Welcome to Classically Minded!

I’m Garrett John Law, curator, and today I am pleased to be joined by Jonathan Gregoire.

Jonathan Gregoire, a multifaceted artist, coach, and educator, invites us into his world where music and coaching intersect to empower individuals in their creative endeavors. Drawing from his experiences as a performing artist and his coaching journey, Jonathan shares insights on navigating the complexities of the creative industry and fostering personal growth.

Without further ado, let's dive into Jonathan's story!

Your journey into coaching began after realizing the limitations of traditional education in preparing you for interpersonal dynamics and entrepreneurship. How has this realization influenced your coaching approach, especially when working with artists and musicians who may face similar challenges navigating the creative industry? 

Great questions, Garrett. You know, I’ve thought a lot about how to best describe this. In fairness, I think education stayed true to what it was designed to teach me – how to be a great performer: understanding the history of the instrument, the composers, performance practice, theory, and practical technique. There’s tremendous benefit to this that equipped me well in my work as a performer and church musician. 

More so, I recognize upon graduating how there were other aspects where I needed more support. Here are a few examples:

• Understand work/life balance out of school. It should be noted I’m not sure I learned how to navigate this in school. If you had free time, you should always be practicing, right? 

• How to work with others. Sure, I could collaborate on a piece of music with a colleague, but what of interpersonal dynamics of working and communicating with pastors, the media team, or other teachers from different schools? How do we collaborate when we all have different needs/priorities?  

• Knowing what was important to me. School taught me how to follow a syllabus. And boy did I know how to excel in that system. What does it look like for me to charter my own course? I didn’t know how to clarify what I wanted, let along map out my own plan for how to get there. 

From a report card, these areas fell hard in the “needs improvement” category. And as I searched to find my answers to support myself, I developed systems, structures, and learnings from different modalities, schools of thought, and teachings to create a composite tool kit to find success for my own life and support others in finding success on their terms. 

As a creative coach, you aim to help artists embrace their true value and lead lives of direction and abundance. How do you integrate your background in music and coaching to create a supportive environment for your clients, allowing them to rediscover their creativity and find success in their artistic endeavors? 

First, my music background helps me recognize and understand the value of another artist. I believe that’s a crucial step. We can all appreciate kind words from our non-musician supporters, but it feels different coming from a colleague. That’s the greatest of balm – to feel seen by another artist. When we find one another in this place of collaboration and support, it’s deeply cathartic and healing. 

Too often, I see exceptionally talented people burned out, exhausted, and ready to quit because they’ve hustled to play the system and got lost/stuck along the way. We learned so much about competition in school, that it unfortunately turned us against one another even out of school. In midst of our intense internal work during our creative mode, we can feel so distant from everyone else, including ourselves. So, this first part of the supportive environment is simply two artists sitting together. Allowing my words of understanding, encouragement, acknowledgement to help the other artist feel seen. And in that seeing, there’s an ease clients feel with my because there’s so much that doesn’t need to be explained – the creative process, the journey they’ve been of untold struggles, wins, amidst the hustle, the odd hours, the constant hours, etc. The details vary, but the stories we share are more similar than they are different. 

The second part of the supportive environment is understanding the coaching method. In its purest form, coaching is holding space for someone to hear their own guidance. It’s a space for them to hear their words reflected back to them, to gain clarity on the language they use that might not be supporting them, and express long held desires that have been hidden away. Coaching is about knowing the right questions for me to ask to bring clarity for the client to come to the truth of who they are, what they’re here to do, and find tangible next steps to put into action to see it happen. 

Your coaching sessions are described as highly individualized, combining coaching, mentorship, and teaching to help clients manage responsibilities while embracing their artistic identity. Could you share some examples of how you tailor your approach to meet the unique needs and aspirations of each client, particularly those in the creative field? 

My approach differs because everyone has different needs. Here’s a cross section of people I’m currently working with and how their needs differ:

Some of my clients are current students. We’ve worked together to help them continue to return to themselves and understand their power and process. This has helped them feel more confident, more successful, and more at peace in their ability to trust themselves. While many have had tremendous professional experiences already, they sometimes do not  always understand what’s appropriate behavior, treatment, or conditions for various gigs or work-place dynamics because of where they are in their careers. This utilizes a mentorship focus, where I offer my experiences to help support them in navigating what they would like to do next, learning how to better advocate for themselves and make choices of what will support their long-term goals and ambitions. 

A few of my clients have established careers, with 10 to 20 years of experience in the creative field. Through this experience, they’ve weathered hardships, setbacks, and yes, even trauma. We work together to understand the impact of these situations in their current place moving forward. While a therapist would work to focus in the past to allow healing in the present, coaching seeks to understand the challenges in the present that exist because of the past. We then return to those past moments to gain new understandings to provide healing and direction in the present moment.

Some clients have come to me with considerable success and by all accounts appear to be thriving in their professional lives. However, they’re feeling the impact their creative success has had on their personal lives, their physical health, or even their mental and spiritual well-being. For these clients, we work together to create more reliable and sustainable structures, helping them work smarter and not harder, and allowing them to embrace the next level of success. 

While the reasons clients come to me can vary, through my diverse set of tools, strategies, and certifications, I listen to hear where they are, where they want to go, and what stands in their way of achieving their earnest desires. The truth is we all always want more. Coaching is about optimizing the work you do. It’s fast-paced, dynamic, action-oriented, solutions-oriented. It’s often said no one “needs” coaching. The coaching philosophy is taking people from functional to optimal. One person’s functional may be another’s optimal, and vice versa. Ultimately, one thing remains constant in my work: helping clients experience more choice, freedom, and passion in what they ultimately love doing.

Jonathan, your love for education stems from your grandfather's belief in its transformative power. How do you see education fostering understanding and appreciation, not only in the arts but also in broader aspects of life? 

To really appreciate something, we must know what we’re seeing/hearing/experiencing. We need to understand what makes the thing in front of us special, valuable. We’re all cataloguing life in relation to our own values, experiences, and understanding. In this way, if we want to increase appreciation for something, we must help (educate) someone in understanding our passions and what that can do for them. Through education people are able to understand, and from a place of understanding, appreciation becomes possible – and ideally inevitable! 

This relates to one’s passion for their creative output, or other interests they may have such as foreign cinema, baking, or the latest book they’ve read. Whatever you love is perfect for you. The real point of connection is relating it to another. How can you help someone understand what you find so fascinating about your given field? What lights you up about it? That’s what engages people. And that’s ultimately what will reconnect us all again. Relating our passions and sharing our stories of interest. We’ll all perceive it in our own way, as we’re all our own teachers in life. Developing engaging education is simply about asking: how do you share your passions in a meaningful and connective way?

Your passion for sustainability in organ building led to your doctoral project, "Toward a 'Green' Organ: Sustainability and Organ Building." Could you share some insights from your research and how you envision the intersection of sustainability and organ building shaping the future of this craft? 

One of my key takeaways was first recognizing the immense sustainability work already happening in our field. Our love of historic instruments is a guiding principle of sustainability. We regularly focus on finding ways to refurbish, restore, and rebuild decaying instruments, rather than discarding them for something new. We intrinsically believe in making instruments of quality that are designed to last and serve generations. Often the repair work is from simply wear and tear of decaying leather or updating electronic software. Our reverence for historic instruments – understanding them as a gateway to the past, bringing music of composers to life for us in real time, hearing what composers heard that inspired their writing – is what ensures their survival. 

The main idea behind this project was acknowledging the stress the organ building community underwent when the commercial use of lead was outlawed. As most of our metal pipework includes some lead, builders were forced to explore what would become of the sound of our instruments if we were unable to use lead? And yet, several historic and contemporary studies demonstrate a negligent difference in sound quality as related to the material used in construction. This is better understood by the numerous tonal finishing aspects available for builders too: winding and wind pressure, mouth height cut-up, nicking techniques, and even pipe shape itself. Further cross-analysis research highlighted that sustainable wood alternatives for the endangered African Grenadilla wood that’s often used to make reed instruments are preferred both for its sound quality and the increased stability in humidity and weather shifts than the traditional wood. 

We’re already seeing the future impact and implementation of utilizing alternative materials as evidenced by the Rieger Organ Company’s successful installation of their new instrument for the Helsinki Music Center, which features a pipe façade made entirely from a 3D printer of biocomposite material. Not only did this reduces waste as compared with traditional wood pipe construction efforts, but the augmentation of the visual design has received significant attention, of both criticism and acclaim, as one might expect. You can read more about this here and here.

You've been praised for your top-notch technique and musicianship as an organist. How do you see your role as an organist intersecting with your work as a creative coach, and how does each aspect of your career inform the other? 

The ability to achieve excellence is a transferrable skill. When you learn how to hone and develop a craft, you learn systems to promote efficiency and reliability. Well-trained musicians all have the ability to develop successful business enterprises because how we do one thing is how we do everything. The fastidious nature of high artistry combined with the attention to detail required are key components to both my business development and expansion. Further, my listening ear developed through music is very beneficial to me as I listen to words my clients use to explore the intent and impact these beliefs are having in their lives. And certainly, the passionate and heart I bring to my music likewise finds a heightened expression in the empathetic support I offer my clients, providing a space where they can apply learnings from one area of their life to another. 

Coaching has helped me see choice and possibility in all things. The release work I’ve experienced through Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) and Time Line Therapy® allowed me healing from my own fears and insecurities where I can show up as more confident performer, in person and in sharing online. Further, the abundance possibility helps me see options in my own music of how to play something to be ever more effective in my communication. This has helped me be more aware in my collaborative work with other musicians, too, in order support them even more from a keyboard.  

Coaching also inspires my integrative approach to life, recognizing how each area of life impact the others. I’ve long viewed music as a very healing art form. To further augment this, I’ve recently started a series of piano recordings where these iconic classical music pieces are augmented with my Master Reiki attunement and recorded at 432 hz. For me, Reiki is a spiritual consciousness of life force energy that I channel through my hands while I play, infusing the music with an additional healing quality. There’s also discussion that music pitched to 432 hz – as opposed to standard 440 hz – adds to the relaxing quality of music, as it’s thought to be more in harmonic resonance with the earth.

Whether one understands or believes in these features or not, I’d invite the reader to listen to the same piece at different pitch level tunings. Notice the effect the initial 440 hz recording has on your energy and mood, and then when you listen to 432 hz and even 444 hz, what differences do you notice in yourself? Your mood? I'd love to hear your feedback!

As an advocate for new music, you've had the opportunity to premiere several works. How do you approach collaborating with composers and bringing their visions to life through your performances? 

There’s great similarity in my collaboration with composers as how I approach working with clients. Coaching is about eliciting information from the person in front of you. It’s about knowing the best questions to ask to help them receive deeper clarity and insight. As such with composers, what is their vision? What do specific passages mean to them? What are they hoping to hear? This helps influence how I play certain passages to make sure I’m aligned with their vision. 

Additionally though, I always ask what type of feedback are they interested in from me as the performer. This has experienced a range of preference from composers, though I also attribute the more recent expansion into co-creation with composers as reflective of my own expansion of my ideas and creative spirit to bring something to life in a way that feels aligned with what I can do with a piece of music. My intention is always to help fulfill their vision for a piece, and ideally, I’m offering insight into how this is best executed. We embrace the improv principle of “yes, and” to fuel my love of collaborating with fellow artists, creating a product even better than we could have conceived alone. Artistic synergy! 

A recent example of this brilliant synergy is heard in “The Calling” by Kira Dawn Rugen, which I commissioned in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the church’s organ where I worked. Though this was the first time Kira wrote for organ, I knew instinctively she was the one to write it. Through our work together, her musical ideas flourished even more as I could offer some of my own ideas of technical figurations and features of the instrument to evoke even more the sound she was hearing. She naturally excels at color, texture, and timbre, and together we found a way to showcase this.

Even the idea for the title of the work, “The Calling,” was powerfully synergistic, as ultimately the work musically evokes my own personal journey of hearing my call to this new line of work. I first heard this in the quiet of 2020, only to watch is disappear behind the frenzy of life returning. Of course, the call (and the theme for the piece) ultimately returns in more than a whisper and ends with triumphant acceptance.  

We both share cherished memories of our time at Interlochen Arts Academy, where we both pursued organ performance majors, albeit during different periods. It's fascinating to observe how our careers have evolved and to note the commonalities that I believe have been influenced by our experiences at Interlochen. Both of us have endeavored to broaden our impact beyond performance by empowering fellow creatives, each in our unique way.

Could you share some memorable experiences from your time at Interlochen Arts Academy? How has your time at Interlochen influenced your artistic and professional journey? 

Interlochen was transformational for me. I attribute my artistic and creative success to what I experienced there. The magic of Interlochen is first and foremost the community. I only felt support and encouragement from my peers. It felt like we were all working together to grow and excel individually. Ever collaborative, even in midst of competitions. Many of us came from schools where we were an outlier because of the attention we gave to our craft. Instead, at Interlochen we found shared humanity and connection in our desires and ambitions. Dinner conversations of evening activities ever included “going to practice.” This wasn’t seen as a chore, nor something we judged one another for, but rather became the supportive fabric that let us all know that even in our moments of isolation practicing, we were all doing the work together. 

My love of interdisciplinary work also began at Interlochen. Being in academic classes with exceptional artists from across the visual, literary, and performing arts allowed a recognition of both our shared creativity, while highlighting the specific flavors the other arts bring to augment an experience. My favorite events were the collage concerts: a panoply of talent that together heightened the overall experience and enjoyment for the listening observer. I was fortunate to perform on the 50th Academy Anniversary Alumni Collage Concert. The energy was electric in Kresge. And after, meeting alumni from around the world, it seemed as though time and space collapsed. Whatever the years we attended Interlochen, the core essence of who we were and who we became was forged in that environment and eternally connects us still. 

Your coaching sessions aim to transform pain by retrieving core parts of oneself from old stuck moments. Could you elaborate on how this process works and share some examples of the transformative impact it has had on your clients? 

These stuck moments tend to be the pivotal moments in our careers where teachers, mentors, and even well-meaning friends offered criticism or rebuke that altered our creative future. People tend to think “trauma” is only capital “T” trauma – physical and sexual abuse. In reality, trauma is any negatively perceived experience which happens to us while we’re in an emotionally heightened state. Think about it. How do we feel when we’re in a performance mode? Our emotions are on high alert – fear, stress, anxiety. So, while in this state, let’s say we receive negative criticism. Or maybe even someone is outright hostile to us. If you felt hurt by it, then the body registers it as trauma. 

Anytime we’re sharing our artistry, we’re exposing the core essence of who we are. We’re sharing our heart and bearing our soul, as we expose the depths of our inner creative. Sadly, criticism and feedback given in an unhelpful way, or in an outright hostile way, really impacts our self-esteem, especially if that judgement comes from a teacher or mentor meant to guide and protect us on this journey. 

This becomes internalized as our personal struggle with our value, our worth, and our purpose. And so in sessions with clients, I help them return to these significant events to uncover the stories they learned and accepted as true about themselves and we heal and reframe them. What can they see differently about this event now? How can they reclaim their power from this incident? What would be different in their life if this event happened differently? With Time Line Therapy® release work, the body re-memories these difficult situations, takes new learnings and understandings with them, to reclaims one’s authentic power. The impact of this is increased confidence, motivation, possibilities, and action.

As an accomplished organist and coach, how do you balance your time and interests between performing, coaching, and other pursuits? What strategies do you employ to maintain balance and fulfillment in your multifaceted career?

Balance. Goodness, that’s a word I feel like I’m always learning. I want to do everything, and I want to do it all at once. Leaving my full-time church job in order to build my coaching practice was one of the ways I chose to intentionally create space for something new to come forward. I feel fortunate I’ve been able to have this time because it’s a lot of energy building something new. This was extremely intentional as part of long-range goals for my life. Balance isn’t doing everything all at once, it’s understanding the larger picture of where you are now, where you want to go, and what things need to be released in order to have the time and energy to do what you say you want to do. 

For myself and with my clients, we focus on the five main areas of life: physical, emotional, professional, mental, and spiritual. We set goals in each area, and though one area might have more of a focus for a period of time, it’s important that each area receives some attention every day. How often have we experienced hardship in our relationships while we’re focused on our careers? Or our physical health takes a toll from the mental stress we’re under? Maybe we feel completely disconnected from an energy source greater than ourselves, and as such we feel disconnected from our professional life? These areas of life are all interconnected, so balance means embracing all aspects, even if for a small amount of time every day, in order that we can run the marathon of life, not just win the sprint. 

In closing, I’d like to extend my gratitude to Jonathan for sharing his insights, inspirations, and passion for music with us.

Learn more about Jonathan on his website, jonathangregoire.com.

Get connected with him on Instagram and Facebook.

Thank you for joining us on this extraordinary musical adventure. Until next time, let the music guide your soul and ignite your imagination.

Kindly,
Garrett John Law
Curator, Classically Minded

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