We were lucky to catch up with Danny Jordan recently and have shared our conversation below.
Danny, appreciate you joining us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?
For many people, my whole career could be considered one big risk that I’ve taken. Choosing to pursue any creative field is difficult at the best of times, and doing so has been the biggest and most rewarding risk I’ve ever taken. Growing up, I was really interested in math and science and, until I started playing viola, I had always imagined working as a scientist in some kind of lab. But, when I started learning my instrument, I was taken by classical music in a way that I had never experienced before. I often say to my students, friends, and family, that becoming a classical musician wasn’t actually a choice of mine. It sounds so cliché to say, but I genuinely believe that music chose me. It wasn’t so much something I wanted as something that I needed.
The choice to pursue a career in the arts itself wasn’t difficult, but sticking with that choice has shown me how much of a risk it actually was. I think, because what I do involves so much steady work and active, personal choice, that it is incredibly easy to take any type of failure very personally. It’s incredibly easy to turn the blame on yourself – “I didn’t practice enough”, “I didn’t practice hard enough”, “I’m not good enough”. I’ve known many musicians who have turned away from their art because of the toll that it can take on your mental health. On top of that, because the arts are so subjective, it’s so hard to guarantee success, regardless of what that means to the individual. Because of that, ensuring that we have all that many take for granted, such as health insurance, a home, or the ability to support a family, is so, so challenging.
Despite how hard it is to go out into day-to-day life knowing that very little is guaranteed, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I wasn’t kidding when I said that I don’t feel like pursuing a career in music wasn’t a choice. Never before had I ever been called to do something in the way that I feel called to performing and teaching. I genuinely feel incredibly privileged to have the opportunity to make a living doing the one thing that I love most in the world. It’s like being in a movie in all of the best ways and I couldn’t be more grateful.
Danny, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
My name is Danny Jordan and I play the viola. I work primarily as a performer, but I am also a private viola and violin teacher and a presenter for the education division of The Cliburn Foundation. My start as a classical musician may seem regular from the outside, but in the community it is rather surprising.
While many musicians enter the field as a result of a family member or some sort of important experience with music as a young person, I come from a family of absolutely zero musicians, whether at a hobby or career level – the closest thing to another musician in my family was my younger brother taking a year of band for his middle school fine arts credit. As a result, my desire to play an instrument when the time came to choose middle school electives took my parents by surprise. At first, they were very resistant to adding another extracurricular activity to their plates – I come from a family with four kids, all who played soccer and were involved in a wide variety of clubs and social groups, so they weren’t exactly keen on adding another to the list. It took until the fall semester had actually started and I was the only student in my orchestra class without an instrument for them to finally give in and go to the shop to rent me a viola. It was one of the best days of my life.
From then, I started learning the instrument and absolutely fell in love. It wasn’t long before my orchestra director recommended to my parents that I start private viola lessons and I began work with my first teacher, Ms. Meitz. From then on, with her guidance, I was able to continue improving and gaining better and better accolades. I got the top ranking at that year’s solo competition, made first chair in the local All-Region orchestra, and made the top orchestra at the summer camp that I attended that year. After entering high school, I went on to place into the top orchestra of my local youth orchestra, as well be admitted into All-Region Orchestra all four years and All-State Orchestra three out of four years.
After high school, I attended Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX for a Bachelor’s Degree in Viola Performance on a full scholarship made up of both academic and artistic offers. During that time, I was able to establish a client base and reputation for myself that still stands to this day – many of the people who I work with on a day-to-day basis are classmates of mine from college.
Once I had completed my degree at SMU in 2020, I moved across the country in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic to begin my graduate studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music in Ohio. Studying at CIM showed me the classical music world from a very different perspective. Gaining entry to CIM is one of my proudest accomplishments. CIM is widely considered to be one of the best schools in the world for my instrument and I had the fantastic privilege of working with someone who, in my opinion, was one of the best teachers in the entire institute. While in school, I realized just how high the level of performance is for the best of the best musicians. I felt like the tiniest fish in the most massive ocean. However, after two years of intense study, I graduated with my Master’s Degree as a top performer in my class, with a 4.0 GPA.
Upon finishing my degree, I moved back to Texas to begin work as a performer and private music teacher. Since then, I have established a large studio of students, at times numbering as many as 57 across three school districts and over ten different campuses, and established a career for myself as an orchestral, chamber, and solo performer. Currently, I hold posts as the Principal Violist of the McKinney Philharmonic Orchestra and a member of the viola sections of the Texarkana and Shreveport Symphony Orchestras, with several more auditions coming up at the end of August.
As much as it may seem like it, my life isn’t ALL classical music. Outside of my playing, I LOVE to cook – it was actually the very first thing I ever wanted to do with my life. There are home videos of me as a toddler running around the kitchen with a spatula in my hand yelling “I’m a cooking man!” Throughout my life, I haven’t had much of a chance to travel outside of the US, so I view cooking as my own way of “traveling” to new places. I also have a cat named Chihiro that I love deeply, in spite of the fact that she loves to knock any and everything she can off of the counter. Aside from cooking, I love to spend my free time playing video games or spending time outside.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
One lesson I’ve had to unlearn is that being “good enough” is often not good enough. I’ve learned that the classical music world, like many industries, is one where connections are everything. As such, I’ve made a huge effort to expand my network of contacts as wide as I can. As I’ve said so many times to students and colleagues alike, the most important thing when building a network is to be kind. Yes, of course, it’s essential to be good at what you do, regardless of what that is. However, the next most important thing is that you are easy, fun, inspiring, or exciting to work with. There have been countless times in my career so far that I have seen a fabulous, incredible, proficient musician lose out on an opportunity (or sometimes many opportunities) just because they are hard to work with. So many of us want to be great in our field, but it’s so important to remember that being great doesn’t absolve us from poor behavior towards other people. I have no intention of bragging when I say this, but I have heard from many of the people who have hired me for jobs that I was a great player, but what cemented a stable position and a great working relationship was the way I interacted with those around me and the connections I was able to build while in that position. To sum it up, one of the things I always tell my students is that it doesn’t cost you anything to be kind.
Has your business ever had a near-death moment? Would you mind sharing the story?
This is something really personal that I hesitated sharing, but I think that even if only one person somewhere out there reads this and is able to gain something from it, then I’ve done my job. In July 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, I moved across the country from Dallas, TX to Cleveland, OH to pursue my dream. I left behind the only state I had ever lived in, my family, my friends, and my partner at the time. I was so scared. I arrived in Cleveland, began my Master’s degree program, and felt alive again after the fear and isolation of the pandemic. I found myself in music in ways that I never had before. I felt like I was genuinely in a place that was designed for me. I earned my degree and felt like I was headed for certain success. The long-distance aspect of my relationship with my then partner had been especially hard on me, but I moved back to Texas after graduation feeling like everything would be fixed. I thought my future was planned and set. I had never been more wrong.
After less than six months back in Texas, my relationship fell apart and I was figuratively out on the streets, feeling like I was left completely alone in the world. I was working, simply because I had to in order to keep myself afloat. I was scared, exhausted, depressed, and isolated. For me to keep going felt impossible. I really thought that everything I had worked for since I was eleven was going down the drain – I felt so lost.
It was in December of 2022 when I had reached such a low point that I reached out to a therapist again. I had attended a few therapy sessions in high school as a result of some severe anxiety combined with an eating disorder, but this was the first time I had ever tried to entertain therapy as an adult. My therapistnquite possibly saved my life. He helped me to realize that my life could exist separately from this person that I had attached myself to. He showed me that I have value as an individual and encouraged me to take life by the horns and make it into what I want. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to adequately thank him for all that he helped me through. He genuinely helped me to feel that I was good enough and worthy of all that I ever dreamed of. Since then, I’ve won three professional orchestra auditions, as well as a few performance-adjacent posts that have allowed me to expand my resume further than I ever imagined. When I decide to pursue classical music as that little thirteen year old, I never expected it to hold so many mental health challenges. In spite of this, I can’t imagine choosing anything else as a career. It is my passion. I NEED to perform, I need to collaborate, I need to teach.
In spite of the roadblocks, I love what I do to the end of the earth, to the moon and back – no distance analogy is good enough to explain the incredible, disastrous, heartbreaking, calamitous need that I have to do what I do. There’s a really cliché saying that’s something to the effect of “I didn’t choose music, music chose ME!” While that may seem so intensely overdone and trite, it’s the truth. At the end of the day, I did have a choice. I could’ve chosen to pursue medicine, chemical engineering, physics, astronomy, marine biology, Spanish translation, linguistics, art history, or any of the other random fields I’ve found interest in over the course of my lifetime. I can guarantee that there always would’ve been a part of me wondering, “What if?” if I hadn’t pursued a career as a classical musician. I am so incredibly grateful to have the life that I do today and want to thank my parents, my siblings, my friends, and my partner, Chris, for all of their love and support throughout all that I do. I can honestly say that I wouldn’t be here without them.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dannyjordanviola/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqqu5QPzn1sB_V8LrqSvogA
Image Credits
All Photo Credits – Erika Weik, The Roam Creative