From classics to curiosity and where melodies meet me.

Welcome.

Doing this for years.

I understand how that goes.

That's funny.

You just jump straight into the whole practice, Steve.

Just no practice.

Exactly.

Two years of practice, but no practice.

Because when you hit the stage or real life.

Yeah.

Whole new ball game.

All the practice either goes out the door or comes into play.

Yeah.

What happens today with all your practice?

You might learn that you need to.

Practice after this one a little bit more consistently.

Well, I'm glad that we have Janet with us.

And that's Janet Sung, artistic director at Meadow Mount School of the Arts.

I have a feeling.

Well, first of all, welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So glad to be here.

Feeling that you're.

Yeah, we're so glad to have you here.

And I get the feeling that you're going to help us out just a little bit with some things relating to practice.

Gonna pick your brain for sure.

Okay, sounds good.

Yeah.

I do want to find out a little bit about your musical background, so I'm going to get to that.

I think I want to start off with the school, Meadow Mount.

I'm pretty sure I heard about it first in the book the Talent Code.

Oh, yeah.

A couple big sections on.

On the school.

Really Peak curiosity.

Yeah.

Actually I read it, then I listened to it on audio again later and jogged my memory on all that cool stuff that I had taken in.

But there was a section in there about the school.

If you could kind of intro us about the school because it's not traditional.

I believe it's a summer program.

Right.

Is that how it's set up?

That's correct.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But you get, from what I've heard and read is you get really amazing results.

I don't even.

I'm trying to figure out how you could.

You'll tell us about the program because seven weeks doesn't seem like a long time, but somehow you're doing some amazing things there.

So please tell us a little bit about that.

Sure.

So, you know, my background as a violinist is I, you know, started.

I was about 7, which funnily enough is considered for some a late start.

But.

But I started when I was seven and probably within a year or two I was quite serious.

And, you know, one of my positions is the artistic director of the Metamount School of Music, which is a seven week intensive program for string players, young string players.

I'm also a violin professor at the DePaul University School of Music in Chicago.

So it's sort of.

Both of those institutions now are sort of where I do the bulk of my teaching and things like that when I'm not performing or doing like guest classes, guest master classes or something like that.

So in regards to Metamount, it is a pretty unique program.

It was started by a renowned violin pedagogue, Ivan Golamian, 81 years ago in 1944.

His premise was he was a renowned teacher at the Juilliard School and the Curtis Institute of Music, which are for many years two of the top music conservatory programs in the US and you know, he has like a sort of a who's who's list of famous violin students over the decades.

And he started in 1944 because he wanted a place for his students during the year to be able to have an equally intensive environment where they could focus on their instrument during the summer.

Because school, the school was usually out.

It was a seven week program.

And his idea was to basically provide an environment where they weren't give.

There weren't any distractions, school, just life in general, things like that, where they could just fully focus and practice.

And so first providing the environment, which is in upstate New York in the beautiful Adirondack.

It's set in a place where it's.

There is no town or anything really nearby.

If you want to go to town, you have to actually get in a car and drive about 10 or 15 minutes, you know, so the immediate surroundings is just nature.

So that's one of the things.

The other thing was just the structure of the program.

There is a schedule that he had envisioned for the students so they would have a certain number of hours of practice, just practice in the morning.

So it's still the same pretty much today.

It's four hours of practice in the morning, 10 minute break, and then an hour of practice in the afternoon.

Of course, a lot of students do more than that actually.

There's also rehearsals and things like that.

But what it allows for each of those students is to be able to fully focus and have just time to really develop what they want to do in terms of their skills and their artistry.

What do you hope the students take away from these, these lessons like musically and personally?

Is there, is there a goal or a hope that you have when you have them for that short period of time?

Yeah, it's an amazing thing.

There is a saying that we've got in Meadow Mount just because we have seen it happen time and time again.

It's basically a year's worth progress in seven weeks.

Wow.

And.

And it is amazing because when I was a student, I was a student when I was 10 or 11 years old, which was kind of on the young end.

I mean, even today, actually the youngest on campus is 13.

That's sort of where we kind of do the cutoff.

But there we do have younger students that may be living off campus with guardians or parents and things like that.

So we do have younger students as well.

And they're obviously very serious and very focused still already at that age.

But I remember when I was a student myself that there was a very different environment once you got there.

And at the end of the summer, the skills that you acquired, there are things that you may have been told sometime during the summer, and then come August or come October, November or January, February of the next year, you will start to still pull on all of those things that maybe at the time didn't fully resonate.

But then because you just sort of had that in the back of your mind, then there's something that you realize even several months later that's beautiful.

I think the.

The focus of the practice is really where it changes.

I know we were talking about the idea of talking about deep practice.

I think that's where a lot of it is.

I think because it's seven weeks, it really allows the young musicians to come in and already have the opportunity to do the deep kind of practice.

So by the time they leave, it can.

For different students, it's kids, different things that they get at the end.

You know, for some, it's just like taking their technique, taking their understanding of musicality, interpretation, way to interpret music to another level.

Right.

And so when you have students that come back year after year, we've had some students that come back for like seven or eight summers.

Like, they basically have called Meadow their.

Their summer home.

And it's really.

It's really like.

I talk to a lot of alumni who, you know, were there.

Maybe they were there in the 60s, maybe they were there in the 80s.

You know, maybe they were there in the 90s.

And they have talked about how they would go back like six or seven summers, and it literally was where they grew up as musicians, you know.

Wow.

And so they have that opportunity to like, keep taking their.

Their skills to the next level.

But for some, it's also if they're getting ready for auditions or getting ready for competition and international competition, it just allows them the space and the time to really, you know, hone all of those things in their music and in their skills.

So.

So it.

It really provides that opportunity.

I think Ghoulami and Ivan Gilamian really hit on something and it's why it still exists and it works today.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's impressive.

Yeah.

So one of the things I'm thinking now, based on what you just mentioned, because that was 1944, you said.

Yes.

Okay.

So the first thing is we have to dive into what this intensive deep practice even is.

But have things changed?

Because from 1944 till now, a lot's changed in the world.

Yeah.

The methods at the school remain the same, or have they kind of adopted to.

Yeah, that's such a great question.

Because the school itself, pretty much the DNA of the school is so funny because we talk about the DNA of the school and your.

Exactly.

But the premise, I think, has pretty much stayed the same.

I think there.

Even much of the campus looks very much the same.

There have been things that have changed over the years.

The concert hall, they had added air condition.

The concert hall used to not have air conditioning.

Just like practical things like that have changed.

But for the most part, the main ethos of the institution, the school, has remained the same.

There are other things that have changed.

You know, there have been different faculty over.

Obviously over those decades, you know, kind of music that we start to incorporate.

I think that has changed, but I think in terms of just developing and having.

Providing a place for young musicians to really develop themselves as young artists.

But also, I think even as humans, they learn so much just from that time in, like discovering more about themselves, discovering more about their peers.

For sure.

I think that that is also something that a lot of alumni students take away from it.

No, that makes.

I mean, I can't even imagine.

I know there's so much.

Right.

You're just trying to.

Yeah.

Dig something out.

So I gotta.

I have to mention this, though.

So seven weeks is the program.

And you said that people.

It said that, you know, you get a year's growth in 7 and people come back continually.

Is that a compound thing or does it, you know, lesson after the third or fourth.

Because I'm picturing in my mind, wow, you go seven times, you're seven years ahead of the game you're playing.

I don't know if it works necessarily that way, but is that kind of the way people seem to fly feel after repeat?

I think it's.

It's actually.

It continues every summer that somebody comes back and it's obviously what changes for them individually is different.

You know, at the beginning, they may have focused more on just developing more of their skills, like technique.

Like we have a lot of the teachers will do technique classes Too, in addition to just working on specific pieces of music.

And so it allows them, the students, especially those that are at that stage, to really develop those things even more.

And then for those that come later that have already built more of a stronger foundation in terms of their technique, then maybe they're developing other things, performance skills.

Maybe in the first years, they didn't actually perform as much publicly.

So we have different kinds of performances, performances that are open to the public, performances that are closed in the sense that they are just for the campus, or even performances that are just for each studio or each teacher's class.

So they'll sort of have different ways to perform, and they'll grow each time they do those kinds of performances.

So maybe in a subsequent year, they have gotten to the point where they can be part of the public performances because they have now reached a different level in terms of who they are as young musicians.

Wow.

Do you feel that, like, if we go back a couple years, when I was learning violin and piano, my teacher was a little bit more firmer, a little tougher.

She could literally yell, maybe even beat me with her bow.

It was, like, a lot more rougher.

I appreciate, but do you feel like, the style.

I don't know if you guys have seen whiplash.

I just watched that recently as well.

And teaching.

When you're teaching someone that's talented, they tend to get a little bit more tougher.

And I'm wondering, have you noticed a change in teaching styles?

And I guess because you're dealing with kids, you tend to have to be.

I was 10 when I learned, and she was not tender with me.

But I'm wondering, have you noticed a softer approach to teaching over the last, like, say, 10 years?

I.

I think in general, our society has softened.

Softened in the sense that there are ways still to develop a young person without necessarily sort of the harsher ways to speak or to.

You know, I think.

Having said that, I think when a student understands it requires a serious commitment.

They understand.

Even if a teacher doesn't necessarily yell, there are still ways to communicate that in order to really get this work done or in order for you to really develop and increase your abilities, that those things have to be done a certain way.

Absolutely.

So.

So I think every teacher is also different.

And even.

Even at Metamount, every teacher is different.

It's like the.

The.

The approaches and the personalities.

It's.

It's really, from my vantage point of just being the artistic director and sort of working closely with everybody, I see that very clearly, you know, but the students that come to work with those specific teachers know that, and so they, they are seeking that from that particular instructor as well.

Okay, well, that was a cool sound effect.

That was an exclamation point right at.

The end of your point.

So that's perfect.

I have a button.

No, that's cool though.

So I guess it makes sense.

Every teacher will have their own unique style that kind of fits within the mold of the program.

Yeah.

I don't know if deep practice, it probably came from the book that I read.

Did I mention talent code?

But could you describe what metal mounts.

I don't.

And maybe there's a term that you use there.

But what does deep practice look like?

Like what are, what is the pull that draws people in that keeps them coming back?

But how also how do they see this substantial growth in a seven week program through prep?

Yes.

So Yo Yo Ma is actually an alum as well.

Yo Yo Ma, Itzel Perlman, Joshua Bell, James Ennis, Jesse Montgomery.

I mean, these are just like a sampling of the many people that have come through, you know, Metamount as the summer program.

So he had mentioned something about.

There's something very necessary about a place like Meadow Mount because it really does allow the time.

And that was a big thing with Galamian is because we can be, as I think with anything, whether it's music, whether it's sports, whether it's dance, any of these art forms that require such a high level or anything that requires such a high level of skill.

Yeah, it just requires time.

Yes.

Right.

To really spend with the craft of that thing that you're doing.

Right, absolutely.

I make always in my teaching a lot of analogies to sports because I think, you know, in order to reach a high level of even any athletic endeavor, you know, whether it's figure skating, basketball, you know, swimming, gymnastics, any of these things, the amount of time and focus it requires is so necessary.

There's no shortcut really to it.

Right.

And so I think that's what people understand about Meadow Mount is they know that that is a place where that it's set up in a way to provide that environment and opportunity for anybody who comes to.

I think that's already the first thing.

So it provides the environment, the distractions are minimum just because of the setting.

But also it's an amazing thing when you have so many other peers.

When we have the practice session or the practice session that is in the morning, it's from 8:30 to 12:30 every morning.

And it's built in a way that there's a 10 minute break so that there's time to reset and just physically make sure everybody is staying, you know, grounded and healthy.

Yeah.

But it is an amazing thing when you walk through the campus, you know, just through the wooded path and you walk by all of the buildings, the students usually are practicing in their own room because most everybody has their own room or they have their own practice room assigned to them.

And so when you walk through campus during that time and you just hear music, like from every window.

Yeah, yeah.

So it is.

I think that in and of itself is.

Is motivation for students, you know, because they just hear the students around them as they're practicing, you know, that they are also doing the work.

Right.

And then of course, the contest that they hear and they hear a lot of the advanced students, you know, and then there's an aspirational aspect as well.

Right.

So.

So I think, because that environment is sort of the way it's set up for Meadow Mound, I think that students, young musicians, sort of understand that and want to come back because they know, wow, look at what I did that summer.

And then want to continue that.

That for them, you know, with each successive summer too.

Absolutely.

I have a couple.

I want to make a quick point.

Sure.

I don't know if you remember this.

Our friend Sean Wilson, he's been on our show a couple times.

He's a fantastic gospel musician.

He has a really cool website.

Sean Wilson, piano, where he teaches, really air training.

But a lot.

Everything that goes with that.

But he broke it down.

He said the environment, as far as learning music, he broke it down.

Down to these three things I never forgot.

The environment, the motivation and the inspiration.

I think you touched on those almost in order when you were just talking.

I was like, oh, right, yeah, he's.

On to something too.

That's interesting.

Yes, very interesting.

Yeah, I absolutely agree with all of that.

Yeah.

And I think that.

Oh, sorry.

Oh, I was just saying.

I think that is what has allowed Metamount to continue in the way that it has, you know, for these 80 some years.

Because there aren't that many places I think that sort of have that built into their program.

You have a lot of different festivals.

I've been a part of a lot of different festivals myself, whether as a student or a performer or as a faculty artist.

And they're all different kind of focus, which they should be because then it provides a different experience for any musician or young musician.

But I think because of that, Metamount has.

That is what it provides.

People understand that in terms of a practice for students.

But I think the other thing for them is not just the individual practice, but it's also.

There's a lot of chamber music that happens at Metamount as well.

That has also been a long tradition.

So it is also an opportunity for them to work closely with their peers and sort of build that trust and relationship and ways of learning how to communicate through the instrument, but also even verbally, that is a skill that they have to learn and acquire.

So it's really interesting to see some.

The students that are sort of there for the first time, they're younger, maybe 13 or 14 years old, and then seeing how they communicate versus the ones that are like, you know, 19, 20, 21 or even older and how they communicate.

So you really see even within the students how it's.

It can transform and change over the years.

I can only imagine.

And speaking of transforming, I know both of you are teachers to some capacity.

And I've always.

And my.

My brother shout out to Andrew.

He's also a teacher and he's talked about how teaching has made him a better.

And I'm also wondering, because you guys, and you specifically, Janet, are part of such a.

Like a.

A program that really hones in on practice.

What's a practice session like for you?

And Anthony, I'm also curious as you as a teacher, what are your practice sessions like?

And are they long?

Are they short?

Are you focused?

Is it a reflection of some of the stuff you've learned that you practice individually, like on your own?

I just was wondering if you guys could maybe elaborate on that as well.

Like personal practice sessions?

Yes.

Yes.

Okay, gotcha.

Specifically.

Yeah, that's why I'm here.

I actually came to learn some of some things from Janet about her practice.

I wanted to learn something from you.

Anthony, you want to go first?

I'm going to go first because you're going to blow me out the water.

I'm sure I'll give one thing and it's probably somehow going to fall into play into what you say.

But one of the things that I still do and I focus on now is breaking things down.

I've heard the term chunking.

I don't know, I guess it came somewhere.

Yeah, Just breaking it down into small chunks.

Whether it's the passage of music that you're reading or, I don't know, a line from a song that you're learning by ears.

Just breaking that down instead of learning the whole thing.

Even if the whole thing is not the whole song, but like the whole thing is the whole verse, I would break that down into small pieces.

And a whole practice.

A practice success into a practice session for me could be just repeating that same thing.

For example, I play bass.

I've been playing bass for a long time, but more recently I've been into piano, which is a whole new challenge for me because I don't have, like, the muscle memory and the automatic things happening.

Even though I hear it in my head, it doesn't necessarily translate right away to my fingertips.

So I might just take the same.

I don't know, say, four chords, for example, example, just to simplify.

And I might just play those in different cases for.

For a while.

So I might just be like, you know, whole notes to kind of thing, and then quarter notes, and then maybe different rhythms, but the same chord progression.

And then maybe I'll flip it.

I read somewhere, too, that almost.

It's almost a good sign when you're playing it if someone couldn't recognize what you're playing because you're playing it so out of context, but you're playing that same thing, right?

So I just.

I've been really just diving into that.

And what I found is I've been learning a lot faster.

I would still love to have a metal mount in my life, but for my personal practice, that's one of the things that works for me.

That's so funny that you mentioned, Anthony, because I talk to a lot of my colleagues that are my generation, you know, and we.

And some of us.

Some of them I met when I was 11, you know, 10, 11, 12, at Meadow Mount.

And I'm still friends with them today.

I mean, I think that's the other amazing thing about a place like that.

And we all say the same thing.

It's like, oh, gosh, wouldn't you love a summer at Meadow Mount Now?

Because we all, you know, we are distracted by life most of the time.

So that seems like such a luxury.

I totally agree with.

Yeah, I totally agree with a lot of what you said.

I think in my own personal practice, I guess it is kind of breaking or just doing smaller phrases.

I mean, obviously you want to already know what you want the piece or the music to sound like, right?

So you already have something in your ear.

You already have something that's, like, fully realized, in a way, in your imagination and in your ear.

And so then what you're trying to do is to kind of work out all the kinks, right?

So that you want to.

You want everything to have such ease and fluidity so that when you're in that moment of performing that you're not having to think about the technical aspects, Right.

Because those things are sort of built in.

It's already imprinted in your brain.

It's imprinted in your muscle memory in a way that you don't have to be micromanaging that like in the moment when you're performing.

You know, when I talk to my students about this, it's your ultimate.

The ultimate goal is to digest and to have enough time with something, a piece, so that when you are on stage, you allow yourself the most flexibility and freedom.

Because every performance is not going to be exactly the same, but you want to.

To have that ability to really be more generous and actually open up what, you know, you've already worked on rather than worrying about things, you know.

And I think, yeah, it's kind of an interesting thing because when you're worrying or you're focusing on those things, even physically, you are a little bit different.

Right.

You want to be actually physically the most free.

It is hard to be relaxed, actually in performing, in performance.

Right.

So you're trying to find ways to really make those things possible in the moment of performance.

Right.

So a lot of that is that, you know, small section practicing.

I love that you the word chunking, Anthony, because I'm totally very familiar with that.

And it's also, I think, doing it in small sections or even doing it slow enough, that is another big tenet of practice.

You have to do deeply and very slow practice.

What it really ends up being is your brain is trying to absorb and really understand from all different angles in many different ways that thing that you're trying to do.

Right.

And this is the analogy I also give to.

Onto to athletics.

You know, they will analyze.

Why do they watch videos of themselves?

Right?

Right.

Because they are trying to analyze every single aspect of, you know, if they're a swimmer, like, what does their stroke look like?

What is their pacing, what is their timing of the breath?

You know, what, how are their feet moving?

You know, how do they do the turn?

I mean, there's so many small micro aspects that they are trying to study so that they can give themselves that little extra edge or really to develop something within their own physicality of, you know, how they do the thing that they're going to do.

Right.

So I think it's very much.

I mean, I often say we are athletes in a way, we are using our bodies.

Right.

But we are also.

There's obviously the.

The art part of it in terms of the expression.

Right?

Yeah.

The emotion, the expression.

So we are still trying to train our bodies, though, I think, to be able to do the things that we're trying to do from a musical standpoint.

Well said.

Yeah, I agree.

I got it from the best of the best, so that's great that it really makes sense.

Does that help?

Does that answer your question?

Yeah, it does.

I just, I like to learn from, you know, what the best are doing, and I consider you two some of the best.

So there you go.

I think the other thing for me is, and I see that even in different students, I think when they really start to learn and progress differently is when they're, but this is for musicians, obviously, is when they really start to develop their ear.

So if they don't know what it is something is supposed to sound like, or the way, the different colors that they can produce, or the clarity that they need in that difficult passage, then they may not know actually how to progress or to practice even.

Right.

And so a large part, I think, is helping the students.

And for me, it's the same too.

Every time I listen to different music or I listen to different performers, I'm sort of drawn into the detail and sort of the nuance of their playing.

So that, that allows my ear to also develop more.

I, I'm a big believer that, you know, if you're, I'm a classical musician, but, you know, regardless, you should listen to many, many different types of music because composers were influenced by many, many different types of music, especially, you know, as years go by.

And so I think the more your ear starts to understand, develop more, then you, you know, you as a performer, as a player, that becomes part of your own, you know, your own bank, like what is, what is in your own mind that you start to create in your own sound or you're trying to develop.

Right.

So I think those kinds of things go very much hand in hand with the actual physical, you know, development as well.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Spot on.

I wonder.

Press for time.

No, I, I, I want to go in on a lot more specific.

Yeah, I know.

So I think we, I think we'll have to do too, if that's okay with you.

Oh, I'd love it.

Continue.

Dive a little deeper into some of these things.

But, yeah, it's been, it's been great, I guess, trying to think of, I mean, and I want to hear more about your performance.

So we definitely have to come back, talk about that a little bit.

You have an incredible career and yeah.

Gone to the greatest music you Wear so many hats.

So it's hard to talk about that too.

That's a whole other thing too, right?

It is, yeah.

Try to think of a good way to leave.

Because I know that.

I mean, we're all students of either life, music, business, whatever it is.

So what's one of the things.

And I think deep practice, the way that we described it probably could be applied to most things.

More of a.

I would say a conscious awareness of what you want to achieve and really breaking it down into smaller pieces and tackling it that way.

But what's one of the things that you want your students to leave, whether it's the end of a session or the end of the term with something that comes from you?

Yeah.

I mean, there are obviously many things, I think for me, like let's say if I've had a student for, you know, their undergrad or, you know, maybe their graduate student degree or something like that.

Right.

I think my goal always with a student is to help them develop as much as they can.

I mean, we hear this a lot.

To help them develop as much as they can so that they can be as self sufficient as possible.

That's.

That's often my goal, you know.

So obviously that covers a wide range of things, right.

From.

From physical technique to musical understanding to being able to.

How to approach a new work, you know, things like that.

That I want them to be able to feel when they leave their time with me, that they have all of those schools as much as possible so that they can continue, even on their own, to develop further.

Right.

Even if they don't.

Even if I'm not around on that regular schedule anymore.

But I think ultimately that is my goal for them in the time that they're with me.

That's a great goal.

Well, I'm going to say they're lucky and blessed.

Fortunate to have you.

Absolutely.

As a teacher and probably a lot more a mentor.

I'm sorry that your violin teacher wasn't more like Jen.

Or else you'd probably be.

We should talk.

Never too late, right?

Anytime.

You love the.

Again.

I think I might.

I love the violin.

I'll pay your tuition.

You can go to Meadow Mount.

Remember you said that it's legally binding.

Come.

Come visit.

For sure.

Maybe a visit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Thanks so much.

It's been fun.

Really been fun.

Insightful as well.

Like we've.

All it's really done is made me want to ask you a lot more questions.

So we're going to get off this and we're going to set up a time where we can maybe a lot more space to just get into it.

Tell us about your origin story.

Yeah.

Okay.

I would love it.

Yes.

It's a great show.

Yeah.

Pleasure.

Absolute pleasure.

Thank you so much.

Thank you all for listening.

Stay blessed.

Nope, nope, I got a.

I skipped something important.

Just let people know, please, where they can find you.

Follow your journey.

That's really important.

Ah, okay.

So I do have a website, JanetSung.com it is still.

It needed some extra work, so it might be down at the moment.

But you know, sometimes a quick Google search will do enough and there's definitely ways if they want to message me if they have a question or anything like that.

I'm at the DePaul University School of Music in Chicago.

That website has my.

My work email and they're very much welcome to reach out with that.

Awesome.

Awesome.

Thanks again.

And until next time, everyone, be kind to yourself and each other.

Sam.