Tritone Co-Founder Jim Doser Reflects
Hello, Tritone Campers!
It has been a few years since I left Tritone to work at the Eastman School of Music but you are a topic of conversation frequently at our Institute for Music Leadership! Let me explain….
In addition to my administrative position, I teach a course called Entrepreneurial Thinking to our Arts Leadership Program students. Every semester, I eagerly take the opportunity to share the lessons that I have learned about music, business and life from Tritone campers, from Bob, and from our late but still loved partner, Fred. Here are just a few!
Value has everything to do with how you use your special talents, skills and gifts to make the lives of those around you better. My all time hero was a Tritone Camper for, well, almost two decades: Carle Porter. As I tell my students, no one understood this concept better than Carle. Carle was not – really not - the world’s greatest saxophonist. Yet, when Carle played, people cheered….and smiled….and danced…..and laughed. He used his uncanny ability to communicate joy in every song that he played (and he knew every song ever written!). If you attended a camp with Carle, I know that you agree with me. Eastman students – the finest student musicians in the world – need to be surrounded by musicians like Carle Porter to understand the powerful meaning and value that they can provide others if they choose to do so.
Carle Porter—one of our first campers and one of the world’s finest people.
Providing what people want and need is the foundation of every successful business. Of course, that is what Bob does each and every year at Tritone. With confidence, I can say that Bob taught this lesson to both me and to Fred very quickly when we started Tritone, and it is the reason that people come back year after year. Both Fred and I – dare I say ‘schooled’ and successful professional musicians – needed Bob to keep us focused on what really mattered: providing an experience that was catered to the individual wants and needs of the campers. Above all, as I tell my students repeatedly, your business (or initiative, concert, project) needs to identify what people really want, not what you think they should want. Can you say Tritone Jazz Fantasy Camps?
Lastly, and most importantly, I tell students that it is important to be able to tell a genuine and heartfelt story about your business that reflects the most important core value that it provides. To do so, I tell a story about Tritone @ Bjorklunden that starts out like this: “At Tritone Jazz Fantasy Camps, we say that we learn, play, laugh, and even sometimes….cry.”
I then go on to relate the experience of a dinner-time conversation at Bjorklunden’s beautiful Lodge. The details are too personal to repeat here, but I will say that it was about two campers suddenly realizing that they had unknowingly interacted decades ago in the most exceptional and life-changing way. It was something that I – and everyone else at that table – will remember always. My point to the students is that at Tritone, though we learn about and play music, the most important thing that we do is develop relationships and memories that last a lifetime. It is up to them to also understand what the core value of what they do is and to be able to communicate that to others if they hope to be successful.
Of course, I do not have to tell you about any of these things. It’s why you come back year after year, talk about it for years after, and when – like this summer – it does not happen, it leaves a void that you cannot wait to fill again.
Best wishes for a safe and healthy year ahead, and a joyful camp in 2021!
Jim