Roads Taken and Not Taken: Jon Saxton '76

On the occasion of my 49th Birthday, my wife, Barbara Fox (BMC '78), surprised me with a gift of two voice lessons with a voice teacher who had posted a simple tear-off notice in our local grocery store. I thought this was a fun present, and totally unexpected. I had never studied music, and had never sung other than in a crowd at birthday parties, or along with the kids on long car trips, or, of course, in the shower. My life was consumed with family, Democratic Party politics, health-care policy, and speechwriting. My musical tastes ran to the music of my younger days—'60s and '70s rock, as well as music I had discovered at Haverford: Chris Smither, Bruce Springsteen, and the Persuasions.

But our kids had grown up with weekly piano lessons. And each had branched out into more music. Our older daughter, Rebecca [Saxton-Fox '06], sang in school choirs and a cappella groups, and in school musicals. Our younger daughter, Tess, played piano in a school jazz ensemble and flute in school orchestras. I loved attending all of their concerts and recitals and always regretted not having learned music. Hence, Barbara's inspired idea of a gift of voice lessons.

My first lesson with my teacher, Mena, was memorable. She had recently emigrated from Israel, having been born and raised in Lithuania. She had performed Russian opera as well as art and Yiddish song and was now part of a large music-loving Eastern European Jewish community in the Boston suburbs. She asked me why I was taking voice lessons. I explained the circumstances of Barbara's gift and said I just wanted to get into music and learn to sing better.“Good,” she responded.“No one can make a living at this!”

Those initial two lessons soon turned into two lessons a week. Mena started me out with show tunes, but we quickly moved on to art songs, mostly German, Italian, and English. It was not long before I was also singing in Russian. The lessons were intense, with every session crammed with learning about musical notation, styles, languages, and voice techniques. Having filled my career working in other people's voices as a public-policy advocate and speechwriter, I was discovering my own voice for the first time. It was exhilarating.

With my teacher's encouragement, I started to seek opportunities to perform. I sang in private recitals, performed in a Sondheim musical at our local community theater, and joined the chorus of the opera Carmen in a neighboring town. Then I saw a notice about auditions for the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, the chorus of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops. I was sure I didn't have a chance of getting in—I had no prior choral experience and couldn't sight-read music—but the auditions seemed like a good opportunity to see what is expected at the pinnacle of symphonic choral singing.

I prepared one of my favorite German lieder, Robert Schumann's“Ich Grolle Nicht.” Among its other virtues, this piece has a high G, which I was told was important for a baritone to demonstrate. The piano accompanist was the rehearsal pianist for the Boston Symphony, and, as he played with a grace I had only ever heard on recordings, I felt I was singing in a different dimension. I finished and heard a“Hmm!” from the chorus master. He asked where I had learned to sightread music, and I confessed that this was still a work in progress. He thanked me and I was dismissed. I didn't even bother to call the number they gave me to see if I had been accepted, but a week later I received a letter in the mail congratulating me on being admitted to the Tanglewood Festival Chorus.

I'm now in my ninth year with the chorus, and it is not an exaggeration to say that it has changed my life to an extent that I really only experienced once before: at Haverford. I had grown up in a rather conservative and unschooled family of small-business people. At Haverford, I encountered my first scholars and my first“progressive” ideas, and so many new ways of thinking and being. I took to heart the Socratic tenet that the unexamined life is not worth living, and then spent most of my time there awestruck and off-balance, just trying to soak in as much as I could. I entered Haverford full of parochial certainties and left certain only that I would never stop learning. As I made my way in the world intent on figuring out how to do some good, I found myself able to draw and build, again and again, on knowledge and perspective gained in those transformative Haverford years.

Getting into the Tanglewood Festival Chorus has not been unlike gaining admission to another very special institution of higher learning. I have the privilege of singing year-round (both at Symphony Hall and at Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony's summer home in the Berkshires) with a great orchestra under the batons of the best conductors from around the world and with the premier soloists. I sing the world's great symphonic and operatic compositions, by Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Mahler, Verdi, and so many more. (Unlike most choruses, we sing from memory, without scores, so that we can more intimately inhabit the music.) I went on the Boston Symphony's 2007 European tour, during which we performed Berlioz's Damnation of Faust (in French, of course) in Switzerland, Germany, Paris, and London. I have now sung in 11 languages, with the 12th, Polish, coming up this spring in a concert version of a Polish opera. I've also had the privilege of singing several times at Carnegie Hall in New York and in many other remarkable venues.

The world of music has been an astonishing revelation. Music is a form of communication and communion shared by all peoples. Every piece we sing enables a dive into historical context involving individuals, societies, politics, and history. Every language brings its own grammatical and syntactical delights and meanings, translated into and through the musical composition. The enduring creativity of the composers constantly amazes, while the active creativity of the individual artists brings freshness to new performances. And new compositions constantly emerge to test and expand the boundaries of the genres.

I have felt so grateful for what I have found through this experience that I have sought ways to help expand such opportunities for others. In other parts of my life, I have done this through engagement in politics, public policy, and civic organizations. Now I am engaging with music and arts organizations dedicated to promoting and broadening access to the arts at many levels. In addition to chairing the Tanglewood Chorus Committee (which works with Boston Symphony management to support the chorus membership), I serve on the boards of the Boston Lyric Opera and Boston Singers' Resource, which provides crucial resources to classical singers in New England. I chair our town's Cultural Council (an arm of the Massachusetts Cultural Council, providing grants to local and regional arts organizations), and I am also looking to become more deeply engaged with a relatively new organization that produces and performs new works by young composers.

Music is one area I did not study at all while at Haverford, even though I was an avid attendee at campus concerts and local music venues, like the Main Point in Bryn Mawr. Back then, music to me was alternately an outlet, a refuge, a source of soulful sustenance, and pleasure. It remains all of these things, and now is infinitely more.

When not singing, Jon Saxton consults on organizational development and strategic messaging with leaders in politics and public policy. He and his wife live in Wayland, Mass.