Transcript of Excerpt from Interview with David Stull

Josephine Reed: International students account for, what, 20 percent?

Dean Stull: Almost 20 percent indeed, yes, of our student body. We could, literally populate the entire Conservatory from China right now, very easily, alone. It's an incredible phenomenon. We tour in China extensively, we have students coming from Taiwan, Korea, Japan, all throughout Europe, the former Eastern Bloc countries. It's a real beacon relative to drawing those students in. I think it's important that the standard be one of a world standard. In other words, we have international competition with the Cleveland Orchestra for youth competitors under the age of 18, called The Cooper Competition, in the summertime, for piano, and then for violin, it alternates. And this is a way for us to put a beacon in the air, and say, "Bring your best, let's see who's there." And those are the students that are at Oberlin, and for the domestic students who are there, they realize they're not just working against and working with, and seeing the great talent of every state in the country, they're also seeing the great talent coming out of the world, and that's important, and it changes their perspective, because, for example, they go off and work internationally. One of the most incredible things we've seen is the explosion of jazz in China. We took a tour there. We have students who are double degree students in East Asian studies and in, say, jazz trombone performance, and they're fluent in Mandarin. Well, two of these folks went to China. Now he is contracting all the clubs in Beijing and Shanghai, hiring his buddies from Oberlin who go and live there for six months, in large numbers, and make enough money, in fact so much money they come back to the states for six months, without the need to continue to work. And then they go back to China again. And he has his own radio show in jazz, in Mandarin, and everyone who meets him doesn't believe that it's Andy Hunter with his pony tail, and this kid from Iowa, because they're all convinced he's Chinese when he's on the air, because his Mandarin is so good. So the international market is a place where musicians need to work, need to understand the standard, need to navigate those cultures, and it's important for us to draw students from there, because if we're not serving a world musical community, we're really behind.