Americans for the Arts

The following is part of a new spotlight series that highlights the work of some of our key business partners, including our Business Committee for the Arts members and past Arts and Business Partnership Award Honorees. Here, we interview BCA member Dr. David V. Mastran, President of QuaverMusic. Keep reading to learn about this business leader and his connection to the arts!

What is your background in the arts? Are you currently a practitioner of the arts?

I’ve always loved music. I enjoy listening to music as well as playing and composing on the piano. In fact, that’s how QuaverMusic, my current company, came into being. I was on board a cruise ship in the South China Sea, playing a few chords on the ship’s piano, when another passenger happened to hear me and came over. We started talking about the piece I was composing, and he became very interested.

It was the power of music and the joy of improvisation that created an immediate bond between us: two complete strangers. From there, QuaverMusic—named for the English “quaver” or eighth note—was born, and that “passenger,” Graham Hepburn, became a co-founder of the company. That’s what music does: it creates immediate bonds. It brings people together. It acts as a unifier and a creative force.

What was your most recent arts experience?

I have “arts experiences” every day. The creation of art—specifically, music—is not just an important part of my personal life, but it also stands at the core of QuaverMusic. What we do is create. We’ve developed a world-class music education curriculum for teachers (preK-8) that’s used in 50 states, 31 countries, and over 8,500 schools, impacting more than three million students.

So, when you ask me to identify my most recent arts experience, I suppose I’d say it was today. It was yesterday. And it will be tomorrow, too, because the use of art—specifically, music—is closely and uniquely intertwined in both my personal and professional life.

What was your most meaningful arts experience?

Fortunately, I have meaningful arts experiences every single day—with music. It’s part of my job. It’s part of my life. I can compose a song for one of our curriculum lessons today or this evening that will hopefully be just as meaningful to the students who will eventually hear it in their classroom.

How do you believe the arts are transformational?

I mentioned earlier that music is a unifying force; people in every culture, in every corner of the world, are touched by it, uniquely and universally. Music taps into our emotions and touches our hearts in a way that no other medium can. Music invokes emotion. It makes a moment more memorable. It changes and deepens our experiences, so in this sense, music itself is transformational.

How have you and/or your company integrated the arts into your business to engage, inspire or train your employees?

We use art to engage and inspire our employees every day. We have a staff of over 100 trained professionals who are fully dedicated to bringing the arts—in this case, music education—to teachers in every state in the nation.

Our entire staff is fully dedicated to the task of creating content and resources for teachers. This allows the teachers to engage their students in a way that helps them learn, grow, and experience the world around them as mature, responsible young citizens.

We also take training these teachers very seriously. It’s important that teachers who use our resources fully understand and appreciate the power of the Quaver curriculum. They also need to understand that our resources are designed to supplement and support them, not replace them.

How have you or your company leveraged the arts to set your business apart?

I am both a businessperson and an artist, which helps expand my perspective and set my business apart. I’m the founder and former CEO of a very large corporation, so I bring a different perspective to what the overall relationship between business and the arts should look like, and there are challenges.

The challenge, on the business side, is that because profit motive is the driving force, the most creative work often doesn’t receive the recognition or appreciation it deserves from businesses. The tendency for most businesses is to stick to a proven, profit-driven formula. I’m not saying that profit-driven formulas are wrong, but we should also be allowing room for creativity, innovation and growth—not just in the arts, but in every aspect of business.

Businesses should want to hire creative people, people who can create solutions without predefined answers. We need businesses to understand that the arts can and will help them achieve their objectives—even if those objectives are not always related to the arts.

We need to frame the arts in a way that businesses can find value in them as well. Having this business background helps me be a better advocate for the arts.

Has your company partnered with the arts to enrich community life and/or advance civic and social priorities?

We’ve recently launched a new Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) curriculum that provides resources to help teachers develop their students not just academically, but socially and emotionally as well. Music and SEL are closely related subjects since they both enhance social and emotional development. Our SEL resources, as well as our music resources, help develop the whole child, at every level—not just academic.

When a student becomes more responsible, more compassionate, more confident, and more empathetic, that’s not just good for the classroom and for school districts; it’s good for the community, for businesses, and for the overall fabric of the national economy. This is where the arts and business can and should intersect.

Where do you see the arts playing a role in the future? Personally, professional, and/or in your community?

The arts can become the thread that weaves together the entire fabric of our nation’s economy. As I mentioned, a business doesn’t even have to be related to the arts to enjoy the benefits of a more creative economy. If employees learn to think more creatively, if they learn to communicate more effectively and become better problem-solvers and more critical thinkers, these are the things that really help strengthen an economy.

You don’t have to be an artist to understand that. Just a good businessperson.

Music is the universal language. Unleashing its true power and potential is a win-win for all of us.