Renowned opera singer Denyce Graves-Montgomery presented the following address at the Bienen School of Music’s convocation on Saturday, June 20, 2015.

Mr. and Mrs. Bienen, Dean Montgomery, Assistant Dean Garton, Associate Dean Machado, distinguished and honored guests, parents, grandparents, friends, family, faculty and of course, class of 2015:

Thank you for this amazing moment and opportunity. This moment is particularly significant to me because my brother-in-law, my sister-in-law, two nieces and my daughter’s best friend’s father all graduated from Northwestern University (#mywildcatfamily)

I’ve thought about how I would use this very privileged and humbling moment to speak about something meaningful and relevant to this graduating class. I thought about what I could share from my life experiences that matter, and how those experiences have shaped me and what have they birthed in me that might be of service or benefit.

I’ve spent 50 years on this earth (which is a hell of an admission on my part because I always lie about my age, but now with Google and Wikipedia, those days are long gone). I still lie about my weight at the doctor’s office however.

As you stand on the threshold of what will now be referred to as “real life,” we offer our sincere congratulations and celebrate your academic accomplishments and your commitment to higher learning as you launch your individual and unique paths.

So, Bienen School of Music…. why music? Why did you choose music?

Why is it important in the big scheme of things? Sure, it’s important to each of us personally for whatever reasons we believe that we are called to this, but what do we hope to bring to the planet through our personal music making? What do we want to do? What do we have to say? How do we leave our mark?

The Call

Most of us heard the “call” in some way. There was some inner pull that directed us to want to play the violin, the cello, the piano, the French horn, or to sing.

I was 13 when I heard that call. I was a student at the Duke Ellington High School, and I was late for class. I was running into the building and I ran into a girlfriend. Her name was Cassandra Cunningham and we used to call her Cassandra “Country-Ham.”

She had just been to the listening library and she said, “Denyce, you’ve got to come to the listening library. I just heard something extraordinary.” And I said, “I can’t, I’m late for class.” And she said, “No no no, you’ve got to come!”

So we went to the listening library, and she had found a recording of Leontyne Price singing Puccini arias. I’d never heard anything so beautiful in my life. I’d never heard opera; I didn’t know what that was. And so we listened to the whole album, and I’d say, “Play it again.” And after it was finished she’d play it again.

That went on until about 8:00 that evening when the janitor came and knocked on the door and told us they were closing the school building. We cut all of our classes that day; we didn’t go to the restroom, we didn’t have lunch. We fell in love with this thing called music – opera in particular.

She and I made a pact that day that that was what we were going to do with our lives. We were going to pursue opera and we were going to become like Leontyne Price. So, she and I graduated high school early and we went to Germany, and we both went to Oberlin College and we became roommates and we studied at the conservatory. And that was our story.

You have connected now to that very intimate and important relationship, called your “inner guidance” because you are here, because you listened to your voice inside. That guidance lies within each of us and is always right, for it is our birth right. It is a gift that will journey with us throughout our lives.

Learning Beyond the Classroom

By now, many of you have become somewhat proficient in a variety of musical concentrations, although the path of a musician and an artist is a lifelong pursuit of endeavoring to become better and better and more refined. And from that viewpoint, this is but the beginning.

You’ve passed music history, theory and cognition, musicology, repertoire classes, juries and recitals; you’ve learned about musical giants like Bach, Beethoven, Handel, and Strauss. Now will come the time for you to infuse that knowledge into your performance, practice, recording and individual projects.

But how will that knowledge aid you in your everyday living? I in no manner mean to diminish the importance of this moment or the accomplishments of the deserved graduates, I would just like to point out that there are valuable life lessons that are often not covered in the curriculum of schools.

We’re not taught about how to create our own opportunities, or money management or financial literacy, entrepreneurism, psychology of relationships, how to pay our taxes, or how to afford health insurance or to pay our rent for that matter. And for musicians, ongoing expenses of lessons coaching, traveling to auditions, making CDs, paying application fees for young artist programs, summer apprenticeships, audition tours, management fees, and on and on and on.

Nor are we taught how to cultivate associations, or how to network, or to be a savvy business partner, a loving partner or spouse, or a good parent.

We’re not taught in school how to be diplomatic, how to negotiate, how to handle impossible conductors, or compromising directors or difficult musical collaborators, or how to handle conflicts or how to be generous and kind to one another.

When I look at our world today, when I watch the news, when I observe major conflicts in every situation in every culture, the common thread that I see lying at the root of the conflict is that someone somewhere is made to be devalued or made to feel insignificant.

If you don’t think the way that they think, if you don’t believe what they believe, if you didn’t go to school where they went to school, or your skin color is different or your hair, your culture, your education, your way of behaving is not like theirs – then a line is drawn and an “us” and “them” dynamic is created.

So today I want to speak about what isn’t taught in our schools and universities.  I want to talk about what will matter in our day to day living.

What we need to arm ourselves with from this moment forward. How we can make an immediate change in our world today, right here, right now; and how we can join forces and unite in that effort and cause a shift in our world – a world that desperately needs it – and that is the conscience choice and sacrifice, in some cases, to choose love.

Choosing Love

It takes courage to choose love, it takes audacity, selflessness, and generosity of spirit to choose love.

Choosing love isn’t always easy. Especially as you will find out, this profession of music-making is indeed a “business.”

We all have a choice in every situation and with every decision we make, to choose either fear or love.

You have the spectacular opportunity at this juncture in your lives to compose a masterpiece. As you turn the page onto this blank piece of manuscript paper, this new movement in the score of your lives, can be played and sung in whatever, key, tempo, dynamic you want. Not what your parents or professors want but how you choose to design and how you choose to live your life.

So, what legacy you will create with this precious gift called life? You can create a whole new world. Love is a language felt by everyone that, like music, can transcend everything – race, class, economic status, nationality – it is the language of our souls.

It can speak and express that which is inexpressible and as musicians and artists, isn’t that is our goal? To surrender and to allow to extend through us this harmonizing force called “music” enabling our particular instruments to be its voice.

In my fortunate travels all over the world as an artist and as a cultural ambassador, meeting different people from different cultures, what I have observed is that we all mostly want the same things out of life – we want to magnify the human experience of life and in the case here today with musicians, music fortunately allows us this unique opportunity and satisfies a need to grow and to contribute. It challenges us and surprises us and connects us to the divine and to love and in some meaningful way to the world.

Albert Einstein said we can live our lives as if nothing is a miracle or we can live our lives as if everything is a miracle.

Whichever path you take will make all of the difference. You can choose to live in fear or we can make the bold, conscience choice to choose love.

Fear vs. Love

Fear is a choice to believe the worst. Often the most encouraging option comes out of love and choosing to believe that a benign universe will respond to our attitudes of faith. We can choose to move beyond a limiting and fearful view of how life works and learn to practice the kind of optimism that opens the doors of opportunity.

Choose love. When you face your fears and walk tall into your orchestral auditions, or when you make your Met debut and go for your dreams, the only thing that prevents us from getting what we want or desire is the story we tell ourselves of why we can’t.

Choose love when you reach out to someone else.  Choose love and trust the process even when you don’t have all of the answers. Choosing love is an act of courage. We all carry that courage deep inside of our hearts. There is no fear in love.

Fear believes that there is never enough; love believes there is plenty for everyone.

Fear believes the worst about people and situations; love believes the best about people and situations.

Fear believes that there is only one right answer; love believes that there are many ways to understand something.

Fear believes that you have to change others through manipulation and coercion to get what you want; love believe the real change comes from the heart, starting with our own hearts.

Fear believes that things will never change; love believes that any situation can always be transformed.

Fear believes that everything must be mapped out ahead of time; love believes that you can trust the process.

Fear believes in negative thinking; love believes in positive choice.

Fear believes that the damage is done; love believes that healing can happen.

Fear believes that if you're not a success by now, you must be a failure; love believes that you're only a failure if you give up your dreams.

Fear believes that you must do everything by your own strength; love believes that there is a higher power that wants to help us.

Fear believes that everything needs to be hyped; love believes in quiet strength and simple faith.

Fear believes that life is cheap; love knows that life is precious.

Fear believes that anyone “different” is “them”; love believes in us.

Fear believes that it’s too late; love believes it’s never too late.

Fear believes that the situation is impossible; love believes that a solution can be found.

Fear believes that 15 minutes of fame makes you important; love believes that we are all important.

Fear believes that people are disposable commodities; love believes that people are sacred.

Fear believes in proving your superiority over others; love believes in honoring the greatness in others.

If we look at the global threats in our world we quickly realize that something is wrong; these times are alarming. Hatred has been turned into a social and political force and it isn’t that there’s more people on the earth who hate rather than who love, it’s not that there’s more people who would conscientiously or unconscientiously do destructive things to the planet, than there are people who want to do wonderful, creative, imaginative and innovative things on the planet.

It’s that it’s time; it is time now to do what Gandhi said and what Martin Luther King did and believed and that is that we must turn love into a social and political force.

The choices that we make that come from love lift us up, enabling us to be able to do things that we otherwise could not do.

We use more money to find out ways to hurt and kill each other than we find ways to heal each other.

And love… love as the great spiritual teacher Marianne Williamson says, is a force multiplier and that is needed here.

A good friend of mine, Gene Scheer, wrote a song called “American Anthem” and the chorus says:  “Let them say of me, I was one who believed in sharing the blessings I received, let me know in my heart when my days are through that I gave my best to you.”

No one can promise that if we all awaken to this collective force field of possibility that all war will be gone and all unnecessary suffering will be gone, but if we do what we can do right now, we will live and die knowing that we did our part and that we gave our best to the world. We are all created for greatness.

Live the life that you came here to live. When you know what you don’t want, then you know what you do want and asking quality questions gives you quality answers that will give you a quality life. And that will impact everything and everyone whom you come in contact with.

Why Music?

So, the question in my intro, why music? Why is it important? Why choose it?

Because it chose us.

It is impossible to not interact with sound, and sound is music; everything is music, even silence is music.

Without music, there’d be no joy, no excitement, no hope, no inspiration. We’d have nothing to relate to, nothing that shakes and stirs us up, nothing that unites us. We couldn’t understand each other, there’d be no release, no opening up of our minds and creativity, there’d be no way to express ourselves. There’d be no singing, or dancing, no radio or concerts, no TV, film, no celebrations or parades, and no art.

Music makes us happy, it brings us peace, and it connects us to spirit. Life would be, void, boring, dull, dreary and without color if there were no heart-breaking melodies. The world would be dark.

Music deepens us, it lifts our souls. Without music, life would be ineffective and useless. Music makes us human beings.

Music illustrates, expresses and makes us feel love. It does not aim to teach love for that is beyond what can be taught, but rather it endeavors to remove the barriers that we hold against love’s arrival.

I’d like to share with you, a poem which I think illustrates this example of “choosing love.” It’s titled:

The Cookie Thief by Valerie Cox

A woman was waiting at an airport one night
With several long hours before her flight
She hunted for a book in the airport shop
Bought a bag of cookies and found a place to drop

She was engrossed in her book but happened to see
That the man beside her as bold as could be
Grabbed a cookie or two from the bag between
Which she tried to ignore to avoid a scene

She munched cookies and watched the clock
As this gutsy cookie thief diminished her stock
She was getting more irritated as the minutes ticked by
Thinking "If I wasn't so nice I'd blacken his eye"

With each cookie she took he took one too
And when only one was left she wondered what he'd do
With a smile on his face and a nervous laugh
He took the last cookie and broke it in half

He offered her half as he ate the other
She snatched it from him and thought "Oh brother
This guy has some nerve and he's also rude
Why he didn't even show any gratitude"

She had never known when she had been so galled
And sighed with relief when her flight was called
She gathered her belongings and headed for the gate
Refusing to look back at the thieving ingrate

She boarded the plane and sank in her seat
Then sought her book which was almost complete
As she reached in her baggage she gasped with surprise
There was her bag of cookies in front of her eyes

"If mine are here" she moaned with despair
"Then the others were his and he tried to share"
"Too late to apologize she realized with grief"
That she was the rude one, the ingrate, the thief.

Advice from Dr. Seldon

I’ve just had a great pleasure this spring of singing the role of Nettie Fowler in Lyric Opera of Chicago’s production of Carousel. The final scene is Louise’s graduation where a popular country doctor, Dr. Seldon, gives a short and simple speech.

As I sat there during all those performances, I thought of how sweet and how touching that speech was, and I said to myself – before I was aware of this engagement – someday if I give a commencement speech, I’d like to use that speech. This is what he says:

“I can’t tell you any sure way to happiness. All I know is you got to go out and find it for yourselves. You can’t lean on the success of your parents, that’s their success and don’t be held back by their failures, makes no difference what they did or didn’t do. You just stand on your own two feet. The world belongs to you as much as it does to the next fella. Don’t give up… and try not being scared of people not liking you, just you try liking them. Just keep your faith and courage and you’ll come out alright.”

Class of 2015, our revolutionary advantages are to connect and share. Love is our substance of survival. Choose love, dear hearts; give yourselves this gift.

By the way, I’m really 51.