Gustavo Dudamel, the newly appointed music and artistic director of the New York Philharmonic, is one of the world’s great conductors. He rose to fame leading the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra in his native Venezuela, and he has since conducted around the world, including for Pope Benedict and on John Williams’s score for Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
So what is he doing in this week’s Leadership Column?
On campus, we’ve been deep in our strategic planning work since last winter. On Saturday, October 3, we’re inviting parents, alumni, and faculty to Community Design Day to imagine what the future can and should look like for the next generation of Belmont Day students.
That has me thinking about how you predict the future, which is, in a real sense, what a conductor does. Dudamel put it this way: “Conducting is a kind of strange, proactive dance. You move your body not in response to music but in anticipation of it … To be visionary. Don’t see the moment here. Stand a little bit up and see there, you know. See this in years.”
Watch a great orchestra closely, and you’ll notice that the players sound a fraction of a second after the baton falls. The conductor is always slightly in the future. The orchestra plays what the conductor has already heard in their mind.
Strategic planning asks the same of a school. We have to hear the music before it’s played. The early notes are already there if we listen: AI reshaping nearly every part of life, the cost of living in and around Boston, the growing specialization of youth sports, and a world that needs resilience, collaboration, and critical thinking more than ever. Our job is to start moving before the downbeat.
There’s one more lesson from the podium. The conductor doesn’t make a sound. The music comes from the players. A strategic plan works the same way: it sets the tempo, but our community makes the future.
Imagining Belmont Day’s future is one of my favorite parts of this job. It draws on the strength of our community and the creativity of our faculty, and it’s all in service of giving our students a world-class education while their world changes in real time.
So grab your batons, step out onto the stage, and listen for the hush before the first note. Join us on Saturday, October 3, and let’s make some beautiful music together.
Have a great weekend.
Interested in joining us for the strategic planning Community Design Day on Saturday, Oct. 3? Kindly RSVP here.