Embracing Musical Versatility!

By Paul Kwo

A few months ago during a worship service, the associate pastor of the church in Culver City where I am the choir and Praise Band director turned to our guest accompanist and asked her to play the song happy birthday in celebration of the church's birthday. The accompanist who has a Bachelor degree in piano performance from a well-known American university jumped up off the piano bench, turned to me and said, “I don't know how to play Happy Birthday.”

It may be trivial but the truth is, just because you know how to play Classical music doesn't mean you know how to play any music. I have encountered many parents who have the notion that if their child learns Classical music, they would then be able to perform any type of music. This is absolutely false. Many Classically trained music teachers shun Pop music, refusing to teach their students the proper skills to perform. The truth of the reality is that many of these music teachers actually cannot perform Pop or Jazz or any other non Classical music and so they refuse to teach them, and deflecting from their own inadequacies by calling them lesser art form.

CLASSICAL, JAZZ & CONTEMPORARY

Every genre deserves its respect. It cannot be assumed that one is easier or superior to another. They are simply different. Surely within each genre we have great works and lesser works. But to cross genre and make sweeping generalization that one is automatically better than the other is simply a stereotype. Every genre requires hard work to learn and to master.

I had many students make mistakes or cannot perform a specific passage a certain way turn and say to me, 'that's what I chose to do.' Surely music is subjective and ultimately it is what the artist wants to present that matters. But a choice implies that the individual had the ability to do it either way and chose to do it one way over the other. In order for a Classical musician say they chose Classical music over the others, they must be able to actually perform the other genres. Chances are they can't. They may still claim they prefer listening to Classical music, but they certainly didn't choose to perform Classical music. They only know how to perform Classical music. They chose to study only Classical music. But they didn't chose to not perform Jazz or Contemporary. They simply don't know how to; they chose not to have train in it.

There is nothing wrong with not training in other genres. Many great musicians are only trained in one genre and became a specialist. But even more great musicians were trained in multiple disciplines. In a world that's increasingly global, where the competition is increasingly fierce, specialists are loosing out on many potential gigs because they simply cannot compete with others who are more versatile and well-rounded. Certainly not everyone wants to become a professional musician. Many simply want to enjoy the process of learning music. But I can easily name a handful of scenarios in a person's life where he or she may need more than just classical music skills. And it's simply a shame for anyone to spend ten plus years of their life to learn something, only to find themselves in a situation where they can't even do the most basic of thing like perform Happy Birthday.

So whether your goal is to play for yourself in the comfort of your home in Alhambra, or play some local church gigs in the San Gabriel Valley, or to become a world class musicians, the question really remains: Do you want to be the professionally trained musician who cannot play Happy Birthday on demand?