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Never too old: Late Starters Orchestra

Ari Goldman, rightOlder people’s minds are too often cluttered by informational overload or professional demands to invest energy in reviving old passions. But some longings, like playing the cello again, refuse to cease and desist.

Ari Goldman’s The Late Starters Orchestra is a serious, whimsical and realistic chronicle of the Columbia University professor and former New York Times’ journalist’s return to the cello at age 60.

A speaker at Sunday’s JAAMM Fest, Goldman is already back in New York preparing a class at Columbia, where he heads the Scripps Howard Program in Religion, Journalism and the Spiritual life.

“I had a nice experience at the festival yesterday,” he says. “A lot people were really skeptical: ‘Can you really pick up an instrument at this stage in your life?’ I said absolutely and gave them a lot of examples.

“I joined the Late Starters Orchestra in New York, but it’s part of a national network of orchestras for people over 50 called New Horizons.”

Although Denver doesn’t have an orchestra for late bloomers, there is one in Colorado Springs.

“We’re living longer,” Goldman says of opportunities to actualize once impossible dreams. “We have more free time, especially now that the kids are out of the house. We should pursue our dreams.

“For some, that’s playing an instrument. For other people it might be learning a new language, planting a garden, cooking — even riding a motorcycle. This book is about capturing and recapturing your passion.”

Goldman and his wife Shira, who have been married for 31 years, are the parents of three adult children.

“I was determined that one of my children would love the cello,” he says, “and Judah, our youngest, took to it.”

Judah, a main character in the book, was only six when he began studying the cello. He’s now a sophomore in college and plays seven instruments, including the cello.

“He’s a music major and is a very, very good musician,” Goldman says proudly.

The author, now 65, is quick to admit that he’s “not very good at the cello because I started late. If you start early, you can do all sorts of miraculous things, but if you come to it late, there’s only so much you can do.”

But standards of excellence are irrelevant in Goldman’s world, where joy is more than sufficient.

Goldman, who wrote The Search for G-d at Harvard in 1992 and Living a Year of Kaddish in 2006, describes himself as a serial memoirist.

Nothing is beyond his observational powers or experiential reach. The themes may differ, but the quest for growth and knowledge remains the same.

The Late Starters Orchestra, tunefully illustrated by Eric Hanson, chronicles the endurance of Goldman’s youthful love of the cello and his determination to rescue it from mute memory.

Here is an edited transcript of Ari Goldman’s interview with the Intermountain Jewish News.

IJN: The Late Starters Orchestra has been voted one of the top 10 music books by Publishers Weekly. Do you feel it’s primarily a book about music?

Goldman: Yes. It’s about recapturing your love of music and the ability to play music late in life. There’s a spiritual aspect to the book, and I’m a Jewish author. Part of my musical quest is a Jewish one. But it is essentially a music book.

IJN: Share the background of this very personal story.

Goldman: I played the cello in my 20’s and put it away when I was 35. I was married, a father, and very busy with my career and life. I stopped playing completely until my youngest son Judah started studying the cello.

I took him to his Suzuki lessons. I was the Suzuki parent, involved in everything. To encourage Judah, I practiced with him. That’s when my passion for the cello reawakened.

My book is about the year I was turning 60. I decided that this flirtation with the cello had gone on long enough. It was time to take it seriously. I found a teacher and spent more and more time practicing.

On my 60th birthday I gave my first public performance. That’s the denouement of the book and I don’t want to give it away here.

The Late Starters Orchestra is about many things: fathers and sons, a great teacher, the love of music, courage, and the resilience of the human brain. You can learn to play a stringed instrument even at this stage of life.

IJN: What’s the most significant difference between the way children learn music, as Judah did, and musical acquisition in older adults?

Goldman: The Suzuki method is similar to learning a language. It’s an immersion program where you not only play music but you listen to it and surround yourself with other people who love music. Music becomes part of the environment. When you grow up like that, the mind absorbs music like a sponge.

When Judah was starting out, we did his English homework, his Hebrew homework and practiced the cello together every night. It was part of his life. His young mind was shaped by this experience.

Older minds are complicated. The synapses don’t work as quickly and are unable to easily absorb musical instruction. It’s harder to learn anything when we’re older.

We compensate — we’re more disciplined, more goal-oriented, more mature. But we don’t have a young person’s facility for acquiring new information.

So the best time to learn music or language is when you’re young — but it’s not the only time. Learning is still possible in middle age and beyond.

IJN: You have compared your experience as “a ba’al teshuva with the cello.”

Goldman: (He laughs before answering.)

The book is not without its spirituality. One of the most notable movements in Judaism today is the ba’al teshuva [one who returns]. People are coming back to Judaism, and the door is always open. I feel the same way about music. You can always come back to it.

For me, playing music is like a religious experience. It’s transcendent. It takes you to a higher level of existence and connects you with something much larger.

That’s what religion does for us. It elevates us. People who practice it or believe in it or get something out of it feel elevated by it. Music is no different. It ennobles us.

IJN: From my perspective, you have such abundance in your life. You reported for the Times for two decades (10 years as the religion writer). You’re a professor at Columbia, a published author, and you have a great family. Why was returning to the cello such an overwhelming need?

Goldman: (He laughs again.) First, I’m glad my life looks so glorious. I do have a nice resume. But everything I’ve done has been hard. A lot of people work hard and never achieve anything. I have achieved many things in my life, but it wasn’t effortless.

I guess the part about music is that I feel like I’m at the top of my game in a lot of realms. I think I’m a very good teacher, a very good writer and a very good journalist.

I am not a good musician. I’m a mediocre musician. And I’m never going to be a great musician. Yet I embrace things that I can’t do well because I find enjoyment in being average. I needed to do this even though I knew I wasn’t going achieve greatness or play at Carnegie Hall.

The satisfaction comes from just being good enough. Say you look at my resume and it includes The New York Times, Columbia University and the New York Philharmonic — or The New York Times, Columbia and the Late Starters Orchestra.

The second one might seem less prestigious. But there’s joy in being average.

IJN: We spend 30 to 40 years focusing on deadlines and perfectionism in our professional lives. How do you throw out the old rules for something new, freeing and joyful?

Goldman: (He grabs a copy of The Late Starters Orchestra.) On Page 12, there’s a little vignette about the first rehearsal of the Late Starters Orchestra that I attended in Lower Manhattan. In fact, that’s what I read yesterday at the JAAMM Fest.

I say, “I don’t think I’m good enough to play,” and this woman named Mary says, “You may not live long enough to be good enough.” It’s my favorite line in the book.

If you’re going to wait around saying, “I can’t play the cello because I’m not good enough,” then you’re never going to play the cello. So play what you can — and then you can.

IJN: Upon whom did you base the book’s teaching mentor and inspirational figure Mr. J?

Goldman: Mr. J was my first cello teacher. His name was Heinrich Joachim. I was 25 years old. I had just become a reporter at the Times, and I was interested in finding a new challenge in life. I ran into him, told him I’d always wanted to study the cello, he said yes, and this resulted in a lasting friendship.

I played with Mr. J in my 20’s. When I picked up the cello again in my 50s, he was long gone but his voice and his life lessons came back to me.

In the book, I put his words in italics so you can clearly find all his reflections on music and life throughout the narrative. Mr. J continues to be my inspiration.

My son, who was just a boy then, is leading me, and Mr. J is pushing me from behind. The two inspirations are Judah and Mr. J.

IJN: How did writing The Search for G-d at Harvard and The Late Starters Orchestra differ in terms of process?

Goldman: Aside from 22 years? I’ve done three memoirs. The Search for G-d at Harvard concerns my year at Harvard Divinity School. Then I did Living a Year of Kaddish, a reflection on the year I spent saying Kaddish for my father. The Late Starters Orchestra is about turning 60 and recapturing my love of the cello.

These books are snapshots of my life and my experiences over the course of one year, although they encompass so much more. In that sense, I’m using the model that works for me.

But they are a quest for knowledge and growth — and the willingness to accept something difficult. I went to Harvard Divinity School to expand my horizons. I wanted to learn about Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism from the perspective of a person deeply rooted in Judaism..

In The Late Starters Orchestra, my life is pretty well set. I’m a professor, I’m a journalist, I’m an author. But I want to stretch myself to see if I’m also a musician. So the quest is common to both books.

Writing is a clarifying process for me. One of the reasons I’m a writer is because it’s the way I understand the world. I see things, I observe them, I encounter them. But until I sit down to write about them, I don’t fully grasp them.

Ever since I was 19, I have been an obsessive diarist. I write down everything that happens to me. Writing is very natural. It doesn’t mean it isn’t hard, but it’s my major form of expression.

Still, every one of my books went through three drafts. The Late Starters Orchestra went through four drafts! It took me four years to write it, and a year to publish it. Yes, writing is very hard. But it’s ultimately very satisfying.

IJN: The Late Starters Orchestra makes a good case that one can recapture dreams at any age. But what if there is no going home again due to poor health or other barriers? Can we cultivate new passions?

Goldman: The book opens with a quote from the swimmer Diana Nyad. When she was 64, she finally completed that 110-mile swim from Cuba to Florida. She comes out of the water and says, “I have three messages. One, you should never, ever give up. Two, you’re never too old to chase your dreams. And three, it looks like a solitary sport but it takes a team.”

That’s the foundation of The Late Starters Orchestra. Never give up, you’re never too old, and it takes a team. Find people who can help you.

Iadmit I’m going against reality in a lot of ways. The truth is you can’t be 20 years old again — but that doesn’t mean you can’t do things now.

The mind breaks down and the body breaks down. We are limited. But I focus on possibilities, not limitations.

We won’t be able to play basketball like we did when we were young, but we can still play basketball. Although we can never learn music like children, we can still learn to play it.

At a certain time, arthritis or something else will overtake my body. Up until then, however, I’m going to keep going.

I’m never going to play the cello as well as my son. But I’m not going to stop trying. As long as I can play the cello, I’ll keep striving.

The Late Starters Orchestra is available at Amazon, bookstores and arigoldman.com.

Andrea Jacobs may be reached at [email protected].

Copyright © 2014 by the Intermountain Jewish News



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IJN Senior Writer | [email protected]


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