Since my resignation with the Artaria String Quartet this past summer, I’ve been deep in thought about the next steps for my career, ranging from the anxieties of the scramble to find new freelance work to reevaluating my presence within my current music groups among other realities of transitioning in my career. Around the same time as I was making this huge shift in my musical identity and career, Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 Presidential race and endorsed Kamala Harris as the nominee, and my immediate reaction was to dive into politics with the impulse that I needed to witness this pivotal moment in American History that I coexisting in. This new engagement surprisingly inspired a re-evaluation of my artistic purpose and how to stretch my musicianship farther than I imagined in the past. I began to realize that I could utilize my musical voice as a means for advocacy - to perform as a messenger of generational emotive inheritance to resurface the lived experiences of our ancestors - and to reach a greater impact in the community that I belong to.

This week, I am joined by Jason Wells, bassist with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, co-executive director of 10th Wave Music and friend of the podcast, Haydn Behind the Music Stand, to explore some thoughts about arts impact, specifically in the classical music genre, identifying current barriers that limit our industry’s reach and possible solutions of how to enact a paradigm shift within our community.

Many of the topics we will discuss will have open ended solutions and may have other viewpoints, which I invite listeners to respond to with their feedback either on social media or at haydnmusicstand@gmail.com. You can also support these episodes by becoming a patron at patreon.com/haydmusicstand and by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.