5 Lessons in Encouraging Students to Lead Holistic Artistic Lives

Performing arts careers rarely progress in a linear fashion. They can be constrained or redefined by circumstances, such as availability of jobs or unexpected life events. So imagine how powerful it can be for a student who has set their sights on being a performer, composer, conductor, or teacher to envision these pursuits layered with other parts of their life that they value. Educators who model and teach this idea can plant the seeds in young musicians to be flexible and open to seeing different pathways to rich, fulfilling lives.

Flutist and teacher Annie Wu has designed a career that incorporates her different interests and creative inclinations. Growing up, she loved playing the flute and the community of friends and opportunities it offered. She enjoyed reading and drawing, and in college, she pursued dual degrees in comparative literature and flute performance. She spent summers at music festivals, won competitions, and taught flute. Annie is naturally drawn to pursuing multiple goals simultaneously.

"I’ve tried to resist the idea that you can only be good at one thing. People tend to think you’re either an amazing flutist but poor in academics or a great writer who’s bad at your day job. But I think every project in my life amplifies other aspects of my life. I’m a better flutist because I love to read and write."

Annie is not unique in her desire to do more than one thing. She exemplifies the importance of helping music students explore how their interests might overlap and intersect. When I connected with Annie on social media in 2024, I learned about her latest project, Not Too Sweet , which was not the first time she had combined her interests and talents in a creative way. Later when we sat down for an interview, Annie shared valuable lessons that have made a difference in who she is as an artist, educator, and person.

5 Lessons of Encouragment

Lesson 1: It's possible to pursue music at a high level while maintaining your other interests.

Many college-bound students feel stuck when choosing between music and another subject. This limited view—you can only do one or the other—closes off possibilities for students early in their educational journeys. As a college senior, Annie tapped into several of her interests (music and literature) for a thesis on the songs sung by Mignon in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship . For the last hundred years, composers have written music for Mignon’s songs (the poems in Goethe’s text), and Annie’s thesis was the first compilation of this music specifically composed for the flute. From working on her thesis, Annie learned that a project like this was an enriching, worthwhile way for her to spend time. By combining a few of her interests, she produced novel, creative results.

Lesson 2: Use music and art to inform your perspectives when encountering setbacks.

In 2020, Annie contracted COVID-19 while staying with her parents in California and lost her sense of smell for nearly two years. The loss of smell diminished Annie’s enjoyment of eating. She continued making music, writing, and drawing—avenues that helped her cope with new, limiting circumstances—but she also began experimenting with food and flavor as she spent her days in quarantine cooking recipes from the New York Times . This practice served to develop her palate and blossomed into a broader interest in the culinary arts. After the pandemic, Annie returned to New York City, where she worked two culinary jobs and befriended several chefs. Just as formative, she began to merge her culinary interests, musical talent, and social connections in new artistic endeavors.

Lesson 3: Students need encouragement to tie seemingly unrelated interests to their art.

Annie realized combining music and food helped her “see creative possibilities everywhere. It was a turning point. Everything has the potential to be interesting, magical, or new. If you look for it, you can find ways for your craft to absorb it.” Music educators often focus on teaching music literacy and ensemble skills, but they should also emphasize how music and art mesh with daily life and are, in fact, common human experiences. If educators communicate how their art intersects with other areas of their lives, young students may be prompted to consider this possibility in their own lives.

Lesson 4: Encourage students to build community through their art.

Music is created with others through performance with fellow musicians or by sharing it with an audience. In one of Annie’s food-inspired projects, she collaborated with Thai chef Hong Thaimee on an afternoon event that featured tea, savory and sweet treats, and flute and piano music. The partnership of the chef and musicians resulted in a sense of community among the artists and those who attended this unique experience.

Musical events can involve creating art with an audience. When people in a community are involved in the genesis of art, they often regard it as an important element in their lives. K-12 music programs can invite local chefs, visual artists, or other professionals (lawyers, doctors, etc.) to participate in projects, thereby generating a pool of patrons who will support their initiatives and young artists.

Lesson 5: Share stories about others who have built artistic lives.

A powerful way to show students how to incorporate music into their daily lives is by sharing success stories. Annie is one example, but many others exist.

• Pianist Miki Sawada travels around the United States with a piano in a van to play music in community gathering spaces that rarely host classical music. Miki’s Gather Hear Tour breaks barriers between audience, music, and musicians, demonstrating in real time that classical music has a place in everyday life.
• Hannah Cole , an Asheville-based painter, spent the early part of her career painting full-time and mounting shows of her work in North Carolina and New York. She became interested in financial education and taxes, studied accounting, and then opened Sunlight Tax to help self-employed artists and musicians manage their taxes and finances.
• Vital Quartet , formed in 2020, presents the repertoire of composers of color, including Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Florence Price , and contemporary composers like Jessie Montgomery . Although Vital’s members play in other ensembles, their activities as a quartet fill a void in chamber music repertoire and satisfy their personal interest in these composers and pieces.

Annie, Miki, Hannah, and Vital Quartet are diverse examples of how creative people expand the conventional image of a “working artist.” Their stories demonstrate that life is not an either/or proposition. As Annie put it, “We always have practical pressures—money, time, health—and I’ve come to recognize that life swings between low and high points. Balancing life in the performing arts isn’t necessarily about keeping things equal with your other activities. It changes over time. You learn to calibrate.”

Encourage Exploration

Helping students explore their interests through tangible projects is a worthy educational venture for any music class or ensemble. To implement this idea, let’s use the example of Annie Wu’s album Not Too Sweet, which she produced with pianist Markus Kaitila for Etymology Classics.

Step 1: Ask students to brainstorm aspects of their lives that define their identity: culture, values, and past experiences.

Annie is Chinese American, and draws on her childhood experiences with her family and community. The title of her album, Not Too Sweet, refers to a Chinese phrase her aunties said when serving dessert that implies a balance between the bitter and the sweet. The same can aptly be said of music. The album is comprised of music that Annie’s mother played during car rides to flute lessons and from other nostalgic childhood moments.

Through this step, students might identify connections to sights, sounds, tastes, smells, or physical sensations in their lives. They can mine their identities and histories to find meaningful elements.

Step 2: Explore how students’ interests and talents might merge with music.

Annie’s interests in visual art, literature, and cooking are all apparent in Not Too Sweet. She generated the cover art for each song, wrote the album notes, and referenced food in the album title. Your students may have interests ranging from sports or calligraphy to cosplay or magic; expressing them opens the possibility of including them at some point, and in some way.

Step 3: Find the overlap between students’ identities and interests and their art form.

Once students have identified facets that make them unique, guide them to explore how those facets connect with music. What songs, instruments, themes, rhythms, tonal patterns, and so forth reflect their lives? For Not Too Sweet, Annie recorded Liz on Top of the World from the film Pride and Prejudice , which she frequently watched with her family. The song signals her value of family connection, and the accompanying artwork depicts Annie and her family watching the film together.

Students may call up specific songs that highlight their lived experiences, or they may want to compose new tunes or reimagine familiar ones with new instrumentation. Encourage this exploration! Who knows? This exercise could result in a short album, concert, or community collaboration. Even if it doesn’t, the self-reflection is valuable in and of itself.

Inspiring Lifelong Creativity

The overall goal of the exploration exercise—whether with elementary or high school students—is to foster creativity and convey the message that there is no single way to be creative. It has the added benefit of inviting conversation among teachers, peers, and families about identity and art. Upon completing it, an educator might see ways to extend the activity in directions relevant to their subject matter, and they might also revisit the project throughout the year and gain insights into how it can be improved.

Exposing students to the idea of integrating music with other interests and facets of their lives opens their minds to a different level of appreciation and implementation of their skills and creativity.

About Annie Wu

Annie Wu is a Brooklyn-based flutist who studied comparative literature at Harvard and flute performance at New England Conservatory. She teaches private students, leads workshops on combining literature and music, and performs. Her album Not Too Sweet ( Spotify ; Apple Music ) has garnered more than a million listens and was recorded with Etymology Classics as part of Etymology’s commitment to inspiring interest in classical music for the next generation. Learn more at https://www.anniewuflute.com/ .