[Reprinted from Vanderbilt Hustler]
ANNA BUTRICO - Meet Rama Kumaran, a sophomore who was the winner of the National Flute Association’s Young Artist Competition this summer and was featured on National Public Radio’s “From the Top” series at age 16. He talks Harry Potter fan fiction, his strategies to connect with an audience and what drew him to his flute in the first place. He dives into the psychology of musical performance, and considers, with great honesty, the stress of his craft.
The Hustler: You play the flute in the Blair School of Music. How has music defined your Vanderbilt career?
Rama Kumaran: It’s funny. You kind of take for granted that you play an instrument. It becomes more a part of who you are. As far as how it has defined my Vanderbilt career, I propose that it is my Vanderbilt career. I try to carry a flute with me, whether it’s my concert instrument or whatever else, almost wherever I go. I wish I had one with me now. It’s just become one of the things I try to make accompany me, like a pocket knife or my glasses.
TH: What drew you to the flute in the first place?
RK: The first recording that I can remember of the flute was a fusion recording made by an Indian player who translated his element into a Western style. [It includes] things like electric guitars and rock instruments; it’s basically a pop setup with an Indian flavor to it. That kind of a fusion was something I think I was waiting for. I think I was seven to eight years old when I listened to that.
One of my huge interests in the flute has been its versatility. I started playing it when I was eight years old. The flute fits into so many different places. I’d like to do as much as possible with my instrument — across genres, across cultures. It’s a great translatable element especially since it’s one of the oldest-ever instruments.
TH: Music and computer science are your two majors. What draws you to these two very different things? Is there something that connects you to both of them?
RK: Not in particular. That’s not why I study them. I’m sure many musicians before me have studied the influence of computer science on music and vice-versa. But for me, my interest in computer science began with research interests in artificial intelligence. Conceptually I love the idea of computer science, but more importantly, I like studying foreign systems and understanding how they interact. It’s a wonderful feeling to be completely competent in some sort of formal system and being able to play with it. Which is why I’m so enjoying my humanities classes right now. I’m taking a class with Vera Kutzinski right now on the literature of [the] 1920s. To play in the discussion with all of these concepts like existentialism and modernism — it’s thrilling. It’s the kind of spirit of free play, which is one of the strengths of a close-knit academic system. Which is why I’m so glad I’m here.
TH: What do you want to do with your career? Something in computer science, something in flute performance?
RK: The most readily available career to me is as a concert flutist. I feel I need to develop a whole lot of expertise in computer science or anything else before I delve into that — but that doesn’t mean I can’t explore. I know that any education I am pursuing here, I’m able to translate it to as many places as possible. To develop that kind of acuity in any field can be helpful, whether it’s computer science, or music, or mathematics, philosophy, even literature.
There’s such a power, especially again in an academic setting, to a nimbleness of mind and nimbleness of thought that the people I respect most practice this on a regular basis. Through writing especially... one of my favorite pieces of fiction is a Harry Potter fan fiction entitled “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.” It’s written by an artificial intelligence researcher at a human intelligence research institute. He’s written some really cool academic papers, and he’s able to play with fiction to explain rationality in ways that I couldn’t even cogitate at this point, partly because I don’t understand what he’s saying. For the most part, I just haven’t spent much time thinking about it. It’s much fun either way.
TH: Why Vanderbilt? Why the Blair School of Music?
RK: When I came to Vanderbilt — one of the biggest reasons also was that it was Nashville. I was raised in southern California, not popular Southern California, middle-of-nowhere southern California. The crossroads where everyone passed through, but nobody really stopped by. I had to do a lot of driving for my cultural exposure. When it comes to Nashville, culture is thrown at you from all directions. It’s incredible how many different styles, how many different dramas converge in one place, especially since it’s the city of dreams as far as music is concerned. So the reason I came here is that I wanted to immerse myself in as many styles as I could; I wanted to absorb new influences. While my progress there has been retarded by the schedule that Blair majors have to keep, and the rigors that unfortunately I have been foolhardy enough to impose on myself, I think I’ve made a lot of progress in the past year and a half, and I hope to do a lot more of that in the next two years, just by interacting with the instrumentalists, who don’t exactly keep a high profile at Blair but do brilliant work. As well as getting out in the city. It’s a great place but sometimes you have to look for the best of it. I don’t know, I might take advantage of more Vanderbilt programs and strike out on my own. Either way, it’s bound to be an adventure.
TH: How has your idea of music changed, since coming to Blair?
RK: When I started music, my parents — the first adjective that came to mind when they thought of music was: soothing. It was something to relax to. And of course, as I began to study music more intensely I began to understand that it also can be intensely emotional. It can be a transformative experience by overt means, but now, I’m understanding that music gets into your head in more insidious ways, especially through its manipulation of time and space. I feel like I’m talking sci-fi here. But when you attune artistic and musical sensibilities to more raptly pay attention to a work of art, whether it’s visual art, or music, or theater or anything else that has been honed to such a high degree that every single action is not exactly contrived by artifice, but it's thought about — its meaning is invested in it. So when I read a book — let’s take William Carlos Williams. Every word has been carefully deliberated. Even if it had been jotted down in the spur of a moment, it’s the result of years of thought. The same can be said of the end result of a composer’s life, which is an “oeuvre” of music, or the end result of a performer’s life, which is a history of recordings, performance opportunities, whatever. The influence that he or she has had on someone’s else’s life — I think that that’s one of my privileges as a performer. Even though my work is bound in time, it can still be made to last forever in more subtle ways.
TH: What has your experience been like with working with Professor Philip Dikeman?
RK: He’s an extremely intense instructor. He pushes his students to the limits of what they can do. He’s definitely pushed me to the limits of what I can do. He’s changed the way I approached music, as [has] the rest of Blair. My high school teacher focused on what I like to call a romantic aesthetic to playing, very emotion-driven. She taught me to understand music by the gesture. Professor Dikeman chooses to take me back to the rudiments, and starting from scratch in that way allows me to question in very scary ways why I play at all. The same thing [is happening] in my literature classes with my delayed adolescence and existential crises. But to work in Professor Dikeman’s studio is definitely a privilege. He worked for the Detroit Symphony for I think 20 years. He has a trove of knowledge to share from his orchestral career, one that I would otherwise be bereft of, since I would like very much to go into a solo career. If I had enrolled under a solo instructor, I would have had a very limited perspective on the scope of a musician's career. He has showed me the reality of what orchestral playing can be. That I am able to apply it in the Vanderbilt University Orchestra is a privilege too.
TH: You have taken theater classes here at Vanderbilt. How has that influenced your performance ability?
RK: I can go for days [on] the amount of influence that my theater training has had on my performance philosophy. I know how to move, I know how to feel and act and think with the music. That’s the approach that I took for many, many years, up until midway through this year, which was when Professor Dikeman, [professor of music theory] Carl Smith, and Professor Michael Rose began to expose me to new ethics of performance, new approaches, especially historically to performing with different objectives. There’s a great deal to be said for the structure of music being able to speak for itself to an educated listener. And this is why I’m struggling right now with conflicting philosophies on communicating a structure in a way that my audience can understand. Because without a certain modicum of education, it becomes exponentially more difficult to communicate an overarching structure that composers used to write their work like Mozart or Bach or Beethoven or Chopin. It’s possible, but it’s just very hard. It takes a performer much more seasoned than I am.
So all that falls to programming choices, and program notes and speeches and acting, the visual element, the theatrical element, to be able to communicate increasingly complex ideas to an increasingly, dare I say, uneducated audience. I want to play for as many people as possible. One of my goals for a long time is to develop myself into the kind of artist who can step onto any stage with any sort of audience and be able to make something that would be interesting to any audience. That’s something that every artist wants to achieve in their lifetime, so we’ll see how that ambition evolves in the next couple of years. But in carving myself a niche as a solo artist, this is something that I have made a priority. If I can help someone discover that music means something completely different to them than it used to, my task for that evening will be satisfied.
TH: What do you focus on when planning your performances?
RK: One of the least emphasized things in an artist’s career, unfortunately, is creative programming. Which is why I’m focusing on listening to new repertoire and seeing how that interacts with my head. When I think of really taking care of my audience like a Nashville musician does, I’ve got to understand what piece an audience wants to hear after what I’ve just played, what kind of program will have the audience leaving the house completely blown away and overwhelmed, and what kind of program will leave an audience introspective and thoughtful. What is the message I want to get across, what’s the headspace I want to communicate to my audience? I think a great many of my colleagues, if not all of them, think that the audience is an integral part of any performance. And if I’m going to invite them into that experience, into that experience that I want to create for them, then they have to trust in me that I can take care of them.
TH: What are the demands of being a student at Blair?
RK: The rigor, the demands that a dedicated artist places on himself or herself… the demands we place on ourselves work on our minds in very, very strange ways. I can talk your ear off about what I do with my art and the grand designs, the schemes, the visions and progress of my own skill and what I want to do with it — what that comes down to on a daily level is a conscientiousness that borderlines obsession. The art that I practice filters into my approach to life itself. Moment to moment, my existence is influenced by the approaches that I take to my art. Seeing patterns, seeing colors, being aware of the things around me is something that every artist seeks to develop I think. At least to be aware of the musicians around them, to be aware of the sounds that he is experiencing in his performance. When an artist is going to practice efficiently, or effectively, he’s going to have to learn how to listen. And when you listen hard enough, your other senses begin to fire in more intense ways. We have to learn not to take it too far, and we have to learn to treat ourselves kindly. A lot of us at Blair learned last semester. We have to treat ourselves with kindness and we have to treat each other with kindness and respect. And that goes as large as a hug and as small as a look.
When some artists that suffer from extreme stage fright, when they look at [the] stage door, as if to walk back and escape the eyes that are fixated on them, that little look, the insignificance of that belies sometimes the most extreme emotional state. There are extremely established artists that throw up before a performance. To be so closely in touch with your emotional life can be revealing. One of the bravest things that an artist can do, without knowing how an audience will judge them, if an audience will judge them, [is] to get out on stage and show a part of themselves that isn’t often seen. And sometimes they, or we, don’t know how to express [that] in any other way but through our art. I know a lot of Blair students are like that. They’re fighting for a voice, that they don’t have, that they wouldn’t have even been aware of, before they began their musical training. That’s why art deserves to be spread, because who knows the changes, the influence it can have on an unsuspecting listener. A single sound can transform a life. It certainly did mine.