by Randolyn Zinn
Ed Bilous, the composer and teacher, met me the other day at Juilliard where he has created the Center for Innovation in the Arts. Last month he was awarded the William Schuman Chair at Juilliard and you will be able to watch a video of his stirring speech at the end of this interview where he makes the case for re-imagining our educational system with the arts placed at the center of the curriculum.
Ed and I met In the early 1980s when we were teaching artists together at Lincoln Center Institute–the aesthetic education program that matches artists with schoolteachers to prepare students for seeing productions of dance, theater and music.
Randolyn Zinn: What year was that exactly…?
Ed Bilous: Had to be between ‘81 and ’83. I was working on my PhD at Juilliard at the time.
RZ: Just think, no cell phones or Internet. The extent of personal technology were our SONY Walkmans and telephone answering machines with tiny reel-to-reel tapes inside. You couldn’t dial in for your messages from outside the house.
EB: That’s right.
RZ: So how did you become so adept with technology and its interface with music?
EB: Technology has always been a part of music making. The shift from harpsichord to piano was largely a technological revolution, as was the creation of the organ. When you think about early composers a thousand years ago, their resources were fairly undeveloped, basically just primitive string and wind instruments. Bit by bit, technological changes brought them to life in a way that allowed far more expressivity and creativity until we got the kind of instruments we see in the orchestra today. The transformation from harpsichord to piano is amazing. The harpsichord doesn’t really have dynamics; you play loud or you play soft, but you can’t really achieve a crescendo. Having that ability with the piano transformed music making and a whole new kind of playing and composing. Trumpets went from just being bugle-like things, cones of brass, to instruments with valves that allow all kinds of sophisticated chromatics and articulation. So…technology has always been a part of music.