Your most recent concert in Syracuse was staged at Jamesville-DeWitt High School. That's the way I think about music. I love music because I'm in love with it. For me, it is a thing that is intrinsically good in and of itself. In addition to a thing that is wonderful in and of itself, music, as all research shows, is wonderful for developing all kinds of attributes which are of great advantage in a democracy.
Music deserves to be supported almost as a patriotic duty.
Those are strong statements. I consider them absolutely self-evident and backed up by scientific research. That seems to me a strong statement. Kids who study music do better in math, they do better in science, better in everything. Music is not some sort of frill that you can eliminate and have society go on as it had before.