What We Can Learn from the Fiddle
What Makes Us Weird Makes Us Great
A couple of weeks ago I went to Music Hall to hear the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and special guest violinist Tessa Lark perform. Going to the CSO is one of those things I do a handful of times a year and I tend to enjoy it – I wouldn’t say I really understand the symphony, but I do get a kick out of hearing a well-performed live musical act, especially one that requires extremely high levels of skill and coordination.
Normally, I am impressed by the Symphony (they are, after all, a top 5-10 Symphony in the country). But rarely does the actual experience move me, make me feel an entirely different way and evoke emotions that are unique to the experience. But Tessa Lark’s performance did just that.
She’s not the only incredible musician who has performed a solo or in a primary position when I have visited the CSO. She is, however, the only one whose music I cared about after the show was done. And it’s more than just her skill – but what her skill represents.
She has one of those backgrounds that tends to lead to someone playing lead violin for the CSO, as well as having contemporary composers compose music specifically for her. She grew up in Richmond, Kentucky (just south of Lexington, so not far away from the Queen City) and even studied at University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music (a top program in the country in it’s own regard) in her youth before going to the New England Conservatory and then eventually Julliard (have you ever heard of it?).
Her pedigree is incredible, even if she grew up in the Appalachian Foothills. She’s one of a million examples of the fact that talent is evenly distributed around the world and can come from anywhere. Something I truly believe in as a Venture Capitalist based in Cincinnati, Ohio. But even as that is true, she left this part of the country to go learn from the Masters of their Craft in the Northeast. She went to Oz and learned from the great Wizard, as many talented prodigies have done since the dawn of time.
And, in all likelihood, that was an incredible decision. Her career has taken off. On her last album, she had people like Jon Batiste featured. While she is unlikely the most popular or most streamed violinist on the planet, she has built a solid career. Things have worked out for her.
But when she played in the CSO last week, the thing that really struck me was not the violin, but the fiddle, and her mastery of it. While the violin and fiddle are technically the same instrument, they carry very different cultural lineages and reputations. I was not, nor have I ever been, expecting to be moved emotionally by a fiddle. But the mastery of her craft compelled me. And not only that, but clearly, this was something she felt was deeply personal. You don’t get up in front of a packed Music Hall and play an instrument like the fiddle without having a deep desire to do so – a symphony orchestra is not exactly a fiddle-forward environment. The crowd tends to prefer the music of German and Austrian men who have been dead for 100-200+ years. Not that that’s a bad thing – I love Gustav Mahler, the bad boy of classical music.
As I continued to listen to her, I read through the program and realized that the theme of the evening was coming home. She wasn’t just playing her fiddle in front of any old orchestra crowd. Music Hall and Cincinnati are just up the road from her childhood home, Richmond, Kentucky. She played Music Hall in children’s orchestras and symphonies and I am sure more than once during her prodigy-laden teenage years at CCM. It’s one thing to see a master at work, but an entirely different thing to see master at work after they have come home. It carries a completely different meaning because that person did that same thing once when they weren’t the expert and here is that person doing that same thing now, only much better, while also maintaining a localized context. The juxtaposition of those two ideas is powerful, even if it’s hard to explain.
And Tessa’s story is cool, if not all that unfamiliar to people from this part of the country. She was born in a place that wouldn’t necessarily be known for its classical music output. Richmond does have some cool musical history (as does Cincinnati, as does Kentucky, as does Appalachia), but there’s a reason Julliard is where it is and it isn’t here. So she left, to learn from the masters; to be at the top of her craft and excel among her real peers. And from there, she started touring the world and achieving pretty notable success in the circles that care about that sort of thing.
Again, part of the lesson is that great talent can (and does) come from everywhere. But that’s an idea as American as Apple Pie. Sure we have elite institutions that churn out people into positions of power, but since the time of the founding of those elite institutions, we have had upstart, obscure nobodies who have gone on and created incredible things, led incredible initiatives, and changed the country and the world. America is foundationally built on the idea that everyone should have the opportunity to be great – meritocracy and our system, while not perfect and a constant work-in-progress, are what makes us unique. This is undeniably a core founding principle.
Tessa being from Richmond, Kentucky and being a great classical musician is less interesting than it is just a part of the fabric of our country.
However, what’s really interesting is the fact that she is all of those things and she is killer at playing the fiddle, an instrument that does not necessarily garner a lot of praise among music snobs, let alone in many orchestras. Not only that, but she seems to relish playing this instrument which does not carry the same prestige that her violin does.
Instead of hiding from her fiddler past, she embraces it. The thing that makes her unique (or strange), also makes her great. Sure, there are a lot of great violinists out there who can play a concerto and blow you away. But how many great fiddlers can do what she does? How many of them have the history that she does?
And this is true for this midwestern part of the country in general. It behooves us to understand what makes us different, because what makes us different can either be a crutch that holds us back or a lever that propels us to greatness. It’s not enough for us to leave this region, gather all the knowledge from the great masters elsewhere and bring it back here so the region can prosper. We must also understand how we are different from the rest of the world, such that we can lean on those differences and step apart from the crowd.
If you want to be the best at anything, you need to be diligent and work hard and catch a couple of good breaks. But you also must recognize when you have an inherent advantage and press on it heavily. More often than not, these advantages come in the shape of eccentricities and strangeness.
A city like Cincinnati has abundant examples of this at play:
There is no reason a city as hilly as Cincinnati’s should have a world-class marathon like the Flying Pig. But the reality is that our hills are what make our marathon so unique, thus a great challenge for real runners.
There is no reason a city the size of Cincinnati’s with two professional sports franchises in a football-addled state like Ohio should have one of the most well-attended soccer clubs in the MLS, just a few short years after joining the league. But it’s our strange relationship with soccer, regional history and our other sports franchises that have helped propel FC Cincinnati to the top of the MLS heap.
And in a city that has a very small Greek-American population, why is our most popular / iconic food a Greek pasta dish like Cincinnati-style chili? I would argue that Cincinnati-style chili thrives in Cincinnati because it is so unique. The abundant Irish & German citizens of this town embraced a traditionally Greek dish, added in their own flavors (literally and metaphorically), and made it an singular experience. It’s weird and it’s authentically Cincinnati and people love it.
Before you try to compete on the same axes as everyone else, identify what makes you strange—and then build around it relentlessly.