Kent Devereaux’s Big Plans For Cornish

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Kent Devereaux has been in Seattle only a few months, but it’s clear after a few minutes of talking with him he is consumed with growing Cornish College’s music department, a goal fueled by a desire to have Seattle approach music differently.  Devereaux took the job as the chair of the Music Department after having spent the last twenty years in Chicago and before that Cal Arts.  Devereaux is a Cornish alum himself, a fact that made the move to Seattle even more enticing.

Devereaux’s mission isn’t simply to improve the numbers of students enrolling in the college.  The number of music students has stayed flat while other disciplines have seen their numbers swell.  But, he also wants to diversify the student body.  Cornish’s past affiliations with chance and electronic music pioneer John Cage and Lou Harrison, has drawn composition plenty of composition students, but not enough instrumentalists.

He also plans on spending more time doing the mundane one-on-one recruitment work needed to recruit the best students.  These goals are simple compared to his larger vision for Cornish’s music program and really, his vision for Seattle’s music scene.

Devereaux believes Cornish must become part of Seattle’s cultural fabric.  The college should be more accessible to the public.  Listening to Devereaux speak, his goal is to reengage the musical tapestry of Seattle, relying on the city’s long, trend setting history across genres to challenge the paradigms of what a traditional music school in Seattle can look like and even how we listen to music, seems too big for one man or even one regional arts college.

Too many times this writer has heard that the key to sparking interest in classical music is to repackage Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms by dropping it into a bar or having the musicians dress down.  While this approach certainly does work for some, the exercise reminds me of the scene in Tommy Boy where Chris Farley explains why a rival auto parts manufacturer puts a guarantee on the box –“Guy puts a fancy guarantee on a box ’cause he wants you to fell all warm and toasty inside.”

Devereaux thinks something different is needed.  Growing up in the Bay Area, he was fortunate to live a few doors away from Lou Harrison.  For a seventeen year old who wanted to be a composer this proximity was almost too good to be true.  Devereaux would hang out with Harrison, visit with Virgil Thomson when he was in town, and commiserate with Aaron Copland.  Later, he partied with John Adams and the minimalists who came of age in the area during the late 70’s.

Growing up around these modern masters, Devereaux hears the influence of Stravinsky, Adams, and John Cage in the music coming from the most promising bands making music these days.  Isn’t this always how it’s been?  Previous ideas influencing the next?  Of course.  But Devereaux has noticed students and the public don’t entirely understand how the past connects with the present.

Devereaux’s remedy is simple: use the best music from today and deconstruct it, reverse engineer the sounds, and in the process make the case for classical music.  Devereaux’s tastes are broad, and I certainly got the impression he is better equipped than most to make this work.  TV on the Radio’s Dear Science has equal billing with Anthony Davis’s Amistad.

Devereaux knows he has his work cut out for him.  This ambitious vision depends on a number of factors, not least of which is willingness of students to wade into music when post-classical composers and bands are shredding serious music stereotypes and genres.  Maybe Devereaux’s plan for Seattle is too big.  As we sat drinking coffee at Victrola, he told me a story about his son.  Devereaux couldn’t seem to get him interested in classical music.  Until Devereaux found an in – his son liked John Cage.  Before too long, Devereaux had talked his son from John Cage to Igor Stravinsky, and convinced him to come with Devereaux to a live performance of the Rite of Spring.  If Devereaux can succeed with his son, winning over Seattle’s music lovers should be easy.