Collaboration sits at the heart of my favorite experiences and most rewarding moments. Watching an energized group of people bow together with full smiles, beginning to play after another musician cues me in, feeling the energy in a room full of people dancing, or hearing appreciation murmur through a shared meal with clanking silverware. Despite the persistent cultural myth that individual achievement sits alone at the top of a precarious yet alluring pinnacle, we are deeply interdependent whether we recognize it or not.
I say this from decades of forgetting and remembering this essential truth. Learning interdependence is at the heart of both my piano playing story and MCMC’s story.
Interdependence in music could fill volumes. Layers of interacting elements combine to make a musical experience possible: from creation, to performance or recording, to the moment sound is received by a listener. Over the years, I’ve come to see how this musical concept extends far beyond the piano bench. In its best form, interdependence respects autonomy while seeking interaction.
No artist creates in pure isolation, we all have countless influences. Anytime one of us creates, practices, or presents, it comes through the filter of our experience. Not only that, we use forms, structures, and tools that have developed before us through generations of experimentation. Music connects us to something larger than ourselves not only historically, but physically. Vibrations move in wave form between us across time and space. That invisible yet felt connectivity continues to orient and inspire me. It makes art feel alive, approachable, and necessary.
What is interdependence?
I first encountered the term while retraining my piano technique after a career-pausing injury. It entered my vocabulary like a golden word. Guided by my teacher Yoriko Fieleke and colleagues at the Golandsky Institute, I slowly relearned its meaning. Interdependence allows two separate hands to function as one unified experience of playing. The sensation brings coordination, clarity, and natural command.
It sounds simple, but interdependence can contain extraordinary complexity. I often refer to it as the vertical moment -- my favorite description of this freeing experience, as it was shared with me. Rather than a to-do list of overwhelm, it becomes loving attention to all the parts that must be included to complete the sound. There is no rush when it's applied this way, just peace with what is and presence.
Three notes in the right hand. Two in the left. Found, felt (fingertips on keys), then synchronized into one unified moment.
To experience clarity, even briefly, feels significant. At the piano, a single chord can feel like winning. Success unfolds one vertical moment at a time. Frame by frame, chord by chord, note by note.
I remember the moment this sensation unlocked for me as a child, way before I had language for it. After years of learning one note at a time and matching notes on the page to keys on my upright piano (F was the one with chipped ivory and brown wood underneath), came the day I played two notes simultaneously. That was it. No going back. I was probably seven years old, electrified by possibility as the world of sound combinations suddenly opened up.
That spark led to solo repertoire and performance that appeared solitary, and began to feel that way too, but it really wasn’t. Composers lived through my hands. Teachers guided me weekly. The myth of aloneness became increasingly confusing.
Over time, I began to understand that what I was learning at the keyboard was also true beyond it. The coordination required between two hands mirrors something larger: independent parts working with awareness of each other create something they couldn’t produce alone.
Expanding this idea of coordination outward, I’m inspired by the living web of our musical community made up of each essential individuals -- teachers, students, parents, staff, board members, audience members, partners, donors, and friends -- and together we create the conditions for confidence to grow and creative expression to thrive. There is something irreplaceable about experiencing music together in live spaces.
Interdependence reveals how profoundly everyone’s contribution is needed. Each person’s effort supports another person’s possibility. Progress leads to joy, it’s how we’re wired. From the focused place of planning coordination, awareness of disparate pieces working together may lead to what so many of us want out of music learning: a feeling of play and even fun.