Expert Episode: William Pu of Atlanta Festival Academy and the William Pu Music Academy

What if music education could transform not just your creativity, but your patience and perspective on life? Join us as we chat with William Pu, an accomplished violinist and passionate music educator, who shares his compelling journey from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music to performing with the Houston and Atlanta Symphony Orchestras, and ultimately founding the William Pu Music Academy in John's Creek. William reveals the profound impact that music education has on students, arguing that it offers unique advantages not found in traditional academic subjects.

Throughout our conversation, William tackles misconceptions about the value of music education and sheds light on its critical role in holistic development. He also introduces us to the Atlanta Festival Academy, a sister organization co-founded with his wife and friend Lin Wei, aimed at enriching the community and offering young musicians a platform to excel. Listen in to discover William's inspiring mission to nurture the next generation and how his academy has become a vital community cornerstone, fostering an enduring love for music in students from all walks of life.

Transcript

Announcer: 0:04

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Stacey Poehler.

Stacey Poehler: 0:17

Hey everybody, I'm excited to be chatting with William Pu. He is the owner of the William Pu Music Academy and works with the Atlanta Festival Academy. Welcome, William.

William Pu: 0:29

Good morning, Stacey.

Stacey Poehler: 0:30

Good morning. So why don't you start off by telling us about your journey, go all the way back to when you started playing the violin, and then how that led to a career in music?

William Pu: 0:41

My journey starts quite a while ago. I started playing violin when I was seven and accepted by the Shanghai Conservatory of Music at the age of 11, which is like a starting of the middle school, end of the elementary school age, so it's like a boarding school. I did all the training for nine years in the conservatory. I came to the USS for further study at the age of 20. In 1990, I got my first professional job at the Houston Symphony Orchestra as an assistant concertmaster under the maestro Christoph Eschenbach. I played there for almost 13 years, 13 seasons. In 2002, I joined the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra as the associate concertmaster and the maestro, robert Spano. So I had 25 years of professional career as a violinist and I'm fortunate enough to work with two finest American orchestras.

William Pu: 1:41

A student from China has this opportunity to work for this real, the best classical organization. It's very fortunate so in many occasions I even had a fortune to lead the orchestra on tour and on the recording sessions. However, you know, teaching has been my passion all along. In 2014, I made a huge commitment to open the music academy in the John's Creek area. Along with my wife, we decided to dedicate our energy teaching students instead of performing professionally. The joy I felt every day from working with students is so inspiring that I have never looked back. Now, 11 years later, the Music Academy has become a vital part of the community. We are not just an academy teaching music lessons, but we are a platform for our students, regardless of their social economic background, and they all can be nurtured and supported to realize their full potential.

Stacey Poehler: 2:58

Are you still playing yourself or performing with an orchestra?

William Pu: 3:04

I did for a few years after I left the symphony. And as the school grew bigger, my studio gets bigger, my students ask more attention of me. Then I feel like you know, in order to hold a real high standard, I'd rather not perform publicly. So only few occasions with friends.

Stacey Poehler: 3:26

Are there any myths or misconceptions out there about music, education and anything that you can maybe clear up for our listeners and to help them understand what you do a little better?

William Pu: 3:38

Yeah, you know, music industry has been, you know it's been exist for as long as people remember, you know has a culture, has life. So there's not many myths in the industry. However, there are quite a few misconceptions that I noticed throughout my career as a musician, for example. People often think about, you know, you know why the value of music is often underappreciated. Right, and I guess it's because because there's some misconceptions in people's mind that music is very difficult to produce a certain tangible goods that can be measured by grades or the dollar signs, and so most people agree, although most people agree that music and arts in broad sense are good for humanity in general, when music education is compared to math and science, many think it's optional activities.

William Pu: 4:47

But the fact has been proven that the student who have extensive music training can often have very clear advantage over non-musical students in many areas, like creativity, like patience, like you know. Like creativity, like patience, like, you know, broad perspectives about the things they're doing, etc. You know, it's been proven that way. And so all I'm saying here is you know, music education, especially at an early age, can have an immeasurable long-lasting impact on students in their you know, throughout their entire life. So that's why I choose to be a music educator from being a professional musician.

Stacey Poehler: 5:34

Can you tell us a little bit more about the Atlanta Festival Academy and what you're trying to accomplish with that?

William Pu: 5:42

Yes, Atlanta Festival Academy is the sister organization of the William Pu Music Academy and founded by me, my wife and my friend Lin Wei, who lives in Iceland. Lin Wei is the mother of a famous jazz singer, Levi.

Announcer: 5:59

Many people know about Levi. Yeah, but we worked together for many years before Levi became really famous.

William Pu: 6:11

So we started Atlanta Festival Academy in 2019. It's for only one mission is we want to build a culture platform that can nurture students, can support students, can bring artists abroad to Atlanta and allow our local students have a chance to perform with the top artists, especially young, emerging artists. We did, you know, ask, invited at that time only 11-year-old violinist, chloe Chua, from Singapore, performed in Jones Creek and Atlanta in 2019 and that, you know, five years, six years, look back. It did such an impact onto our students many my you know, finest violinists these days in Georgia the little girls, little boys at that time, and inspired by Chloe, so they started to work hard and now, five years, six years later, I see these students get blossomed and it's all because they have a chance to perform with world-class musicians like Chloe.

William Pu: 7:26

So now and that was the original mission and the platform but now Atlanta Festival Academy has grown into a year-round program. We have three youth orchestras working weekly and give many students training, and we also go to some local schools and offer free lessons to some, you know, challenged, financially challenged family. The kids can have a music lesson. So it's wonderful and, yeah, it keeps growing. Oh, now we have this year For the first time we're going to host an international young artist competition and it has the grand prize of $10,000 cash, and more than that is it gets a chance to perform with Atlanta Festival Academy Orchestra and also be invited back for a recital. If the student won, someone win the competition. So that's the first time, yeah.

Stacey Poehler: 8:34

That sounds like a good opportunity. For sure, obviously, music is your passion. Are there other things that you and your family enjoy doing?

William Pu: 8:43

Besides working almost seven days a week for teaching and the students, we find time to get together with our sons, who are living in Seattle and New York. We are empty nesters now, and so every time we have a chance we will try to have a family vacation together. So we like to travel, we like to especially my wife like to plan that kind of trip and during the traveling time and we love enjoy fine dining and look for, search for the local delicacies, things like that.

Stacey Poehler: 9:23

Do you guys have anything planned at the moment?

William Pu: 9:26

We are going to meet in Japan in the beginning of March.

Stacey Poehler: 9:31

Oh wow, that's right.

William Pu: 9:32

Coming soon. Have you been there before? Yes, actually, I've been to Japan many times. When I was in Houston Symphony, we used to resident in a music festival in Sapporo called the Pacific Music Festival, founded by Leonard Bernstein. So Houston Symphony went there many times Then I think the other trips is because I love Japan so much. I love Japanese food. So last time we were there, my wife and I was in October 2023.

Stacey Poehler: 10:08

Okay. Have there been any hardships or struggles along the way in getting the school off the ground and Atlanta Festival Academy.

William Pu: 10:18

I would say the challenge is always, as a musician, you try to make a change. You're always going to meet challenges, and one of the challenges I remember the most is to start off Atlanta Festival Academy in 2019. We need, you know, inviting those world-class musicians. We need funding. We perform in the Sandy Spring Performing Arts Center, which has cost a lot of money to rent, and we have no money. We have zero to start from.

William Pu: 10:48

That time we were very nervous, you know, but we worked together. I learned how to talk to people. I learned how to feel passionate about you know what I believe I stand by. So finally, I was able to convince. You know, some good friends supported us through the first year and it turned out to be a huge success. From that event, I learned that you know it's the challenges in the life actually is not a bad thing, right is? I see this as as if compare if yourself as a sailing ship and you try to do something new as the sailing ship, you always encounter the water resistance. Right, it's the immobile ship and it doesn't have a resistance from the water. Anytime you try to do new things, get a new degree and even expanding your compassion for more people. It can encounter challenges, but those are good things.

Stacey Poehler: 11:57

Anything else that you haven't had a chance to share that you want to make sure our listeners know.

William Pu: 12:03

Yeah, I think it is because, just for the nature of arts, and we love to have more people be aware of the kind of work we're doing for the young musicians and I really think thank you and your magazine and help us to spreading the words to the public and we have upcoming this huge competition, which is different from we have so many competition now, especially after covid. There's many online competitions and they're just doing, for some, you know, very short term and they want to make a name. Our competition is designed for supporting emerging young artists and we will not only just give them the money, the fund to go on, but also the opportunities to develop. So we have a big plan for whoever the winner of that competition.

Stacey Poehler: 13:00

I'm going to definitely check that out. If folks want to learn more about you, where should they go?

William Pu: 13:07

They can visit our website WPMusicAcademycom. That's one website for WPMA. Atlantafestivalacademyorg is my other website. There are many information about what we have done in the past and what we're doing now. It's a lot of things we try to provide to local students and please take advantage of it well, thank you so much for joining us today, william.

Stacey Poehler: 13:36

Thank you yeah it's great.

Announcer: 13:38

Thank you very much thank you for listening to the good neighbor podcast milton and more to nominate your favorite.