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Mark Conley, the chairman of the Department of Music at the University of Rhode Island.

Music is a quintessential part of the human experience. For those who dare to study music, these musicians are embarking on a journey into an infinite field of artistic and scientific possibilities.

For over 30 years, Mark Conley has made music his life. The University of Rhode Island music department chair, professor of music, and director of Choral Activities/Teacher in Voice said he is in awe of all of the opportunities being a musician has already given him and will continue to give him and his students for years to come.

As a musician, Conley has established himself as a distinguished conductor, composer and singer — especially during his 2009 Carnegie Hall debut conducting a performance of Haydn’s Te Deum for the Empress Marie Therese and being the guest choir director for the 2013 Manda Wilderness Choral Festival. However, he said there is more to being a musician than the major milestones. To him, these milestones are incredibly reaffirming and enlightening, but he is equally as thankful to simply be creating music and working closely with young, talented artists.

“I am just happy to have some longevity in this career because it doesn’t work out for everyone,” he said. “One of the things I am grateful for is that I have had a career over several decades. I am proud of the careers that a lot of our students have. I have taught a lot of voice students, many of them have found valuable careers in other professions where they use what they learned at University of Rhode Island in other creative ways, but I am pleased that we have so many performing musicians who came from my voice studio and our music department in general.”

For a different type of career highlight, Conley said he was honored to be a part of the team that figured out the logistics for how the University of Rhode Island music department could continue to meet in-person and make live music throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to safely holding classes/lessons and livestreaming live performances starting in the fall 2020 semester, the department created “Ram Jams,” a weekly YouTube variety-like video series, stitching together recorded performances from various ensembles and musicians from the music department. He now uses “Ram Jams” as an example to his students to show how to make creative solutions and the need to be a well-rounded thinker.

“I can still use [Ram Jams] for students as an example of how creative thinking, yes, it was done in the service of music, but a lot of the research could have been applied by other people had they been able to think that way, instead many people might not have had the ability to see that they were other possibilities besides staying home or being in one place,” he said.

Growing up in a small town in Illinois, he said he had excellent musical training — in particular from his high school choir director — and always wanted to have music in his life. When faced with the decision for his undergraduate studies, he remembers getting scholarships for science-based degrees, but felt it was the wrong path. He ultimately chose music because he viewed music as being ripe with boundless potential.

“I really felt like I wanted to go into music, particularly vocal music, because it involves everything,” Conley said. “It’s science, it’s art, it’s languages, it’s poetry. I wasn’t interested in finding out answers to questions where you could find the answer. I wanted to ask questions where you couldn’t find the answers or where there was more than one answer, sort of living in that area of possibility [and] ambiguity.”

After receiving his bachelor’s degree in vocal performance from the University of Illinois and master’s degrees in vocal performance and choral conducting from the University of Michigan, he didn’t plan on developing a teaching career. He originally wanted to pursue performance full-time, when he was offered a job at Montana State University in 1991, he couldn’t say no to an enticing musical opportunity. He’s been working in music education ever since.

A key part of his teaching philosophy at University of Rhode Island is encouraging his students to take any opportunity that is given to them. He said they don’t have to wait for their initial vision to come to fruition because all opportunities have the ability to create a path that they never knew existed.

“It’s important to be open to any possibility,” he said. “We try to teach our own students here to be open to creative possibilities. When a door opens, an opportunity for a job, or something that is related to music, we encourage students to step through it and not wait for what they thought they might want to do.”

Conley explores as many different styles of repertoire with his music education and performance students during their respective undergraduate programs, giving them the reading and rehearsal skills needed for the professional landscape. While they are training, Conley said he urges his students to not be afraid of failure. It is a difficult journey to master the complexities of music, but it doesn’t have to be perfect.

Taking chances and being willing to make a mistake is not only important to becoming a musician, but it’s vital to any career path. Although musical aspirations are different for every person, Conley said the magic of music is the ability to learn how to be creative and the art of creating.

“I think one of the things I think is really important about a university education that people miss now because it’s been turned into this idea that a university education is about choosing a major that prepares you for a certain career and that’s not actually how life works,” Conley said. “I think many people recognize that. It’s really about training various ways of thinking.”

When Conley is programming concerts for his students, his creativity is “most awakened” when there are restrictions or obstacles in his metaphorical or physical way. These obstacles spark out-of-the-box thinking.

“If you are facing a blank page where you can write anything you want to, or if you are in a situation when you can create anything you want to, sometimes that is almost too much,” he said. “It’s overload. You need obstacles.”

Recently, Conley combined his need for obstacles with one of the hottest topics within present-day academia — artificial intelligence. With the rise of ChatGPT, a popular artificial intelligence chatbot, Conley has been pondering over the idea of what it means to be fully human.

He asked his students to try to answer that question and provide an artwork (poem, song, etc.) that evokes the feeling of being human, ultimately using their submissions to guide him in selecting pieces of music. During the performance, he had the students share the artwork they selected in between various sets of music to add an extra dimension to the program.

“We were sort of hoping, or at least I was, that not everything was immediately accessible so we would be creating obstacles for the audience, to use their own creativity and work around what they were trying to say,” Conley said.  “What did that mean? We let them draw their own conclusions… opening the creative process, not just to the students, but to myself and to the audience.”

As for artificial intelligence’s impact on music, Conley said he is not worried. Artificial intelligence has been used in the music industry for decades now, in particular aiding composers in their original compositions, helping with creative fatigues. When referencing his program, he said artificial intelligence will never be fully human, and music needs humans.

With the work Conley and his colleagues have done over the years at University of Rhode Island to guide the next generation of musicians and advance the musical scene in South County, he knows the future of music will continue to be ever evolving and uniquely human.

“There will always be a craving among humans to make music with other humans, which is where choral music comes in and all of our ensembles come in,” Conley said. “There will always be a place for machinery in our discipline now, as long as the machinery exists, and that’s good too, but I think we are going to be just fine making music with each other for all of time.”

(1) comment

pisp2023

A heartfelt appreciation to the author for presenting an insightful interview with URI Music Department Chair Mark Conley. Their blog allows readers to gain valuable insights into Conley's career, teaching philosophies, and the future of music. A fantastic piece that celebrates the passion for music and education!

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