Meet Felix Graham, Ed.d.c.t.

We recently connected with Felix Graham, Ed.d.c.t. and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Felix, appreciate you sitting with us today. Maybe we can start with a topic that we care deeply about because it’s something we’ve found really sets folks apart and can make all the difference in whether someone reaches their goals. Self discipline seems to have an outsized impact on how someone’s life plays out and so we’d love to hear about how you developed yours?

Desire.

One of the earliest moments of philosophical awareness I recall having as a child the realization of an eternal dream of mine: becoming the proud owner — at eleven! — of the dearly-desired horse I had begged my parents for over at least five years. And it wasn’t a gift, it was the result of my perseverance. While we lived on a farm, my parents were reluctant to get me a horse for obvious reasons: expensive, large, laborious, really expensive…and their firm belief that I wouldn’t take care of it, I’d get bored of it, I’d move on and the horse would be left to its own devices. I swore over and over that this wasn’t the case, and finally, in an act of desperation, when I was eight, my parents promised that if I completed a set of tasks to prove that I dedicated enough to be responsible, I would get my horse. They assumed I would get bored, drop it, and on we’d go, horseless, with an “I told you so” to hold over my head when I asked for another pet. Over the next three years, though, I doggedly worked my way through a set of truly Herculean tasks, one of which was training another animal to be successfully ridden (a cow!). When my astonished parents finally caved and presented me with the promised pet, it struck me on the spot that I could get anything I wanted, if I just wanted it ENOUGH that I stuck with doing whatever it took to fulfill that desire.

This mindset has served me since. Discipline is simply the act of allowing myself to follow through on desire.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I am the founder and director of TRANScend, New York’s first trans and gender-expansive classical vocal ensemble. What began as a personal project at the beginning of the COVID pandemic has now morphed into a full foundation with 501(c)3 status, a semi-professional performing ensemble and a community chorus, run by assistant director Hannah Cai-Sobel. The performing ensemble has taken on a whole swath of challenges, including singing the national anthem at a major league soccer game, giving an improvised performance for a night club, recording a music video, and singing concerts at an art gallery, a nature preserve, a ketamine clinic, a high school and even on ABC7 for the New York Pride Parade. We believe that singing is a human right, and that every voice deserves a place to sing and be heard. When we started, there wasn’t anything really like our organization for trans singers in New York. If we wanted it for ourselves, we had to build it for ourselves.

Being able to do two Big Things at once is a point of pride for me: we’ve created a community for trans/gender-expansive singers in NYC, and we’ve been able to increase the visibility of trans musicians by showing up in places no one expects to find a choir! We’ve built a community and an atypical, grassroot-built audience for classical choral music in a time and place where “classical music” is supposed to be dying. We’re not dead: we’re thriving and making beautiful music.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Organization, perseverance and a high tolerance for uncertainty! Having an organized system of thinking and working through the world allows you to find a path where movement seems impossible. Perseverance keeps you on that path even when it’s rocky and it looks like it’s about to end in a cliff. And that last, a high tolerance for uncertainty, means that you don’t get knocked off the path when the inevitable roadblocks or storms appear.

Developing those three qualities requires two things: practice, and practice doing hard things. You have to practice being organized and thinking through a problem-solving lens. Perseverance and a tolerance for uncertainty is built when you do something hard, fail, do it again a different way, fail…and continue until you either realize that the path you’re taking isn’t the right direction OR you succeed. Try, fail, get up, try again.

What is the number one obstacle or challenge you are currently facing and what are you doing to try to resolve or overcome this challenge?

Without a doubt, funding is probably the biggest challenge an arts/community-based non-profit faces, particularly if your nonprofit serves an underserved community, as ours does. Very few of us (and certainly not me!) came into this with access to financial resources or the knowledge of how to acquire them. The only thing you can do is to educate yourself and ask for help, which is exactly what we’re doing. We’ve consulted with several experts, have hired a grant-writer and are working to develop our organizational reach to find the type of folks and business who believe in our vision.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Pete Gibson
Human Flower Productions
Stevie Goughnour
Zina Fields

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