students will naturally be funneled into more advanced ensembles as they grow and discover their own preferences.

When I look at the students in the Marshall music ensembles, I see curiosity, resilience, honesty, and a bit of delightful mischief—they are kids after all. Each of these qualities are supportive of engaging one’s passion, and are fantastic tools to help learners discover a passion in music if they haven’t yet found it. Sometimes, I see that our more gifted students tend to shy away from the spotlight out of an aversion to being the center of attention, but the way they speak to us teachers show little glimpses of an authentic artist still trying to feel comfortable in their own identity.

Ultimately, I could share numerous examples of passion at Marshall, but my mind goes to one particular student that has left a permanent mark on my career. She walked into my classroom on the evening of my very first day of teaching at Marshall and said, “I feel like I’m so far behind, and honestly, it makes me want to drop the string ensemble. With that being said, I don’t want to quit because I really love strings so I’m going to tell you all of this and hope that you can help me.”

In her eyes, I saw all of those traits that come with the beautiful gift of passion. Fast forward a couple of months—she’s on her way to becoming an excellent violinist that I would be happy to share a stage with on any given day. She wasn’t the only student to transform like this, but she was the first, and she inspired a lot of her classmates to do the same. I think passion within the Marshall music program, and perhaps in all areas of life, is infectious; the kids take care of each other and push together to become better than they were before.

I couldn’t ask for a better group of kids to work with.