To celebrate the latest episode of the Piano Inspires Podcast featuring Peter Mack, we are sharing an excerpted transcript of his conversation with Andrea McAlister. Want to learn more about Mack? Check out the latest installment of the Piano Inspires Podcast. To learn more, visit pianoinspires.com. Listen to our latest episode with Mack on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or our website!
Andrea McAlister: I do want to mention—touch on the fact that you are the MTNA President right now. You’re talking about giving all these master classes and teaching your own students. You are having such an impact on the future of music education, whether you think of yourself as being that impactful or not in the moment. I know sometimes it’s hard to see, like we were saying in the moment. How do you feel about that? What is your mission as we move forward in music education? What are your goals as MTNA President? What kind of impact do you want to make for the future?
Peter Mack: So the thing about living in the first quarter of the 21st century is that landscapes change so quickly. I mean, we’ve kind of got computers figured out now. And then along came COVID, and COVID changed things more than anything that I can think of in the field of education and music education than anything has in such a quick time. Because suddenly the internet, instead of being a thing that you could also do, became the primary thing that you can use to change music education. I think of things, the way that The Frances Clark Center and that Piano Inspires has embraced that.
AM: You have a way of bringing people with you, of creating this community. You talk about how the internet can do this, and how we might use it to build relationships or bring people along with us. Do you think it’s the internet that’s doing that, or do you think it’s the people who are doing that?
PM: I think it’s both. I mean, I think it’s—you have to have a vision, you have to have that, but there’s no point in having a vision if you live in the age of the Pony Express. I mean, well, no, that’s not true. Your vision has to be different. And the fact that we are now in 2024, that’s the amazing tool of connecting—being able to connect people virtually—that’s the obvious place to do it.
When we think of music education and when we think of what we’re teaching people right now, all our colleges are wrong, or most of our colleges are wrong. One of my friends said, “When I was at college, I should have been taught how to market a studio, I should have been taught how to file taxes, I should have been taught how to [do] all these things about business. Since I graduated, I’ve done all these things, and I’ve never once been asked to write a fugue.” [laugh]
AM: [laugh] Well, perhaps that’s still coming. We don’t know that. [laugh] I agree very much that we need to create more well-rounded human beings who are leaving the nest of college, and not just somebody who can create a fugue.
If you enjoyed this excerpt from Piano Inspires Podcast’s latest episode, listen to the entire episode with Peter Mack on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or our website!
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