Perhaps apart from Aja Gabel’s “The Ensemble,” there isn’t much contemporary fiction set in the world of classical music. Gregory Walker’s (nom de plume GT Walker) “The Curse of the Maestro” fills an overlooked space in literature and even popular culture. When was the last time a sitcom was set in an orchestra, after all?
A satirical take on a world that, although generally heralded, remains an enigma to many, Walker’s book is a collection of epistolary-proximal stories of the fictional Stonhaven Symphony Orchestra. Told from the viewpoint of its insiders, the equally sad and hilarious tales bring the musicians and those who support them way down to earth — almost beneath it, actually.
Walker might be uniquely positioned to tell such a tale. A composer, violinist, guitarist, and music academic, he is also the son of music historian Helen Walker Hill and George Walker, the first African American to receive a Pulitzer Prize in Music; he will perform some of his father’s work at Scandinavia House on Nov. 24.
Walker told the AmNews that he began writing as an outlet from the pressures of an environment whose sole focus was classical music. “I don’t always run into people who come from a family where it’s actually expected that you’re going to be a classical musician. That’s the norm — the parents, the grandparents — so doing something like writing was just a little bit of a departure,” he said.
Writing simultaneously gave Walker an escape from the stress of family expectations and created a path to find himself: “My first publication ‘Trigram Cluster Funk,’ like ‘Maestro,’ tends to find myself, find people who look like me in these scenarios of another genre.”
Among other things, “Curse of the Maestro” also takes on the question of an overemphasis on playing traditional compositions when the interests of diversity and the art form itself might be better served by doing less of it. “There’s absolutely no reason why anybody — man, woman, regardless of orientation or race — shouldn’t be able to play the music of any given dead white guy,” he said. “On the other hand, the pursuit of that comes at the expense of what you can be doing to promote and champion the music of living underrepresented composers.”
Walker concedes that his father, a beacon of respectability and Black excellence, might not have wholeheartedly applauded his take on the classical music world in “Curse of the Maestro.” “It’s a little bit of a rebellious pose, writing a book that kind of lights up the classical music industry,” he said. “Certainly he wouldn’t have condoned it. The success and advances of that generation largely came in excelling within the white model and, against all odds, winning at their game. In a sense, ‘Curse of the Maestro’ is kind of dissing their game.”
As a person of African descent ensconced in the classical music world from birth, Walker possesses a nuanced understanding of diversity and how it plays out — the awkward two steps forward/one step backward trajectory it often has. Walker used several Black characters in “Curse of the Maestro” to illustrate this. “The elephant in the room is the nature of classical music, coming from this white European hierarchy — no matter how hard one tries, you’re always going to be an outsider,” he said. “I don’t think people should be limited just by what they were born into or the attributes and traditions that are associated with them. But regardless, you’re always going to be a bit of an outsider.”
Walker also said in discussions of diversity, the complexities of certain industries or spaces are sometimes overlooked. “Sometimes you’ll see writers objecting to the lack of diversity in orchestras in certain situations,” he said. “And from an outsider’s point of view, yeah, there’s more of the same atrocity going on, but for people who are in the field, you just realize what the requirements and nuances of a pro orchestra audition are, and see what a big ask that leap will be if it happens.”
Walker agreed that his depiction of African American classical musicians, replete with stereotypical imagery, in “Maestro” may be uncomfortable for some readers. “There’s no denying there’s this racist stereotype getting pounded with those characters,” Walker said. “The easy answer is it’s the nature of satire, but are important issues being raised by the whole thing? Is it saying something significant about Black violinists’ role in classical music? Is it possibly questioning if so many of these mystery achievements celebrated by orchestras are really achievements or is it just making the situation all the more problematic and pathetic?”
“Curse of the Maestro” can be found at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and elsewhere. For more info, visit www.gregorywalkerviolin.com.
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