The Argonath Duo

Welcome to the next round of our career series Q&A, “Awesome Women Doing Awesome Things.” Click here to read previous interviews.

So - who are you, and what do you do?

I’m Claire Allen, and I’m a violin teacher and performing violinist living in Fairfax, Virginia. I teach a private studio of about 20 students, ages 4 to 18, play in a professional string quartet, and am in the Argonath Duo, a violin/piano duo with a YouTube channel that does covers of geeky music such as Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and video game music.

Why do you love your job (or just really, really like it)?

I love my job because I get to spend my day surrounded by music and teaching others to love it, too. My students continually challenge me creatively, and I love developing lesson plans and sequences of repertoire for them. Since I teach privately, I work one-on-one with my students so each lesson is a unique experience – for both of us! I love getting to know my students as people and figuring out what will make them light up and really shine. As for the playing part of my job, I’ve had the most musical fun of my life in the Argonath Duo. My partner, Wade Meyers, and I have the best time creating our own covers of music that has great geeky significance in our lives. It uses an entirely different set of skills than my classical training. We’re still figuring out the business aspect of having a YouTube channel, but the beginning stages have been great.

Have you always known what you wanted to do? What was your journey to your current career?

I’ve wanted to play violin really well for as long as I can remember, although it wasn’t until high school when I realized that to get as good as I want to be, I’d have to turn professional and pursue it seriously.  I started playing violin in my public school orchestra when I was nine, and started taking private lessons soon after that. The more I played and learned, the more I wanted to do it. I got my undergraduate degree from Baldwin-Wallace University in Ohio and then took a year off to study with Burton Kaplan, a teacher in New York, before going to the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Maryland, for my master’s degree. Music school was incredibly challenging, both from a musical and from an emotional standpoint. If you decide you want to pursue music as a career, that means you’ve hit a point where you literally can’t imagine doing anything else with your life, and that you’re willing to give up anything to achieve it.  That doesn’t mean the sacrifices are easy, though.

Teaching snuck its way into my musical life early on. I was fortunate enough to have a private violin teacher in high school who asked me to assist with some of her younger students, so I was tutoring people in violin while I was still a student myself. I started teaching in college, and was lucky enough to attend some absolutely amazing classes and workshops about teaching private violin while I was still in school. It got to a point where I realized that the time I spent with my students was my favorite part of the day. It didn’t matter how stressed out I was about school or homework, or how upset I might have been about something in my personal life – somehow, I was always able to push that aside and focus all my attention on my students. I leave lessons feeling energized and like I’ve contributed something positive to someone’s life, and that’s just an amazing thing.

Do you have any mentors/have you mentored anyone?

I’ve been fortunate enough to have so many amazing mentors who were also my violin teachers.  My violin teacher in graduate school, Keng-Yuen Tseng, probably had the most dramatic impact on my violin playing. During our first lesson, he taught me how to hold the violin and bow. He literally rebuilt my violin technique from the ground up. It was incredibly humiliating to be at Peabody, which is this amazing, high-level music school, and be working on beginner stuff. Mr. Tseng knew, though, that I would have no chance of succeeding unless I made these corrections to my technique. He was really tough on me, and while that was difficult and at times devastating, there’s not a day that goes by when I don’t think about something he taught me that made me a better violinist. I’m profoundly grateful for that experience.

Rebecca Henry, the pedagogy teacher at Peabody, is the mentor I credit my teaching success with. Her pedagogy class changed the way I teach violin, and I use her materials with my students on a daily basis. She was also kind enough to take me under her wing and teach me private lessons after I left school to continue my own education, as well as advise me on the early steps of starting my own studio and violin program.

I suppose you could say that I mentor each of my private students, at least when it comes to being a violinist! I do try to be a strong role model for them as well. I want my students to build true confidence, the kind that comes from knowing  your work will get results and pay off in the long run.

What’s been a defining moment in your work? (Graduating/passing exams, a project, a big risk, your first big break, etc.)

Graduating from Peabody was definitely a defining moment. Having my master’s degree from such a fantastic school has opened so many doors for me. It adds an instant sense of credibility to my musicianship on paper and when people first meet me. I certainly have to prove myself to every student and to everyone I work with, but the degree and connections from Peabody have given me opportunities that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

How do you stay motivated?

Well, my monthly bill from Fed Loan Servicing is pretty good motivation to keep working.  No, honestly, my students keep me motivated. They’re such amazing kids and people, and I want to be the best teacher I possibly can for them and continue to create fresh and meaningful musical experiences for them. In terms of my own playing and practice, that’s been a challenge since I left school and focused my attention on building my studio. It always comes down to the people I get to work with. I want to be the best violinist I can be so I can work and perform with my colleagues who I respect. Playing chamber music with other musicians is my favorite thing in the world, besides teaching.

Has gender ever been an issue in your industry/workplace experiences?

I’ve been so fortunate in my job. I work for Potomac Arts Academy, the community arts division of George Mason University in Fairfax. The administration is almost entirely female, including my boss, and our teaching faculty is pretty evenly split. We get paid from our students’ tuition, and we’re paid based on our experience and education, not gender. We’re very open about what we charge for lessons, and everyone at the same tier of faculty gets paid the same.

However, in the classical music world, there’s this overwhelming presence of white men. Most of the famous composers people have heard of are men – Beethoven, Brahms, Bach, Mozart, etc. I had given an assignment to a student where she was supposed to read all these kids’ biographies of famous composers. She was telling me her thoughts on one of them and suddenly looked at me and said, “Why are all the composers I learn about men?” It was like this lightbulb went off inside my head. I consider myself a thoroughly modern woman and a supporter of gender equality. Yet, here I was, teaching my young female students music that had been written by only men. I went home that night and discovered an amazing anthology series called “Violin Music By Women,” edited by Cora Cooper. It has pieces at all levels of difficulty, from beginner through advanced, written by women composers. I now assign pieces from that anthology regularly to both female and male students. It’s my goal for it just to be a normal thing that my students play music written by women, not a huge statement.

There’s this ongoing discussion of women “having it all” - what are your thoughts on that?

Ha. Ha. Ha.  

In seriousness, someone very wise told me once that balance doesn’t mean you’re standing in the middle, perfectly poised and without dropping anything. It means that you will wobble to one side on one day and to another side the next day. So, maybe one day I take care of my errands and my budget, but I don’t practice violin very much. Another day, I’ll end up eating a frozen dinner but practicing as much as I’d like to.  I think for me, “having it all” would mean that at the end of my life, I will be able to look back on everything and know that I have no regrets, and that each stage of my life focused on what was the most meaningful to me at the time.

I also think that having it all is going to look different for each woman, and that ultimately, it’s about doing what makes you happy and what allows you to add value to the world – not trying to cram in all the things we think we “should” be doing.

What advice would you give to a young woman looking for her first job?

Find an excellent career counselor to help you polish your application materials.

Know that the first job is not going to be your only job – it doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to get you started.

Surround yourself with people who support, understand, and care about you.

This one is really important. When you’re a musician, you go overnight from being a student at a prestigious music school, which is fascinating and impressive to people, to being the cliché of an unemployed musician. I’ve lost track of the number of times people have asked me “Is it really possible to make money with your degree?” “Is that a real job?”  Make sure you have a support network of people who understand what you want to do, and why you want to do it – and listen to them, not to random strangers who are asking you how you’re going to support yourself. You are going to need people who will love you and believe in you, even at times when you might be down on yourself because the job hunt is not going the way you want.

What’s something that you wish you knew when you were getting started in the workforce?

The email you need to write is rarely the email your client/coworker/boss needs to read.

I interact with students and their parents on a daily basis. Sometimes, a parent will say something to me that questions my teaching methods or even directly insults me. I’ve learned to write an email with my own address in the address bar that allows me to express everything I’m thinking and feeling about that situation. I process things verbally, so it’s really important for me to get things out.  After I write that email to myself, I sit on it at least overnight. Then, I reread it the next day and decide what needs to be communicated to the person and what I just needed to vent out. The email I send is much kinder, more diplomatic, and understanding than the email I wrote the day before. Your gut reaction to something upsetting is very rarely going to be what is appropriate for business communications – it’s important for your emotional health to be able to  honor and express your feelings, but it’s important for your professional relationships to not tell everyone what you’re feeling all the time.

What are the next steps for you? Anything big coming up?

I just moved out of my mom’s house! I lived at home for two years thanks to my incredibly generous mother and was able to pay down a substantial amount of my student loans. I’m so excited that I’m finally making enough money as a musician (see, it IS a real job!) to pay rent.

Career-wise, I’m excited to continue working with my current students and am welcoming new students into my studio. I’m part of a great team of faculty members developing group classes and performance opportunities for students at Potomac Arts Academy, so I’m working on that from both the teaching and the administrative side.  My duo has some recording sessions coming up, and I’m incredibly excited about that – we’re planning Star Wars, Sherlock, Disney, and Elder Scrolls covers. It’ll be a lot of work but also a ton of fun.