Final Reflection, Parker

This trip has been truly incredible. It feels so complete that I can hardly add or detract, and my music-making has certainly changed in ways beyond anything that I could have imagined.

What is most shocking perhaps is simply the incredible standard of art in Europe. One could say that here art is so much better, more skillfully executed, more refined, and so on, but truly it is so much more than just all of these aspects that we can summarize in words. Here, art exists on a completely different plane, incomparable to the music that we hear in the United States. It’s true art, really, and the privilege that I've had to be exposed to this brilliant conception of musical expression has completely and irrevocably changed who I am as a musician.

It was also wonderful to see, particularly in Salzburg, the way that music is such an integral part of the culture in Europe. It’s not a separate experience as it is back in the US: it is a very real part of seemingly everything that goes on. Music is not just a form of art here—it’s also a way of life, and the high standards of music that are so developed are not just the result of better musical study, but also a result of how the music is an active part of the culture. Music isn’t played: it’s lived.

I’ll end with one final observation of how the past interacts with the present. As a young man with all my life ahead of me, it naturally sounds quite depressing to be surrounded by history, with the weights of the past stifling my broad and exciting plans of the future. But my time in Europe has been so amazing because I have been able to live in the present to such an extent that I have never been capable of in America. Europe has a past stretching back thousands of years, but in the US we have no past, as 250 years is nothing in the grander scheme of history. Because of this, as Americans, we have no concept of the past. Everyone wants to live in the present, for that is where true joy lies, but in America we are forced to mistake the future for the present; that is why life moves so dreadfully fast there. I’ve learned on this trip, both musically and personally, that the past is the present, and the present is the future, and that is a beautiful thing.