Performances + Events
Maxwell Fairman ’26 realized after his third year at New England Conservatory that his priorities were changing. Fairman, a violinist who studied at NEC with Donald Weilerstein and completed the Conservatory’s Concentration in Teaching Artistry and Music Education, had other interests, some of which he’d explored in STEM classes in high school. He’d even considered applying to dual-degree programs for college but chose to focus on music.
Fairman graduated from NEC in May and enrolled in another undergraduate program. He’s pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering at the University of Cincinnati.
“I got a wide variety of reactions” from peers, Fairman said, explaining that he’s chosen this path not because he’s second-guessing himself but because he’s curious. He also wants to broaden the possibilities of what his career and life could look like. “I want to have multiple options for making money,” he said.
With the serious study of music at NEC, alongside driven peers and mentored by the leading artists and pedagogues of our time, come lessons and skills that can readily be called on in other areas. Through hours, days, and years honing one’s craft in practice rooms, one learns — in a way that has been compared to Olympic-level training — discipline, how to focus, and what one is capable of. In ensembles, students learn to listen and to lead, to share, to communicate, and to collaborate, all in service of the music. Working toward a common artistic goal requires empathy and necessitates diplomacy. Art happens not in vacuums but in inspired and inspiring communities from which open-minded, well-rounded, and purposeful individuals emerge.
Fairman still practices and plays gigs. He also composes and arranges music. The art form, he said, continues to fulfill him personally, and his education at NEC has provided advantages and shaped his perspective. Pursuing and completing the Teaching Artistry and Music Education Concentration taught him “how to communicate complex concepts in a way that’s easy to understand.” More broadly, he said of his time at NEC, “I got very comfortable working very consistently and being OK with delayed gratification or uncertainty about results.”
Maxwell Reed ’26 MM, who studied clarinet at NEC with Andrew Sandwick, is embarking on a career in financial management. Like Fairman, Reed has many interests. He’s entrepreneurial, ambitious, and drawn to serving others.
While at NEC, Reed enrolled in the Harvard Extension School to pursue a graduate certificate in finance. “The more I did it, the more I liked it,” he said.
He received NEC’s Entrepreneurial Musicianship Grant to create portable, lightweight, acrylic mirrors that musicians could bring with them to practice rooms. He also learned to prepare taxes, and he put that skill to use to the benefit of his colleagues.
“I got to help people one on one,” Reed said, pointing out that in helping musicians with their taxes he was, in a very practical way, supporting the arts.
At Commencement, Reed received NEC’s Entrepreneurial Musicianship Spark Award in recognition of his plan to provide financial services to musicians.
Today, Reed is pursuing certification and working toward licensing in the financial-planning field and interviewing with firms around Boston. And he’s calling on skills he developed at NEC.
“Communication is the biggest thing,” he said. “Studying at NEC did give me the tools” to forge another career path. Originally, he thought he’d find himself working in an orchestra or military band. Still, he said, “I don’t think I would have done it differently.” Like Fairman, he’s not walking away from music. “I would like to keep clarinet in my life,” he said.
Similarly, Blake Hetherington ’24, a soprano who studied at NEC with Jane Eaglen and just completed her first year at the Georgetown University Law Center, wants to remain engaged in performance and hopes to join a choral group in Washington, D.C. Hetherington’s path to law school began with serious performance challenges she faced during a year at NEC she described as “the hardest of my life.” Hetherington learned that the tongue tension she’d been experiencing was due to an anatomical issue that required surgery. Recovery involved speech therapy and having to learn to sing again.
Ultimately, Hetherington said, “I needed some sort of reset.”
Her parents and stepparents are all attorneys, and it struck her that a career in law might be a possibility. After all, she’d loved bookwork in school, particularly her theory and analysis courses. And she loved doing research.
Most of all, of course, Hetherington loved music — but at that point she loved it in a new way.
“I wanted to preserve my love for it,” she said.
Like Fairman and Reed, Hetherington took with her from NEC plenty of lessons that she believes she wouldn’t have found elsewhere. While at NEC, Hetherington received a Nova Fellowship, a program through which four students work together to produce events on campus. Working on the production side of things called on Hetherington’s natural knack for organization and operations.
“I genuinely think my music degree has helped me more than a political-science degree ever could,” she said. “It has changed the way that I can think critically and creatively.”
Hetherington’s music education strengthened her work ethic and sharpened her attention to detail. It developed her ability to express herself, and it taught her how to interact with those around her.
“You learn how to communicate with people and work as a team,” she said.
Today, Hetherington is thriving. And music remains an important part of who she is and has been since she began singing in the sixth grade.
“I’m grateful that I can just love it again,” she said.
Ryan Mewhorter, the Entrepreneurial Musicianship program manager in NEC’s Community Engagement and Professional Studies Department, advised Hetherington and Reed as they looked ahead to careers outside the field of music. All of the NEC’s faculty and staff, Mewhorter said, are committed to each student’s success, whatever success means to that student.
Mewhorter, who studied voice in college and graduate school, said conservatory training “pushes you to your limits.”
“A conservatory education is intense,” he said. The skills one develops in music school “are going to differentiate you” from peers in other fields.
