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The following transcription has been edited for flow and is not an exact transcription:
Hello everyone, welcome to this interview. I’m Michelle Schodowski, the founder of Radda, and I recently had the pleasure of interviewing the fantastic cellist, Julian Langford, who has just joined Radda. Julian has been playing the cello since he was six years old and has had an exciting career as a solo and collaborative performer as well as a teacher. Before attending the Juilliard School where he obtained his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, he was already attending international music festivals, winning competitions like National Public Radio’s From the Top, studying with prominent musicians including David Soyer and Steven Isserlis, and performing with renowned musicians like Yo-Yo Ma. While pursuing his degrees, Julian was a prizewinner in many competitions such as the Pearl and Julius Young Music Competition, the Core-da-lean Symphony Young Artists Competition, the Young Classical Virtuosos of Tomorrow, and the Chappaqua Orchestra Concerto Competition. Julian recently completed his Doctor of Musical Arts at Stony Brook University and is currently on the cello faculty at Music Conservatory of Westchester, Long Island Conservatory, and Lindeblad School of Music. In this interview, Julian and I talk about what inspired him to pursue a career in music, some of the most exciting moments in his musical career, his teaching philosophies, and much more so we hope you enjoy!
Michelle: Let's start the very beginning. What got you into playing cello?
Julian: Sure, well first of all, thank you for having me, and I'm looking forward to this interview. Basically what got me started playing cello is that I have a musical family. Both of my parents are musicians. My dad is an academic musician. He’s a musicologist, and he does music history at Manhattan School of Music, and my mom is a performing musician. She's a concert pianist, and she's on the piano faculty at Manhattan School of Music. So I was surrounded by music throughout my whole childhood, and when I was younger, I would notice my mom practicing the piano and I really liked the idea of playing an instrument. When I decided that I wanted to play an instrument, my parents actually rented a whole bunch of different instruments from Sam Ash, the music store, and I got to try all types of different instruments. Everything from piano to trumpet and drums and guitar and you know, I tried everything I could. Eventually after a few months of this, I narrowed it down to the cello and the trumpet, which are to this day still my two favorite instruments actually. So I was kind of stuck, and I couldn’t quite figure out which one I wanted to do. There was one night where my parents and I went to a New York Philharmonic performance where they played Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony and the slow movement, the second movement of Tchaikovsky's 5th symphony, has a really beautiful cello section solo. As soon as I heard that in the performance, that pretty much solidified my pick, and I decided to pursue cello. Then when I was six years old, I decided to take lessons from there.
Wow so did you go to any music prep schools or did you just have independent private lessons?
Well it started with independent private lessons, but eventually I did go to Manhattan School of Music Pre-College when I was much younger. Eventually, I ended up studying with David Soyer, who was the original cellist the Guarnari Quartet, when I was 14 years old. I pretty much stayed in pre-college until I graduated high school.
What was the turning point for you in deciding to go on and study it in college?
Well it was definitely the idea that I had basically the most passion for music. I had an open mind and explored different things, but at the end of the day, I really felt like I couldn't really live without music, and I felt it was the only thing I could see myself doing professionally. And so- basically Isaac Stern has a famous saying that if you can do anything else but music, go ahead and do it. But if you really feel you can’t do anything but music, then really give it a shot professionally. And that's how I felt, I really felt like music was what I wanted to do professionally.
Yeah, and then you ended up going to the Juilliard School, right?
I did, yes. Absolutely.
How was that experience?
It was really fantastic. I mean Juilliard is a great place to be, for sure. You’re surrounded by phenomenal artists of music, dance, and drama. So it's really fun experience because you can go see shows of dancers and actors, and they’re all top-notch, wonderful people. When you're at Juilliard, you also get to play with wonderful musicians, and the faculty is fantastic as well. You get a lot of great opportunities so it was overall very good. It can be overwhelming sometimes just because, you know, there is- it’s not direct competition, but everyone you know is very focused and works hard, and they're very diligent. So it was definitely an adjustment when you first get there because you're kind of not used to being surrounded by all these phenomenal fantastic, dedicated, and hard-working artists all the time. I spent six years there. I got my Bachelor of Music and my Master of Music there. I felt after even just a few months of being at Juilliard, I got more adjusted, started to make friends, and just got even more connections throughout the experience. But overall it was wonderful, and I was really happy to have attended Juilliard.
Yeah, and what about your teachers? Do you have a teacher that you've studied with that really stuck out or any teaching philosophies they had that you still hold to this day?
Yeah, absolutely. I was definitely fortunate to study with some wonderful teachers. As I mentioned before, I studied with David Soyer, the original cellist of the Guarnari Quartet, when I was only 14 and that was really thrilling for me because David Soyer was a very famous name and a wonderful musician. I grew up listening to the Guarnari Quartet recordings, and I just loved their music and their approach to music. I was a huge fan of all of their recordings. To be able to study with the cellist of that group was just a huge thrill for me. He was really the one who opened me up to musically interpreting certain things, being open, and trying to get my artistic way into what i'm playing. Obviously, you want to do what's in the music and everything, but he was really focused on what do I, Julian Langford, have to contribute to this music that would be more personal and be more of a personal approach. Yes, you can play what’s in the music, and that’s fantastic. But how can you do it that would make it more of an individual context in that way. So that was you know my first really major wonderful teacher that made a huge impact on how I play the cello. I also studied with Richard Aaron at Juilliard who's a wonderful teacher, and he helped me technically get things under control and also musically helped me develop. That was really important for me to just refine everything that I was working on. I worked with him for a long time. Then when I pursued my doctorate degree at Stony Brook University, I studied with Colin Carr who's a well-known soloist and won the Naumburg Competition. That was really exciting because Richard Aaron was a fantastic teacher and Colin Carr is also a wonderful teacher. He also has current performing because he's in the field performing consistently. It was really nice to be able to work with a performer who was performing during the time that I was studying with him. He had up-to-date ideas of performances, how to approach performances, what's out there in the business right now, and what kinds of things can help you be a performer in the business.
What were some of the things that he taught you about performing? What were some of the approaches that he had?
That's a really good question. I think again a lot of the focus was kind of freeing up musically and the interpretation that I wanted to portray in certain music. Something that he definitely focused on with me is really making a difference between different types of music. For example, you may not play a baroque composer the same way as a late romantic composer. He taught me to just really zoom in on the styles and the different types of approaches that make music and composers different from each other, and how when you're a performer, you would make sure that that comes across really clearly to the audience or whoever's listening to the performance.
Awesome, so you have a lot of students as well. What are some of your teaching philosophies?
I'm fortunate enough to be teaching at Long Island Conservatory, Music Conservatory of Westchester, and Lindeblad School of Music. What I've found teaching over the past few years is that there's really no one-size-fits-all approach to teaching. Since everybody is different and everybody is an individual with different qualities and approaches to things, I’ve found that as a teacher the most effective way to help a student is to get to know them as people. When i'm teaching them, I try to find out how they absorb information most effectively and what will help them enjoy the process. In music and pursuing pretty much any kind of art, there's a lot of hard work involved, but I believe that there's also needs to be a joy and a kind of positive approach to it as well. It's not just all about work. If you enjoy the process, it obviously makes a huge difference so I always to try to connect those things when I'm teaching students. I find out like what they enjoy about music and the instrument, the cello specifically, and how that can be implemented into the whole idea of taking lessons.
Yeah. A lot of your students do different performances and competitions, right?
Yes, that's correct.
What is the kind of advice that you give them whenever they're getting ready to go up on stage, prepare recordings, or even do auditions and those types of things?
That's a really good question. Performing can be very difficult for pretty much any type of artist simply because you're essentially putting yourself out there. You're exposing your art to people. I think one of the most important things about performing is believing in what you are sharing. That's the other thing I tell my students. If you think that you're sharing your music with people rather than performing or feeling like you're going to be judged by people and getting nervous about that- If you feel you're simply sharing what you have worked on and where you are at that moment, that can be such a mental relief rather than being stressed about, “Oh, I really need to make a good impression, and I need to make sure every note is exactly perfect.” That can be so stressful. But if you just think of the performance as where you are at the moment and that you're sharing what you love with people who want to listen, that can definitely help with the mental approach to performing.
Let's go back to your performance career now. So what have been some of the most notable projects you've worked on? Any super memorable performances that you've had?
I was fortunate enough to play with Yo-Yo Ma two times, which was really exciting. The first time I got to play second cello to him in the Schubert two cello quintet. Manhattan School of Music had a gala, and I was in the pre-college at the time so I was very fortunate to be selected for that performance. There were a few exciting things about this. First of all, I loved the Schubert two cello quintet. I had heard recordings of it multiple times, but I had actually never played the piece before so the fact that I was able to play this piece for the first time with Yo-Yo Ma was incredible. I had never met Yo-Yo Ma before and to experience playing with him- He's a phenomenal musician and just the whole idea of performing with him and getting to know him as a person. You know, the generous, kind, thoughtful, and intelligent man that he is, it was such a pleasure getting to know him and also even just to play with him. I mean it's one thing to meet him but to actually play with him, it was incredible. It was a really wonderful experience. So that was the first time I played with him. Then the second time I got to play with him, I got to play with his Silk Road Ensemble and him as well. We all got to play together, and what was so exciting about that was obviously playing with him again and the idea that there's a lot of different types of music that I wasn't aware of. Middle Eastern music and different types of music that isn't just the standard classical music, which is of course wonderful in its own way, but I wasn't exposed to it. I didn't know a lot about other types of music, and they had all different types of music that they were performing. They had all types of instruments I didn't even know about, for example the kamancheh. It was exciting to see all these different types of instruments and play different types of music, and it eventually influenced me to have more of an open-mind towards performing not only standard classical music but other types of music that might be a little bit more unusual or out of the box.
What kind of music do you like to pursue that's maybe not as well-known?
I'm trained in classical music so what I’ve decided to do mostly is focus on different types of classical music, meaning different composers that might have works that are not as well-known or played as much. So I’ve just been exploring that recently. When I was studying in school, it was definitely important to have a lot of the basics focused on with my instrument and a lot of the standard repertoire applied. But when I was going through my doctorate degree at Stony Brook, I started to explore more tonal contemporary classical music, specifically for solo cello. For example, Judith Lang Zaimont, Laura Kaminsky, and Samuel Adler all have solo cello pieces that I studied with Colin Carr at Stony Brook. So I decided to more go in that direction where I was just finding different types of classical music that may not be as well-known but would be fresh and different to hear.
Very cool, and let's see. What else is there? Anything else you'd to share with the audience that we haven't covered yet?
Well one thing I wanted to talk about is how musicians and teachers can deal with the global pandemic that we're dealing with. It's a very difficult time for artists in general and musicians because there are live performances involved, and now a lot of it is cut off or very much diminished. I wanted to talk about just some ideas that I've been exploring. My ideas had to do more with incorporating resources that we have during the pandemic, such as technology, the internet, and youtube because not every single era has had that kind of advantage. Now even the Zoom call is a huge advantage. Without being in-person, we can still talk and communicate and even see each other. Those kinds of things can be really eye-opening for musicians who might be a little bit down or a little bit depressed about the the cancellations of performances. There are all kinds of different ways to get your stuff out there and get your performances out there. There might even be room to have creative and different ways of incorporating technology into the way that you're performing. So I would just say to musicians and teachers during this time is to try and keep an open-mind and also just know that there are so many different ways to get your stuff out there. Also there might be different ways that you never even considered that could help things that you're doing and the performances that you aim to do.
Awesome so thank you so much for doing this interview. It's been a pleasure talking to you and getting to know more about you. Julian’s also a Reviewer on Radda so if any cellists out there want to get their performances reviewed, you can reach out to him on our platform. Thank you very much!
Thank you, Michelle, it's been a pleasure.