NEW USC DEAN : LIVINGSTON: A MUSICAL ACADEMIC

The first thing Larry Livingston did when he took over as dean of the school of music at USC in July was to order a number of new paint jobs in the school’s faculty office building. “The building was dilapidated,” he explained the other day.

The second was to requisition a 16-foot-long, four-paned window across the west wall of his office on the fourth floor, a window that now looks over the USC grounds and surveys from mid-campus the entire vista from Palos Verdes to Santa Monica.

“I think it’s metaphorical,” Livingston said about his not-quite-finished refurbished office. He was looking out that wide picture window.

“I mean, is it an accident that from here one has a clear view of the HOLLYWOOD sign? I don’t think so. Academia has to confront the world outside. It makes no sense for us to remain enclosed.”

Livingston, a 44-year-old musical academic and former clarinetist who boasts that he has “not been out of school in 39 years, not even for a sabbatical,” comes to Los Angeles with a reputation as a school-builder.

For the last four years, he has polished that reputation while dean of the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University in Houston. Before that, he held similar posts at the New England Conservatory and at Northern Illinois University and UC San Diego, among other institutions.

As an administrator, Livingston, at his own insistence, remains a working music-maker. Though he stopped playing the clarinet in 1973, he still pursues regular activity as a conductor. In that role he could be seen this summer leading a student ensemble in Mahler’s Second Symphony at the National Music Camp in Interlochen, Mich. In that outdoor setting, surrounded by enthusiastic and high-achieving high-school-age musicians, he seemed to thrive.

“Conducting is my way of addressing music now,” the tall, intense educator explained in his new office.

“It would be very easy for me to meet my daily challenges in this job and be completely devoured by being an administrator. Making music is my way of keeping in touch.”

Balancing pedagogy and practicality is the job of the music educator, Livingston believes. It’s a job that requires constant vigilance.

“Shouldn’t all music students be required to take courses in the application of technology?” he asks, one assumes rhetorically.

“What should we do about music for industry? How do we handle the temptations of the marketplace? Should we prepare composers not only to write more sonatas and symphonies--which may or not be performed--but also to score for films and television? Have we really looked at learning theory? Do we need to add movement and mime to our training of instrumental performers? Is our curriculum broad enough for the needs of our students?”

To the question of what Livingston will do at USC, the administrator does not hesitate to be specific.

“There are pressing needs in our physical plant,” he begins. “We need more practice rooms--soon. We need more faculty teaching studios. We need a first-class recital hall, and one we won’t have to share.”

Livingston says there are other, even more ordinary, needs to be addressed: “The whole question of campus security--I’ve only recently arrived, and have no intention of pointing fingers this early in the game--must be rethought, not only for those of us who are here every day but for visitors and prospective visitors.

“We need to make the environment even more attractive to outsiders, and reassure them that they can come here and not be inconvenienced.”

Concluding that thought, the new dean says, “These are not glamorous items. It will not be easy to raise the money for them from arts philanthropists in an already heavily tapped marked.

“But it must be done--because it is these unglamorous, everyday needs that will, when filled, improve the quality of our musical life on this campus.”

Now a resident of Pasadena--where he lives with his wife, Karen, and their two children, aged 3 and 13--Livingston was born and educated in Michigan. He completed his education at UC San Diego. The son, grandson and great-grandson of musicians, founder of the Illinois Chamber Orchestra and writer of numerous instrumental, symphonic and choral compositions, he calls himself “an amateur composer but a professional conductor.

“In the absence of an explanation for life, music is the best substitute I’ve found. At those moments when music exerts its greatest power, we recognize that this is the best it gets.”