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Center for Enlightened Leadership
 
THE LENS E-NEWSLETTER/JOURNAL

Soaring on Two Wings: Head and Heart
By ADAM SOKOLOW

  Adam Sokolow
  Adam Sokolow
Senior Advisor

One of the best places to spend the summer in the United States is Teton Village, Wyoming. Nestled at the foot of the Teton Mountains, just a few miles from the southern entrance to Grand Teton National Park, it combines mild summer temperatures and low humidity with awe-inspiring natural beauty, dominated by the Tetons, which thrust themselves abruptly and majestically right up from the level ground.

From the mid-1960s Teton Village evolved into a bustling ski resort offering some of the best skiing in the nation. Yet not long ago during the summer months, except for the locals, the village remained mostly empty. This surprising vacancy prompted Maestro Ling Tong to visit the village. After securing promises of financial commitment from some of the area’s wealthy families, he committed himself to build his own “Field of Dreams”—a concert hall that would become the summer home of the Grand Teton Music Festival.

Ling constructed his concert hall expecting that talented musicians would agree to take part in his festival—and so they did. As his annual festival gained national recognition, it became apparent that he needed to upgrade his home so that it would be a more gracious place for entertaining his friends and patrons. Here is where I enter this story.

I was enjoying lunch with Ling and a few friends in the garden of his residence in the rolling hills near Philadelphia when he told us about his music festival and asked me if I would be interested in helping him renovate his home. A simple (and enthusiastic) yes on my part, and I was off to Wyoming. Once there, I spent my days rebuilding his residence, and in the evenings I attended symphonic and chamber concerts performed by musicians from our nation’s most celebrated symphonic orchestras. I felt like I was quite literally living at the top of the world—my spirit soaring the heights of the Rocky Mountains on the wings of classical music.

After the evening concerts I would invariably walk with friends up into the mountains where the natural night sky, unsullied by air pollution and the lights of civilization, seemed so completely filled with tiny points of gleaming light that it appeared more sparkling white than empty black. Where even the blackness of space could be seen for what it really is—not mere darkness, but vast distances that shock the mind into the realization that we are both less and more of who we think we are—I felt tiny and insignificant yet simultaneously as grand and expansive as the vast universe about me. Those late-night walks up into the Grand Tetons would reveal and reaffirm that—I was a spiritual being, living in a sacred world.

It was in this elevated frame of mind, midway through the summer concert series, that I attended a performance of Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor. At the conclusion of the concert, the audience leaped to their feet, enthusiastically clapping and shouting their approval. Conductor and orchestra were not permitted to leave the stage; the audience kept on expressing their appreciation for the performance by loudly recalling them again and again.

As usual, I met Ling after the concert and expressed my appreciation for the evening's music. I asked him, “This has been a season of astoundingly beautiful music. Why was this performance exceptional? The audience reaction tells me that something very special happened here tonight, but I honestly don't know what it was.”

He had the countenance of someone who had just scaled the summit when he responded, “I just performed Mozart and I can't reduce it into words.” Instead, he suggested that I talk to Roger, who was the orchestra's first violinist and concertmaster.

The next day I sought out Roger and repeated my question. He told me to conceive of the performance of Mozart’s symphony as a perfectly cut flawless diamond. He went on to say that, if we looked at it carefully from every angle, we would see that the diamond’s internal brilliance was revealed in all of its magnificent glory because every facet was perfectly polished and aligned with every other facet. And then he said that if any single facet was even slightly out of perfect alignment, the whole experience would be ruined just as surely as if the diamond had been chipped or broken.

This is why the audience was quite literally holding its collective breath until the end of the performance, when all their pent-up anticipation exploded in rounds of rolling applause and shouts of “Bravo.” Ling and the orchestra had polished every facet to perfection, and succeeded in revealing the brilliance of Mozart’s symphony.

I persisted in my attempt to comprehend the flawless performance that I had witnessed. “Okay,” I asked, “so was this a technical feat? Does that mean we’re talking about precision that could be described mathematically?”

Roger replied, “No,” and then he continued, “The festival musicians are some of the best in the country, so the essential understanding and the technical skills were truly there, but there was something else that was also ineffably present that enabled this height of perfection. Let’s call it a feeling or an energy that is the vital expression of one’s soul. I have performed this symphony many times with various conductors and orchestras, and every time it’s a little different. It's always great music, but sometimes something really special happens—and it happened last night.”

Roger paused, searching for exactly the right way to explain more clearly what had made that performance extraordinary.

“Last night's performance was truly exceptional because we were not just performing music—we lived it, we truly were the music. The conductor, the orchestra, and the audience were all drawn in and alchemically elevated by the ineffable spirit of the music. No, Adam, we were not only playing for technical perfection; we were also playing from our hearts. These are the two wings on which we soared last night. This is why the performance was exceptional.”


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