CHANGING THE WORLD WITH ALEX CARNEY

CURRENT POSITION: Ph.D. candidate in Mathematics at UC Berkeley

LOCATION: Berkeley, California

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN DEGREE: Mathematics 

GRADUATION YEAR: 2012

ACTIVITIES AT MICHIGAN: Michigan Pops Orchestra, MRun

MICHIGAN POPS ORCHESTRA INSTRUMENT: Violin

Listen to one of Alex's favorite Pops pieces while you read about his Pops Life!

A CONVERSATION WITH ALEX

KELLY COMPTON, our Pops Life correspondent, catches up with Alex Carney to talk about all of his amazing life adventures!

KC: Alex, tell us a bit about your musical background before coming to Michigan

AC: I’m from Midland, MI and started playing violin when I was five years old. I also started playing trombone in 5th grade band because all of my friends were doing band and I didn’t want to miss out. I played trombone through high school. At Michigan, I played in Pops all four years, as well as in various other orchestras including the Campus Symphony, University Philaharmonia, and some pit orchestras here and there. I played a cool show with Groove, a percussion group that runs through UAC as well. The theme was loosely based on Fiddler on the Roof, so I was actually playing an arranged version of that on electric violin, with a whole range of percussion stuff underneath it.

KC: Did you ever consider pursuing music professionally?

 AC: I didn’t end up applying anywhere but definitely thought for a while about it. I considered applying to the music school to do a dual degree with math, but I eventually came to the conclusion that it probably would have taken 5 years, and even in 5 years I think I only would have hit the minimum requirements for both degrees. So rather than do that, I figured it would make more sense to just do the math degree but also have a lot of musical opportunities on the side. I’m happy with how that worked out.

KC: Once you got to Michigan, what drew you to the Michigan Pops Orchestra?

 AC: I first found out about Pops from Tina Wu, a cellist who played for several of the years that I was there. She was a year ahead of me at Michigan, but I had played for many years in a quartet with her starting in middle school (she was from Midland as well). I knew her and had just started at Michigan – I had been looking around for what options there were for orchestras and music groups to play in, but I hadn’t found much yet. I happened to run into Tina, who said she was heading later that day to a Pops meeting. I asked to tag along and don’t remember much about the meeting itself other than it sounded like a ton of fun.

KC: Tell me about your experience with Pops, and share some favorite memories!

AC: One memory that came back to me…I remember concert days. For the Board, it was an all day thing. We would usually meet for breakfast that morning, and then be at the theater all day, getting ready, doing sound checks, setting everything up, and then rehearsing with the orchestra that afternoon. I always liked the moment of the quiet down time in between the rehearsal and the performance. Before the rest of the orchestra came back, it was just the Board, completely exhausted but really happy and excited for what was to come. It was a nice, contemplative moment kind of in between all the craziness of the concert days.

KC: What was your position on the Board?

AC: I was Small Ensembles Director; I put small groups of people together who wanted to play, and the last couple of years I ran the String Orchestra as well. I was in various small ensembles myself, but was pretty consistently in a quartet that was like the “Pops quartet on call.” Because we were so well known on campus, we would often get calls from campus events, alumni groups, etc. who wanted a small music group to play. We were kind of the “go to” group who got to play all of those gigs. We played a couple of dinners, a couple commencement events each year, etc.

KC: How do you feel that your career, relationships, and general mindset have been shaped by your experience with Pops?

 AC: On the music side, I think it definitely helped me to keep going with music and develop it into something that I will do for the rest of my life. College is often a point where people who have played an instrument end up stopping, just because there is so much else going on. Because it was so important and shaped my experience in undergrad, I’ve kept it as a priority moving forward. It’s also kept me open to a wide variety of things. I studied in the UK for two years after leaving Michigan. When I was at Cambridge, I was playing some classical stuff but also a ton of pit orchestra gigs. I even did this thing called the “24-Hour Musical,” where a musical was written, rehearsed, and performed in just 24 hours.

In Pops I appreciated that there were the organizational challenges of just making something of that size function, but that it was also tied with an artistic direction – making ideas happen and making the whole performance and production run smoothly. That’s definitely something that I’ve kept up with, especially with the orchestral work I’ve done in Brazil over the summers.

 KC: What have you been up to since graduating from Michigan?

 AC:  I’ve been in school the whole time. I was on a Marshall Scholarship to study for two years in the UK after Michigan. I did a Masters in Math at Cambridge for a year and then a Masters in Science and Technology Studies at UCL in London.  Since then, I've been studying for a Math Ph.D. at Berkeley and am in my 4th year now.  I'll probably finish up next year, but school is a lot of fun, so I'm really in no rush to be done. In my Ph.D., I work very much on the "not applied, pure math" end of things. It's just theoretical math. The broad subject that I work in is number theory, and I work specifically in fields called Arakelov theory and arithmetic dynamics.  

While I was at Cambridge (the year after I graduated from Michigan), I was somewhat involved in the start of a pops orchestra there as well! A good friend of mine whom I met through orchestra had been tossing around the idea of doing some Broadway music, etc. Finally I said, “I played in an orchestra just like that! It’s a ton of fun, and I guarantee people will love it.” The orchestra was definitely his thing, but I encouraged him to go with it and played in some of the first concerts. Spreading the Pops love across the ocean!!

The summer after graduating from Michigan, I went down to Brazil for the first time. A friend of mine from undergrad had been running some work down there for a number of years as summer/study abroad things. I didn’t go as part of an official program, I just went because he was a friend of mine and I had some time to travel before going on to the next thing. I really enjoyed it and ended up getting connected with some music people down there. One orphanage in a small town where we had done some work had some instruments that they wanted to use to start a music program. They just didn’t have anyone to teach them anything. I got the instruments out and had some fun with the kids that year – it was a blast, and the kids seemed really into it.

Over the next year, I talked to some other people (actually several other friends from Pops!) to get some more music people involved and to get a real plan and curriculum involved. We all went down for a longer time the next summer and started really teaching. I’ve been doing that basically every summer since that first year, and I bring some other musicians when I can. We also have that program now tied into a local youth orchestra in the capital city of the state in Brazil. They have a teacher that goes there year-round while I’m not out there. I’m usually there for about 3 months every summer – pretty much my whole summer break. Three years ago we organized all of this into a non-profit foundation, which as a whole does the music program, as well as some other initiatives, like English lessons, health education, and some conservation work.

I’d love to talk to people about this work and see about bringing some more musicians down! We do actually have an ongoing campus organization for some of the other projects – we bring down a lot of students from the engineering school each summer as well.

KC: What advice would you give to students interested in a similar career path?

AC: I would say to think hard about why you want to go to graduate school. Don’t just go into grad school because it’s the next logical step after what you’re currently studying in undergrad. I think it’s an experience that can be great, but it can also be terrible for a lot of people as well. You have to really make sure it’s the right thing for you.

Don’t ever feel that you’re constrained by what you’re doing or working on currently. For my own example, most people doing a PhD don’t just disappear to South America for three months during the summer – most people would probably tell you that you’re not able to get away with that. My advice is that if there is something that you enjoy and that is important to you, just do it and you’ll find a way to make it work.

KC: Alex, what does the Pops experience mean to you personally?

AC: It’s hard to put it into words… some of my friends that I’m closest with today are friends from Pops. One of my best friends was my stand partner for a couple of years in Pops. Even though he’s in LA now, we make a point to see each other, and we’ll always bring our violins if we’re traveling together.  I appreciated the music – that was the base of all of it all, but there was so much outside of the music – so many opportunities, and an amazing social connection.

Pops gave me some of the best and most important connections that I made in college. I’m excited that you and Warren are picking up this alumni thing and growing it fast. There are so many people I’m excited to get back in touch with.

ALEX'S FAVORITES

• TV SHOW: Game of Thrones
• BEVERAGE: Bell's Two Hearted
• RESTAURANT IN ANN ARBOR: Blue Nile 
• TROPICAL ANIMAL: Hyacinth Macaw
• UNSOLVED MATHEMATICAL EQUATION: the ABC conjecture
• POPS PIECE: "The Victors!"
• CONSPIRACY THEORY: that dolphins are actually running the world

12/1/17