David Northington, professor of piano for the School of Music, will be leaving after a 40-year career.
Northington first started taking piano seriously in high school during a summer piano program.
“I realized that if I wanted to be a professional pianist that I would have a lot of catching up to do and I would have to work very hard to prepare for college,” Northington recalled. “I came back to high school and I started practicing six hours a day. My friends didn’t know what happened to me.”
Northington continued to play and practice through college and afterward began to teach as well as perform in over ten countries. Combining performing and instructing allowed Northington to become one of a handful of performers who could “make it” as classical pianists.
He earned many awards and praise from critics for his performances in some of the most-renowned recital halls in the world, including the Carnegie Recital Hall.
“I was not dissuaded from the career path because classical music was not as popular as it use to be. It was almost like a challenge for me,” Northington said. “How could I show people who haven’t experienced classical music what a great musical experience can be?”
After a few stints at preparatory schools and smaller colleges, Northington made the move to UT where he has continued his mission of sharing his love of classical music with others.
As his teaching career at UT reaches a close, Northington is still trying to get people interested in classical piano.
“There is a great communicative power of classical music and that’s something our culture does not promote as much,” he said. “I haven’t given up.”
According to one of his graduate students, Ruixi Niu, Northington’s passion is evident in both aspects of his career — performing and teaching.
“He’s passionate about his music and his teaching and inspires us a lot and makes us love the music even more,” Niu said. “He always has a childish heart when he plays his music. It’s very natural and innocent and that is very special for a musician to keep that childishness.”
Niu is a student from China who met Northington through one of his former students with whom she shared an instructor in China. Together, Northington’s former student and Niu are setting up a piano music festival at her home university where Northington will give master classes and spread his knowledge and passion for piano. Niu plans to assist and translate for him.
The special relationships built between Northington and his students is evident not only in his collaboration with Niu but also in the impact that he has had on another of his graduate students, Julian Calvin.
Calvin benefited from a masterclass by Northington when he was in high school in 2007. Years later, after receiving his undergraduate degree from Lipscomb, he remembered the impact that Northington’s energy had on him when he was younger and began to look into coming to UT.
“One of the reasons I came here was because he was the only professor out of the three schools that I got into that called me and said, ‘Hey, I really want you to be here.’ So, that really impressed me, and I’m very glad I did come here to study with him,” Calvin recalled.
Coincidentally, both Niu and Calvin will finish their degrees this semester and won’t have to make the difficult transition to find a new mentor before graduation.
“As sad as I am that Dr. Northington is retiring, I’m glad that I don’t have to deal with it,” Calvin joked.
One of the reasons Northington’s students have so much admiration for him is the way he pushes them to do better.
“I have an expectation and a level of quality that I am expecting them to rise to, and I’m not going to be compromising,” Northington said. “They’ve got to get there, they’ve got to do that and hopefully in the process I inspire them to reach for that goal. To reach for that and go for that and to give up things in the process in order to make it.”
Northington has won the Tennessee Music Association’s Teacher of the Year Award and received the Tennessee Art Commission’s Artist of the Year Award.
Taking up piano was a gamble for him as a young man, but it paid off at the end of a long and successful career here with connections to students all over the world.
Northington plays his last ever recital at UT this Sunday at 2:30 p.m. in the Haslam Music Building.
David Northington, one of the most renowned piano professors at UT, will be retiring after nearly 45 years of teaching.
