U School of Music director Patrick Warfield wants more collaborations for students

Little robots moving about on a dancer’s body.

That’s an image that Patrick Warfield had on his resume when he became director of the University of Minnesota School of Music. In his previous position at the University of Maryland, he had a reputation as a facilitator of imaginative collaborations, heading up the university’s Arts for All initiative.

“We were able to do some funding to seed collaborations between the arts and sciences,” Warfield said recently from his office overlooking the Mississippi River on the university’s West Bank. “Between, for example, visual artists and climate scientists. Between a violinist and some AI technology we developed on campus. When you got those conversations happening, really cool things grew out of that.

“A dancer was working with a scientist who helped create miniature robots that could live on you and measure your health,” Warfield continued. “So they built a track around her body suit, and her movements would trigger the robot to do various things. It was this dance between the human and the not-quite-human.”

As Warfield left Maryland for Minnesota, University of Maryland President Darryll Pines wrote him a note in which he said, “You became the lifeblood and energy behind getting faculty, staff, students, alums and friends interested in all things that are artistic. You made a huge impact and essentially have become the face of the initiative.”

Warfield has just begun his second academic year at the University of Minnesota, and he’s looking forward to helping create more collaborations. A product of Platteville, Wis., where he took up the clarinet, he earned a bachelor’s degree from Lawrence University (“a kind of hippie conservatory,” he called it) and a master’s and doctorate from Indiana University. He has since taught at Towson University, Georgetown University and the University of Maryland.

When offered the Minnesota job, he was especially intrigued by the eclectic pursuits of the university’s music faculty, particularly the places where classical and world music meet. And the location.

“We are one of the few schools of music in an urban setting,” he said.

That was attractive for a musicologist who specializes in local musical cultures, with his past teaching jobs extending into American Studies and African American Studies.

He’s excited to have a world music hub like the Cedar Cultural Center off the edge of campus (they collaborated on the recent Nordic Roots Festival), as well as a plethora of venues presenting the music of many genres around the city.

“I think it’s really important for students, whether you’re going to be a classical musician or some other kind of musician, you have to be able to bend and merge, play in both spaces and bring them together,” he said. “For example, the Minnesota Orchestra has [hip-hop artist] Dessa performing with them. That’s the future of our field.”

But Warfield is committed to students also having the opportunity to exchange ideas with some of classical music’s top musicians.

“One of the first things I did when I got here was look at the season announcements for the Minnesota Orchestra and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and see who they were bringing in,” he said. “Let’s invite them here.”

Hence, renowned classical pianist Jeremy Denk will be meeting with University of Minnesota students when he’s in town. And two composers participating in the SPCO’s Sandbox residencies, Gabriela Lena Frank and Valerie Coleman, will work with university composition students.

But Warfield said he’s particularly excited about meetings between “institutional music, where the art is passed down from trained masters who themselves studied in similar institutions, and grassroots music, where practitioners learn from the communities of practice in their neighborhoods, and the music morphs and changes over generations.

“When you can get the from-the-ground-up music and the top-down music talking to one another and experimenting together, that’s where I think we find new things.”

The university presents free concerts by student ensembles throughout the school year (October has a lot of them), with most performances at 7:30 p.m. at Ted Mann Concert Hall, 2106 S. 4th St., Mpls. Information and livestreams are available at cla.umn.edu/music/news-events/events.

Rob Hubbard is a Twin Cities classical music writer. Reach him at wordhub@yahoo.com.