Brown alums reflect on music, memory and community at MusicWorks performance

By Pune Media On Feb 5, 2025 19

In late January, music educators Sebastian Ruth ’97 and Jeremy Eichler ’96 hosted a chamber ensemble performance and discussion in downtown Providence. The event, hosted by music education organization Community MusicWorks, explored how music can serve as a bridge between mentorship and social change.

The performance drew inspiration from Eichler’s 2023 book “Time’s Echo: The Second World War, the Holocaust and the Music of Remembrance,” which examines how composers responded to the trauma of the Holocaust through music.

Eichler opened the evening by encouraging the audience to view music as both a memorial to the past and a means of navigating the present. Following his remarks, the ensemble performed a selection of works by the composers featured in “Time’s Echo.”

Before the performance, Ruth and Eichler sat down with The Herald to discuss their relationships with music. Ruth is the founder and director of Community MusicWorks and Eichler, now a professor of music at Tufts University, is also an award-winning author and critic.

Though they have taken different paths since parting ways after graduation, their connection to music began in the same place.

“Jeremy and I were playing in a string quartet together at Brown,” Ruth recalled. “That was a big part of both our (experiences) as artists trying to understand where we belonged.”

This experience, Ruth said, shaped his vision for what a career in music could look like.

“During my junior and senior years, I was thinking a lot about how to combine music performing and teaching with a sense of contributing to social justice,” he explained. His idea soon evolved into a community-driven organization.

A core part of CMW’s philosophy, Ruth noted, is its commitment to youth-led vision and collaboration. “Young people are really articulating their visions for what the program should be, what their aspirations are,” he said. “Organizations are not done by individuals. They’re done by communities, assembling and articulating visions together.”

The organization follows an apprenticeship model where students learn by observing and working alongside professional musicians. This structure, Ruth said, creates a space where learning and teaching “grows out of a kind of shared vision — a shared aspiration.”

While Ruth has explored his relationship with music through CMW, Eichler has pursued it from a different angle. Eichler’s book “Time’s Echo” examines the idea that music is a method of documenting experiences.

“The book is about inviting readers to listen in a different way — to hear music as culture, as memory,” Eichler said. During Saturday’s event, Eichler expanded on this theme. His talk provided historical context for the evening’s program, explaining how the works performed serve as echoes of the past.

But beyond historical memory, he emphasized that music is also a “gateway to empathy.”

The theme of remembrance resonated with some audience members. “I was moved by Jeremy’s talk and the notion that music is a language that connects us to the past,” Jed Lippard ’95, a concert attendee, told The Herald.

Lippard described the event as “somber but not defeated.” He noted how the strength of the community “demonstrates a sense of hope and possibility that stands in contrast to the music that was played,” he said.

“As musicians, we are all really engaged with this question of how music can play a role in helping us shape how we think about the times we are living in,” Ealaín McMullin, another attendee, told The Herald. “A program like (tonight’s) has never been more timely.”