Professor Abby Anderton teaches music class at Baruch. She had long history of music in her life, starting from when she learned how to play the piano at five years old. She originally wanted to be a doctor but gave it up to pursue music. She seriously considered music as a career choice in college. Having had experience in several different capacities of music, Abby Anderton is very well rounded and has a lot of insight into the world of music.
Q. How would you say you contribute to music in New York City?
A. I teach the Music in Western Civilization, one of the jumbo classes, there is like a hundred students. I also teach a seminar on music and film so those are kind of two of the ways I contribute to music in New York City. I worked a few summers as a manager assistant at Lincoln Center so that was fun. I was meeting a lot of different musicians. Usually my job was going to the airport and getting thirty Lithuanian thespians on a bus to midtown Manhattan and its always chaos. Someone would always forget the timpani drums in customs somehow and some hilarious chain of events would ensue. But right now I am primarily doing it by teaching and interacting with students and trying to figure out what things they are going to hear in the city and what groups interest them.
Q. What inspired your interest in music?
A. Well I guess I started playing the piano when I was five or six and I had a very active brother so I guess the only time I was not in a headlock from him was when I was practicing so I thought I should start practicing more because then he would leave me alone, do his own big brother things. So that is partially the reason why I started. I just found it really relaxing, and soothing, I had a lot of teachers. But it wasn’t until high school that I considered music as a career. I actually thought that , this will sound bizarre but, I was shadowing a doctor on summer when I was watching a colonoscopy. You can imagine that it would turn anyone away from medicine. And so I decided to pursue something that I actually like which is to teach music and learn more about it. I also wanted to meet students with similar interests or even completely different interests just to see what makes them tick.
Q. What unique experiences do you think music has given you?
A. I think one of the reason people study music and why it is valued is that you’re able to produce under very high-pressure amazing, music that you can’t replicate. By that I mean a talented musician who spends many, many hours practicing in order to play these pieces and produce them in front of concert audience. The skill that allows you to perform under pressure transfers to the business world, to education, that is why people have their children learn how to play an instrument early so that they are able to deliver those kind of things in front of audience. It is like another form of public speaking.
Q. Do you wish you could have done more?
A. I can’t imagine anyone would be content with what they did. I wish I learned to play the cello or another string instrument. I wish that I could have started an after school music program, perhaps in my own town. It is very rural, not many people, no concert stage, so no one pursues a career in music. So I think everyone can improve on his or her experience.
Q. Do you have any future goals in music?
A. Yeah, I am writing a book. For my PhD, I have to write a book, a dissertation and I am writing one on post war German music. It is really about larger questions how music and politics relate to each other. What was Germany’s post war identity based on? Since the Nazis destroyed the country ideologically and economically. So this is the next big project, the next step for me.
Q. What is your favorite music?
A. Wow that’s tough. I like Mostly classical music, western classical music to be exact. I am also a fan of twentieth century music so I like American minimalism, Rakhmaninov’s piano pieces, which everyone thinks is sort of clumsy. There is something about them that I found beautiful. I also like Beethoven of course, everyone says Beethoven whether they like or hate him. I like certain people’s ideas about music, like John Cain who kind of started this whole movement that music can be any sound or the absence of sound or what is this thing we call music? And he was obsessed about it so he would go into this barometric chamber where you are supposed to be able to hear nothing and he could hear his own heartbeat so it shows you can never really hear “nothing.” I also like The Beatles, I listen to a lot of pop music, daft punk.
Q. Why did you choose to teach music?
A. Well, I think at the end of the day I would rather talk about more and nothing else that I would love to do more. I find it interesting and try to share it with someone else to get him or her excited. You realize that something that resonates with you might be a bit of stretch to someone else and vice versa. I think there is a constant challenge of how to communicate these ideas and the best way to make them stick.
Q. Are other people in you family contributors to music?
A. Not particularly. My mother and I sign along loudly to the car radio but I don’t think that fits. She is retired but she used to be a kindergarten teacher so she had to teach a little about music since she taught them. But no I guess there is not anyone in my family who loves music the way I do, which I love. We can have these conversations like why does this sound like that, or what you think of this? Its very interesting to get other people’s perspectives because my family members hear things differently than I do. They always talk to me about this because of my expertise.
Q. Do you have any advice for people interested in music?
A. Well I think one of the things I have enjoyed about working in music is to work in different capacities. At Baruch I teach music as well as Providence College, last year I lived in Boston and I worked as the concert manager in Gerber Museum. I got to meet a lot of different musicians and people from all walks of life, which I really enjoyed. And in teaching, teaching students are music students versus those who are not that has also been a wonderful experience and a great way to learn a different sets of vocabularies. So I think people interested in working in music I guess I would say is to say as many diverse and divergent experiences in the field as you can because you never know how something will help you in your ultimate goal. So definitely intern and shadow people you know.
