Bailey believes strongly in outreach. “Our mission is to have music everywhere,” he says. (Zuill Bailey photo)
Cellist Zuill Bailey is performing in his 10th season at the Sitka Summer Music Festival, his fifth since taking over as artistic director from founder Paul Rosenthal.
The festival has developed a statewide brand under Bailey’s leadership — as AlaskaClassics — and is even sending artists to venues nationally.
But just on his own, speaking to the Sitka Chamber of Commerce this week (6-8-16), Bailey is a musical force of nature. He believes in the importance of the arts in Alaska, and he makes his case on a 17th-century instrument.
Bach: Prelude to Cello Suite No. 2
Zuill Bailey is playing the prelude to Bach’s Cello Suite No. 2 for about 25 members of the Sitka Chamber of Commerce. It’s sunny outside, and a hotel banquet room is not really anyone’s first choice for where to spend this hour. Usually chamber presentations are punctuated by the clinking of water glasses and the sound of forks on plates. Not today.
The setting is perfect for Bailey to discuss the way music transforms moods — transforms people, if only for a while. Over the last five years Bailey has performed across Alaska — in concert halls, in hospitals, even in prisons.
A lot of things in life are just checklists of making us feel good about we’ve done this, we’ve done that. Playing in Carnegie Hall is amazing. Because it’s Carnegie Hall. It’s history. It sounds great. But you look out in Carnegie Hall I know no one. You’re just playing and going, Wow I must have made it. But what does ‘make it’ mean? And that’s what happened to me at 40, is that I said This isn’t what I do, This is what I am. And my bio looks like the bio of everybody else who’s made it. So I started going, Well who am I? And then it goes back to what (festival founder) Paul Rosenthal said. I asked him, You’ve been around in ‘history.’ You knew all the greats: Who was your favorite? He said his friends. Because it means something. You trust me to give you me. So you’re feeling it far deeper than just some random guy coming in here — and that was really pretty — and we get to talk about it. We get to experience it.
Bailey performed earlier this spring in Washington DC for members of Alaska’s congressional delegation, and for Jane Chu, who chairs the National Endowment for the Arts. Bailey said that the festival is regarded by funders as a model for an arts organization for its approach to education and outreach. The festival now owns Stevenson Hall — which Bailey calls the “mothership” — on the Sheldon Jackson Fine Arts Campus, and has forged a partnership with the Sitka Fine Arts Camp by offering an advanced cello seminar for students contemplating a career in music.
And even those of us not contemplating careers in music can take a lesson from this world-renown cellist.
The biggest thing for me is to enforce that habits, if done correctly, you don’t have to do them and you’re free to function. It’s very complicated. Practice makes perfect makes no sense to me, because you can be perfectly wrong.
