Celebrating the power of possibility.
I'm Dr. Jeffrey Papas and I believe anything is possible.
Welcome to another episode of Anything is Possible. I'm Halor in Hilton Hill.
Love telling these great stories about great people whose lives prove that anything is possible.
My guest today, Dr. Jeff Pappas, a great friend as well. Thank you for being here.
Oh, it's a pleasure. Thank you for the invitation.
First time we ever met and hung out, you'd invited me to do something over at the University of Tennessee
and then a friendship started to emerge and we hung out.
And the first thing that I noticed about you was you were a visionary.
Like you had great ideas for what was going to happen at the School of Music at the University of Tennessee
and to watch those things unfold. Unbelievable.
Where did you get this visionary aspect of who you are?
And thank you for being here.
It's a great question. It's so internal to me. I love change.
I think change is a positive in our world. I think that people get so afraid of it
and I think that's what visionaries do. They change the world.
I'll give you a great example. Somebody leaves our university as a faculty member, which we don't like,
of course, but we don't like when they leave our college.
But I looked at our leadership team just the other day and I said, this is a great opportunity.
Look at what they've done for us and let's go make this even better.
And the only other thing I can think about being visionaries, I always want to be present in the world
and I want to be relevant to the world.
And I think if you're going to be present and relevant in a world, then you better change.
And that's not to dissuade or disparage anyone who's a firm traditionalist.
That's just not internal to my fabric.
Let's talk a little bit about that.
I want to start where the university is right now when it comes to music
because you now have the distinction of being historical, right?
You are a founder. What happened at the University of Tennessee in the area of music?
Because this is a big year for you guys.
Oh, it's been huge. We could take up a lot of time with this.
I'm going to give you the readers' digest first and if you don't mind.
I've been here 12 years. We have done great work.
We, W.E., capitalized, bold, whatever you need to do, it's we.
Because I tell our faculty and our staff all the time that we all have to be rolling in the same direction.
I know that's cliche, but I use it all the time.
So about two, two and a half years ago, our visionary chancellor, Don Diplomyn,
had realized we had never really looked at our academic structure in decades.
So she put a committee together and I happened to be on that committee
as a member of the College of Arts and Sciences from the Visual and Performing Arts.
And long, long story short, you know, there was, well, why, how can we reimagine our university if we're going to do so?
And I believe, and I'm talking now from Jeff Pappas' perspective, not speaking for Don Diplomyn,
I think she ideally wanted maybe a College of Fine Arts or for us to look in that direction
for whatever reason it didn't go that way.
But I'll never forget, she was meeting with our music faculty and she looked up there.
So there's a lot of colleges of music that are our peer and aspirational institutions.
Would you all be interested in that?
I just told you a few minutes ago, I said, Don Diplomyn, we'll talk about anything.
Just because Howard and you and I talk about changing something, that doesn't mean it's going to change, right?
We may change it, we may tweak it, or we may not change it.
But by talking about it, at least engages us in energy toward a common goal or a common situation or problem.
And so it was just really interesting.
Then we went on warp speed, let me tell you.
We had about a month to make the decision because she said, how about if we look at you all becoming a college of music?
Because, you know, it takes a lot of things to do that in the state of Tennessee.
You've got to go through your university, you've got to go through the board of trustees,
you've got to go through the Tennessee Higher Education Commission.
So really, I mean, that's how it happened.
We were an academic restructuring committee, Don Di looked and said, well, there are colleges and music out there.
Would you be interested? We said yes.
And from there, we got to a college July 1, 2023.
And I'm telling you, I have friends across the nation that still don't believe it.
They're like, you know, because, and I'll be honest, this is not, I'm not happy to talk about this,
but when you talk about colleges and universities taking programs away,
anytime I see the headline, you know, X University or X colleges eliminating programs,
I hate to say it, I can almost guarantee you art, theater or music are going to be in there in one way or another.
And so for UT to take it and elevate it, it's huge.
And I mean, people were like, you've got to be kidding me.
And I said, I am not kidding you.
What I noticed from you was a definite love of the arts, love of music.
But it's almost like you love the art of leadership too.
That's something I, when I first met you, I thought this guy loves not just bringing people together to do beautiful music together.
He likes bringing people together to do great things together.
It's like orchestrating the world even.
How do we get to this you?
So I was in music since five years old. My family blue collar, dry cleaning Cincinnati, had a restaurant in Greek.
Grandfather came over on the boat, you know, so leadership was kind of natural from about age five,
because I'll tell you a true story that at age five, I was responsible for the floor being swept.
And doesn't really get you into leadership, but it gets you into what happens if responsibilities are not kept.
So it starts to form your thinking.
So my father was very insistent that I study, you know, piano, which I literally hated, you know, at five, six years old.
I, you know, go practice for an hour.
What we know about child psychology today, maybe not the greatest, but you know, where we were back in the 1900s, like to say.
So, you know, what really happened though, I ended up going, obviously, I'd get my undergraduate in music.
And I took a conducting class and conducting a lot.
All my loves of music, because I love, I like to geek out on the theory part.
I love to hone in on the history.
I love to perform.
I love to create.
And really from there, when you become a conductor, you really are a leader.
But it's a different type of leadership.
And I knew when I was doing it.
And I literally at one point said, I've got to do something else.
And this can sound selfish to harness my own ability, because I knew I wanted to do something a little bit broader and deeper to serve more people.
And so that allowed me to make a transition from being a conductor in a university setting to an academic leader.
And when you become an academic leader, you get to just, you get to invest and serve so many people in so many positive ways.
What makes a great conductor?
Musical?
Yeah.
Visionary?
You know, a conductor is an interpreter.
That's what people forget.
We do not create.
People think we create.
We don't create at all.
What is a great conductor interpreting?
The composer's intent.
And that's the beauty of it.
So I'll give you a piece, say the Brahms Requiem.
People know that pretty well.
Or any piece of music that's classical.
Why do we have 100 recordings of the Brahms Requiem?
Well, and because we love the piece, one because it's a great piece.
But conductors believe they can bring something to their interpretation of it through Brahms' intent.
You know, Brahms writes piano.
What is a piano for that choir?
What is a piano for that orchestra?
And what are those ranges?
And how do you view it?
How do you view the shaping of the phrase?
How do you view the shaping of the entire piece?
You know, I always say to everyone I ever have conducted or I've ever done workshops or clinics,
conducting a piece of music, whether it be a three-minute piece or an hour and a half,
it's like going on a journey.
You got to start here and you got to go there and it all has to be perfect for it to really make, you know, a good musical vacation,
so to speak, to keep that symbolism alive.
So you go through school and you discover conducting and you're like, oh, wow.
This, but then you use a very interesting word.
You said to harness your abilities.
So there was, there had to be something in conducting that you saw beyond the music,
that this is bigger than music.
It really is.
I mean, every conductor is a leader.
But at the same time, again, all I can say, and internally, I just knew there was more for me.
And I'm glad, you know, somebody walked up to me yesterday.
We had our convocation at the college, our first convocation, one of our faculty members.
And I thank him. I won't call him out here.
But he said, thanks for what you've been doing this year.
You know, you've really led us.
And I looked at him and said, no, no, it's everybody.
He said, no, no, stop.
It's not everybody.
You know, and I agree.
I'm the first to tell you if we met out that every good leader leads,
but every good leader also thinks everyone around them.
And, you know, we hire staff all the time.
I've got some wonderful staff.
We have wonderful staff and a lot of young people,
and they're hiring assistants now because we're a college.
They're directors or associate deans.
And I'm saying, do not hire you.
Don't hire you.
If you hire you, you're going to fail, you know.
Say more about that.
Yeah.
Say more about that.
Why is that one of your philosophies or maxim?
Oh, because, you know, well, I think it was Benjamin Franklin that said,
and if I apologize if somebody actually does know this, you know, text me or call me and let me know.
But Benjamin Franklin said, if everyone in the room agrees, only one person's thinking.
And I love that quote.
It stuck with me.
I use it in my leadership courses.
You know, I mean, it's just crazy if you think about that.
I want to be sitting in a room if we have an issue or we have a problem
or we've got to think something through.
And I do not want a bunch of people just doing this.
I want people, you know, challenging in a positive way.
And I think we can get very, we got to be very careful anymore in our climate.
I'm not going to go there, but you get my point, you know, that we get so adversarial.
Challenging and questioning each other should not be adversarial.
It should be for the growth of the organization or of the people or of the situation.
And so I just love the fact that you can be in the same room and you can have seven different perspectives.
But you know what I think that grows out of and I think it grows out of what happens when people do music together.
So if you're conducting an orchestra and you've got woodwinds and you've got strings
and you've got all these different types of instruments, they make different types of sounds,
they add a different texture and flavor, you actually need all of that to make this.
So if you have that concept that divergent pieces brought together around a big idea
make it sound better than it would individually, just that insight.
I would imagine as a leader, put you at the table in a different way.
Never thought of it. I'm going to steal it. Thank you very much.
I love it.
No, you're right. You know, the hard thing is, you know, if you're conducting,
the last thing anybody wants to be told is you're too loud or can you do it this way?
It's not really exactly what I'm thinking, you know, because,
and that's kind of like we're talking about right here, right?
I mean, it does give you that license to be a leader,
but you know, the best conductors that I've ever seen form a relationship
and a community with the group.
And I think that's the same thing with leadership.
Let's talk about the future though of artistic education within the academy
because like you said, there's so many places that are so technology driven now.
Curricula are moving toward the marketplace wants coders,
and that was until AI showed up, but the marketplace wants this,
the marketplace wants that.
If somebody is doing anything in the arts, how does that add value?
And I'm thinking it adds great value.
What, talk about the future of art and education because I think it's essential.
Well, I do too, you know, and obviously I do, but I would if even if I wasn't in my position.
We are never going to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Arnold Schoenberg, the famous 12-tone composer, said there's still plenty of music to be written in the KSC major.
You know, so this is where you get to your traditionalist and your people who want to be progressive.
Our traditionalists have to hold on and they will hold on.
We have a little mantra and I say this at every audition interview we do at UT,
that if you want to be the concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic, this is the place for you.
If you want to create a job that is not in the marketplace today, this is the place for you.
We're really looking at a couple parallel universes to use that phrase.
We've got music.
We're not going to get rid of orchestra band, choir, jazz band,
but even at UT and our college of music, we're creating music business administration degree, music communications degrees,
because we know there are jobs out there and there are the realities out there that are going to continue to create music
outside of the performance hall or outside of the research or outside of the scholar creative activity.
We have people out there who want to do jobs and in higher education, we have got to continue to connect to what society needs
to connect to what our communities need and be relevant.
And the beauty of what we're doing in my opinion is we're allowing anyone to walk into our college and say,
I'm interested in music, how can I have a career in it?
Music
I was thinking the other day, I have a friend who's a very successful music producer in Nashville,
and he came to visit me and he called me afterwards and he said,
hey, something's not quite right with you. He was right, by the way, and we had a conversation.
And then he said something to me, I never thought about music education in this way and the value it might add.
He said, you do realize what my musical training has done for me.
And so what's that? He said, it's made me a professional noticer.
He said, if I know, if I can hear intervals, if I can look at a piece of art and I can see shape and light and shadow
and all the dimensionality of, you know, some painting, all these things in the arts raised my ability to be aware and to notice.
And he said, in every aspect of my life, what I've noticed is that I notice more and it gives me more insight.
And I'd never, so we started having this conversation about what do you actually learn when you study music?
First of all, if intelligence is rooted in pattern recognition, in a lot of these arts, it's patterns and sequences.
So you really are feeding the foundation of intellect that can be used in so many different ways.
Does that make sense?
It all does. You know, this has been proven that the study of music uses both sides of the brain almost equally.
You know, and that's the beauty of it.
You know, it was a few years back, but I wish I could give you the actual date.
But I remember reading the people who went to med school, what their undergrad degree was, and there was chemistry, and there was biology, and there was music.
You know, and there actually, as you probably already know this, in some of those fields, they're actually having artists, theater people, musicians come in and help people because we're so empathetic.
We're very empathetic people. We're very much in tune.
You know, a really fine musician, as you know, really fine actor, really fine painter, sculptor.
They're really in tune with the world, but not in a way that really anybody else can sometimes understand.
Right.
And that's the beauty of it to me, because we're never going to understand, you know, how these great people do what they do, but they do form really some type of response inside of us that draws us to them.
And that's, to me, what you're just talking about.
You know, they have taken the world around them, and they've created it, and then they're allowing us to look at it through their lens.
And that is so beautiful.
What will AI do to what you do?
You know, I would say the jury's still out on that, you know, because I think we're scratching the surface of AI.
Personally, I think we can harness it for positive.
You know, we need to use it for positive.
I think it's like anything. There's going to be a positive and negative effect to it.
Of course, there was the legislation, you know, in the Tennessee General Assembly about, you know, you can't, you know, become Johnny Cash all of a sudden.
You can't start becoming Loretta, Glenn, if I can say her name.
Excuse me, Loretta, I can't, my elves aren't working today.
But, you know, it can be very, very helpful to us.
But I still think that when it comes to hearing music, people are going to want to see it live.
You know, I think back to, I don't know, years ago when we had the amusement parks, I always said they went to all these tracks, you know, and they had singers on top people.
We're just like, this is the end of the world.
Now it's 30 years ago and we're all still here.
We're all still here.
You know, we're all still here.
So, you know, again, you know, you can't say you like progress and then say, well, AI, we can't have that because that's not fair.
You know, so if you're, I'm looking to people, and again, this is where, this is not my strength.
I'm looking to people inside our leadership team who are really good at this to inform me and then we can make a decision about how it's going to affect us.
I do think, you know, and I see what's happening in medicine and I see what's happening in some areas where it can, you know, I was watching one of the new shows and it was like, you know, AI might be able to tell you if you're going to have a heart attack.
I mean, how valuable is that?
You know, it can tell you before you're going to have it and that all the algorithms that no human mind can do if you've got this, this, this, and this, you are prone to that.
I mean, that's fantastic.
The name of my show is Anything is Possible.
And today you just gave me yet another, ah-ha-ha.
Possibility is connected to your relationship with change.
Absolutely.
And I never thought about it until talking to you today that because you were willing to pivot and change and grow, redefine not only yourself from conductor of music to conductor of, right, to pivot and change,
but now we have this, this new thing at the University of Tennessee, entire college now and none of that would happen if you didn't have the relationship you have with change.
That's what creates the possibility.
Well, that's kind of you to say, I'm going to go back to, I think what I said at that time was it's not a one person show.
We've got great faculty, we've got a great staff, we've got great students, and we all believe in each other.
Change is only one step in the direction of possibility.
Let's look at it like that.
You've got to be willing to change to get to the possibility.
And I think I've told you this, I love the name of this show, Anything is Possible.
It really is.
I love when I hear your show and I'm going to mess it up. Today is the day you can make a change in your world, say that every hour on your show on the radio.
I want to do something publicly as we wrap today.
I want to thank you for encouraging me.
As long as I've known you, you've always taken the time to just shoot me a text or just reach out to me to encourage me to keep moving forward.
Thank you for that.
Well, you're welcome.
But thanks for what you do.
And we've talked about this.
We have a mutual admiration society here and we can do another show on that.
I can interview you and bring out all the things you're bringing me.
I thank you today for allowing me to think differently and giving me the opportunity.
You give me things to think about right now that I get to get to the car and start making some texts.
Dr. Jeff Pappas, thanks for being on anything that's possible.
My pleasure, Howard. Thank you.