March 13, 2008
A pair of passions
James Garlick is a 24-year-old accomplished violinist who recently debuted as concertmaster of the Cascade Symphony Orchestra, where he performed as featured soloist and joined Seattle Symphony principal cellist Joshua Roman in a duo-encore. He is also a research scientist at the UW’s Department of Otolaryngology, where he studies the neurobiology of hearing loss and cochlear hair cell regeneration. He earned dual degrees in neuroscience and music from Ohio’s Oberlin College, home to the top-ranked Oberlin Conservatory of Music.
Q. What is auditory neuroscience and how did you first connect it to music?
A. Neuroscience is one of the frontiers of science and it’s a fascinating field — studying the way the brain and nervous system works. I first became interested in neuroscience when I was an undergraduate at Oberlin College and I was also studying to be a violinist. As I studied neuroscience, I inevitably became interested in the connections between music and neuroscience. One such field is auditory neuroscience — studying the way the auditory system works, how it interacts with the brain and, from my perspective, how music might influence the brain.
Q. Did you become interested in music at an early age?
A. Yes. I started playing violin when I was about 5 years old in Port Angeles, where I grew up, and I’ve been playing ever since. I knew early on that I wanted music to be a part of my life. I wasn’t sure how much it was going to be a professional part of my life – it’s very difficult to be able to pursue – but it’s something I could never live without. I really enjoyed the opportunity to study both science and music in college.
Q. What does your current scientific research encompass?
A. I’m a research scientist in the lab of Jennifer Stone at the Virginia Merrill Bloedel Hearing Research Center, where we’re studying the neurobiology of hearing loss and cochlear hair cell regeneration. We’re looking for ways to promote regeneration of these sensory hair cells of the inner ear in mammals. Currently, this is only possible in non-mammals such as fish and birds. The goal of this research is to eventually promote hair cell regeneration in mammals leading to a treatment for human hearing loss.
Q. What role do hair cells play in hearing?
A. The hair cells in the inner ear are in a sense the fundamental unit of hearing. When sound energy travels from your outer ear into your inner ear, hair cells help convert this mechanical energy into nerve impulses. These nerve impulses then travel to the brain where they are interpreted as sound.
Q. Describe the neurobiology of music.
A. It’s a really interesting and vast field that I’m naturally drawn to. Lately, it’s become a very popular subject and there are some great books out there including This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin, and (neurologist) Oliver Sacks’ new book, Musicophilia. There’s a lot of interest in the way music stimulates the brain – the different centers that are activated through music, the complex coordination that goes on, for example, when you play the piano or the violin.
I’m also peripherally interested in how music actually creates emotion. We’re a long way from fully understanding this, but back at Oberlin I started working with a music theory professor from the Conservatory who was interested in studying how music essentially affects the body. I’ve been interested in how neurons fire when you see someone else performing an action vs. when you do the action yourself. It could have some interesting implications in terms of how we perceive music.
Q. What is your role as the new concertmaster of the Cascade Symphony Orchestra?
A. Concertmaster is an interesting sort of archaic term, but essentially it’s the leader of the first violin section and the string section. My role is to unify the sound and provide leadership to the ensemble. I serve as an intermediary between the conductor, who has his mind on the big picture, and help translate his vision into something practical for the strings. I also play all the orchestral violin solos. So I have to embody a soloist as well as orchestral player. My goal is to improve that connection between the players and groups that makes it more of a musical dialogue. It’s also my job to provide all of the bowings and fingerings for the various (musical) parts, so I have to work on the music ahead of time. This is my first official season with the Cascade Symphony Orchestra. We perform six concerts per year and we rehearse weekly.
Q. What are some of your other music projects this season?
A. I’m performing as concertmaster for several concerts this season and was recently appointed Associate Concertmaster of the Northwest Sinfonietta, which is a smaller chamber orchestra that performs in Tacoma and Seattle. I’m doing several chamber music collaborations as well with the Spectrum Dance Company, Tacoma City Ballet, the University of Puget Sound, and UW. I also perform with the Seattle Baroque Orchestra, which performs on period instruments. These instruments are an earlier version of the modern violin. Next season, I will solo with the Cascade Symphony several times, will tour with the Spectrum Dance Company, and will make my Carnegie Hall solo debut with my high school orchestra from Port Angeles.
Q. What about contemporary music?
A. I’m very interested in contemporary music. It gives a real sense of exploration and life to the music. In some ways, it’s similar to the frontiers of science – you’re working with something that people haven’t done before that’s new and exciting. Some people have difficulty with contemporary music because it’s sometimes not as melodious. But it’s also like science in that time will tell what’s good, what’s bad, what works and what doesn’t. It all deserves to be heard and played, performed and listened to. Then, 20, 50, 100 years down the line, we’ll look back and perhaps say, ‘well, that was a good idea — but that sure wasn’t.’
Q. How do you manage your time in these two demanding fields?
A. It’s certainly a challenge. In a sense, it works kind of as a day job and a night job. Music is performed in the evenings a lot, and sometimes rehearsals are evenings or weekends. So I’m able to spend most of my days in the Lab working on projects, and spend evenings working on concerts. I’m also very grateful to Jennifer Stone for being supportive and flexible in working around my musical projects. Of course, it leaves almost no time for anything else, which can be difficult. But on the flip side, I feel lucky that I get to do these two things that I love — and get paid for it.
Q. Would you say your two passions create a balance?
A.Yes. I know that both science and music are always going to be a very important part of my life, and they complement each other in a wonderful way. Both science and music take a certain type of perfectionism, but they also require a real element of creativity. I think they both attract a similar type of person. If you look to people you know who are in science, I think you’ll find most of them have probably done some type of music at one time or another. It seems like every great scientist was really serious about the piano or violin or some form of music at some time. And the other way around is true as well – a lot of musicians have an interest in science, as was particularly evident at Oberlin.
I feel very fortunate that I’m able to keep both passions going.
Note: To learn more about the Northwest music groups mentioned in this article, visit www.cascadesymphony.org,
www.seattlebaroque.org and www.nwsinfonietta.org.
