Artist Check-In with Anthony McGill

Great to see you too.

Oh gosh, well, there was a little bit of a surprise. A casual dinner, and I was sitting around the table with a few people like Deborah Borda and a couple other friends, and I just thought it was just a fun, random Tuesday dinner. And sometime into the dinner, like 30, 40 minutes in, Deborah said, 'You know, Anthony, come with me, I just want to talk to you about something really quickly.' We went to another room and she dropped this news on me. And it was pretty shocking actually, you know, because it was totally out of the blue, totally out of nowhere. And obviously it was a really big deal.

Well, it's actually probably the greatest honor, one of the greatest honors of my life, because I know about it very well. I received the Avery Fisher Career Grant about 20 years ago, 21 years ago, and that really changed my life and kind of started my career path really. And then to get this award, for me it just means that I've been doing the right things, you know, that there's recognition that I've been playing the clarinet well. No, but much more than that. I think much more than that, it just means that my life's work is valuable and my life's work has been meaningful for others. And that's a pretty amazing thing to be acknowledged for.

No, I have plans for a portion of it. There was a portion of the monies that were going to go to the live celebration, which is not happening. And so the Avery Fisher Artist Program gave that amount of money to me to be able to donate to a charity or non-profit of my choice. And so I chose to use that money to give to students, to music students, at the Music Advancement Program at Juilliard, where I'm an artistic director. We've decided to start a program by which we can give kids scholarships to go to music festivals when we can go to them again, and music camps and instruction during the summer. So a specific scholarship program that will eventually be an endowed program that we're working on the details of, and you'll hear about at some point, by which all of the money that comes from this endowment will go directly to students and their families, because all of the instruction that they get during the year, which is so important, is really helped by the study that you can continue during the summer. I know the summertime was an important part of my growth as a young musician, and it's really important that financial considerations don't have to be a roadblock for students getting further study during the summer.

I think the initial start of our love of classical music just happened because we were playing instruments, and the genre itself was kind of secondary. So my parents just believed in giving us access to all kinds of different things, whether it's great academic programs or sports or music and art, because they were both visual artists and they were teachers as well, so they really believed in education first and foremost. So starting the instrument just happened to be that our first early teachers taught classically trained, except for my first clarinet teacher who was a jazz saxophone player. But besides that, that just kind of happened organically, and falling in love with this music is something that is very easy to do.

Yeah, I woke up one morning that week and I was feeling devastated and helpless and full of pain and wanting to find a way to express myself as a musician when we hadn't performed in months, and just the fear of what COVID was going to do to us individually and us as a nation. And I wrote some words down about why I think it's important that people are allowed to protest, and that it's a very American thing to do to protest for freedoms and equality and racial equality specifically, and to protest against racial injustice. I think it's a very American thing. And so my decision to play that piece was, I had a conversation with my wife that morning, and we were talking about what I would play if I were to play my clarinet, because I wanted to not play my clarinet at all actually. I wanted to just let the words and the gesture of kneeling on two knees take care of that. And I was thinking about 'Amazing Grace' and some other things, and she suggested 'America the Beautiful,' and I was like, that's perfect. And then as I looked online and I was looking at different versions of the piece and I was kind of listening to the words and reading the lyrics of this piece, it proved to be especially meaningful for me. And while I was playing it, I decided to change it a little bit. I missed a note here and there, and it went into a minor key. And I realized that this was going to be a part of this written statement of protest really, of saying that it's okay for us not to be okay with these things going on in the world. And it's my little part that I can do to speak to that, to kind of raise my voice against this kind of violence and racial violence and injustice.

Yeah, I think it's probably not as stunning to me as it is to many other people. Growing up in America as a black kid, that isn't really shocking to me, especially in our field. But that's the kind of state of the world. When certain populations of the world weren't allowed to participate in American traditions and human traditions for so long because their lives weren't valued or weren't appreciated, that's really the state of our society and what it was founded on. So that part isn't as shocking to me. I think what's more shocking is just the slow state of progress regarding issues of diversity and issues of inclusion and equity frankly in organizations in our societies. So bringing up the rear and getting things going has been something that orchestra, that classical music, has been talking about for many years, 30 years perhaps, but only recently has really, and maybe perhaps only this summer, started to really put a point on trying to create actual change and understand the reasoning and the value of that change, of why we need specific kind of representation. And I think the more we all get educated about the history of that kind of discrimination against certain populations of our country and our world, and how insidious it was and still can be, having those honest conversations and learning about that, we all start to realize, oh, that's why we need to care about these issues. That's why we need to care that perhaps with all of the great players and musicians out there from diverse backgrounds, brown and black people specifically, that we need to do better.

It is so strange, Elliot. I mean, at the beginning of this thing, I could have never imagined that I would be busy doing anything. At the beginning, I was barely touching my clarinet because, like a lot of artists, I was so depressed about everything going on and just going cold turkey with performances and content. So to have it be so busy now, and then we're just starting teaching at the schools I teach at now, and with all of the different online talks and performances and streaming opportunities, it is really weird, I'll be honest with you. But so many organizations need us to be active to support them. And whether it's WQXR or a small chamber presenting series in the middle of the country, I've been really, honestly, as stressful as it is to have so much of these things happening, it gives me hope that everyone is trying to keep the music going in whatever way possible. And so it's hard for me not to say yes. It's hard for me not to say yes to participating in keeping these things going.

Thanks so much.