In a recent five-year business plan that J. Robert Wills, Dean of the Herberger College, presented to President Crow, Dean Wills restated this anonymous quote: “If you do what you always did, you’ll get what you always got.” Music schools are faced everyday with the challenge of doing both what we have always done and with trying new things. We often want to do what we have always done because what we have always got was worth getting. That passing on of certain traditions in art music is the very core of a student’s experience at a great music school. And, we would be remiss in transmitting this heritage if we stopped “doing what we have always done.”
However, in order to be the transforming place that is the School of Music and the Herberger College, we must also do what we have never done before. We must not only find new ways to deliver what we have always done, but to also deliver new ideas.

The faculty of the School of Music is an exceptional group of people challenged every day by our talented students, and open to new ideas and new ways of doing things. This issue of eNotes points out some of the things we have never done before. We welcome a Pulitzer and MacArthur prize winner to our faculty in Gunther Schuller; we launch a new set of graduate degree programs in interdisciplinary media and digital arts; and we experiment with the use of Internet II with partners, such as the New World Symphony Orchestra. And, we do what we have always done as we present more than 650 concerts this academic year and launch the careers of more than 125 newly graduated professional musicians. We hope that you join us this year for a few things that we always do, and for a few new ones as well.

Wayne Bailey
Director, School of Music