Rockers keep on rockin’

Arts and Humanities People and Community

By Michael R. Malone [email protected] 07-30-2025

Rolling Stones rocker Mick Jagger is still strutting the stage at 81. Willie Nelson, a "living legend" at 92, performed last year with family members at Los Angeles' iconic Hollywood Bowl together with Bob Dylan, a spritely 84.

Dolly Parton at 79 is taking some time off but will soon rekindle her career that already spans six decades. Bruce Springsteen at 75, after two years of performing solo shows on Broadway, is wowing audiences on a European tour this summer.

For these iconic musicians-and creative artists generally-there's no "drifting off into the sunset" and no notion of retiring. Abetted by new technologies and driven to satisfy the whimsical muse, many pursue their craft through to the last refrain.

"One of the beautiful things of being a musician or creative artist is that you don't retire-because it's not a job; it's your passion," said Shelton G. "Shelly" Berg, outgoing dean of the University of Miami Phillip and Patricia Frost School of Music and a renowned pianist. "Musicians and artists don't retire unless they have a physical disability and begin to lose their technical ability. You can still grow and deepen as an artist your entire life."

Reynaldo Sanchez, professor of music industry, as well as a talented guitarist and songwriter, said that "not all of the arts are as gracious to the artist as music is. Dancers, like athletes, who make it through their 30s and into their 40s are getting to the end of their careers. But music and visual arts, as long as you're physically able-and now with technology, that 'physically able' has been expanded quite a bit more-you can do it your entire life."

Sanchez noted that even into his 70s, blues legend B.B. King had 200 dates a year on his performance calendar.

After nearly 48 years as a leader and administrator in higher education, Berg is himself on the precipice of a career reset. Though along the way he has continued to record and perform-his trio recorded a new album, "Alegria," last year that opened the door to play some big-name jazz venues in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago-and to produce-he's garnered six Grammy nominations, arranging and orchestrating for performers such as James Taylor, Garth Brooks, Kiss, and many more-Berg prioritized his academic duties.

Berg performs at the Maurice Gusman Concert Hall at the Frost School of Music. Photo courtesy of the Frost School.

He has an agent now for the first time, and far from being daunted by the tectonic shifts in the landscape, he's excited for what awaits after he moves on from academia.

"With all the challenges in the music industry, there are more festivals and performing arts centers than there have ever been. If you're a jazz musician and think all jazz clubs have all died out and wonder, 'Where am I going to play?' there are more opportunities than ever," Berg said.

His experience has helped him keep pace with many of the new technologies.

"My life has been imbued with technology in order to work with the artists that I have," Berg said. "But now, while the fingers can still move, I'm looking forward to doing many of the things I put as a secondary priority. I expect to be playing some European jazz festivals and major U.S. festivals in my next chapter as a musician and artist."

Sanchez is turning 70 this year and has no intentions of slowing the tempo of a busy academic and recording slate.

"You often hear that you don't choose the arts-they choose you. It's a certain kind of person who is just fanatical, so driven-we call it passionate," he said. "I feel like I'm just getting started, and that's the beauty of music. If you keep doing it, you can only get better."

Sanchez fell a few months back and broke four fingers in his right hand, so holding a guitar pick has been difficult as he recovers. "Yet I feel like I'm a better guitar player today than I've ever been-you always find ways to work around limitations," he said.

The new technologies have made it possible to understand and track how musicians age with their music in ways that never existed before.

"The 20th century changed everything," he said. "Once audio-and later video-recording became the norm, it gave musicians a whole new way of understanding music. Before that, if you wanted to study how someone like Mozart or Beethoven developed over time, all you had were their written works. Now you can actually hear and see that evolution. We have a front-row seat to history."

Sanchez, who is also the Frost School associate dean for strategic initiatives and innovation, has first-hand experience with much of the disruptive transformative technology that has revolutionized the industry. And he believes a "creative explosion" is on the way, borne on the wings of AI.

"The most important one for artists today is the fact that anyone can make and memorialize their own music," he said. "In the old days, making a record was a big deal; you had to have a lot of money and involve a lot of people. But today, I have more power in my laptop computer than existed in any recording studio through the end of the 1980s. That's pretty amazing."

Sanchez jams with Livingston Taylor, brother of James Taylor, who taught a master class at the Frost School in 2022. Photo courtesy of Sanchez.

Sanchez is just finishing a new record-one he's worked on for the past four years-and only one session, which took place last month, was done with other musicians in a studio. "This is how business is done today; this is how we do it," he said.

"What defines a true artist is the willingness to keep evolving, and (alumnus) Bruce Hornsby is a perfect example," Sanchez said. "Just look at his work over the past 10 or 15 years-it's all over the map in the best way; chamber music, bluegrass, jazz, and more. He's not chasing trends; he's following his own creative path."

When artists evolve their craft, they maintain and even grow their audience, Sanchez said.

"There are plenty of examples of this. Although Jimmy Buffett has passed on, his band continues to play. People want to continue that experience, so a great artist not only grows their audience, but their audience grows with them, and they also pick up new audiences," he said. "You see this over and over because there are not just older people at the concerts, there are all generations."

Berg was just launching his career in Los Angeles when he learned a lesson that has informed him ever since. It's one that the Frost School strives to communicate to its students.

He'd arranged and orchestrated an album for the band Chicago and, with the breakthrough, was sure that his phone would ring nonstop and his career would skyrocket.

"Guess what? The phone didn't ring. There's nothing that guarantees one great opportunity is going to lead to another," he said. "An artist's career is completely nonlinear. There aren't job fairs and recruiters coming to campus saying, 'We want to hire a concert pianist.'

"We impress upon our students that music is a business of one. We help them understand where the opportunities are and how to create those opportunities," Berg added.

So while some musicians seek to reinvent themselves, they can't rely on the fact that they play piano well and expect that talent alone will get them hired to play a performing arts center, Berg said.

"People drive by a restaurant and decide to eat there because the place looks good-the restaurant has done something to entice you," he explained. "As part of evolving a career as you age and to create opportunities, you need to generate ideas that will interest the presenters where you want to perform and find compelling themes that will make them want to book you."

To persist in the music business, both Berg and Sanchez encourage musicians to stay in touch with what sparked them in the early going.

"The mundane parts of being a musician-too many days on the road, too many concerts-can cause someone to become jaded," Berg said. "Music is endless, and what I always say is that the secret to life is to appreciate the things you love as if it's the first time."

"You can have more success when you stop worrying about success and instead focus on what you really need to do, which is making your music, your art," Sanchez suggested. "Yes, you need to look at the business side, but none of that is important if you don't have a compelling story to share with somebody.

"Stay curious, listen to a lot of music, but most important is to draw back to that early moment," Sanchez added. "It has to stay fun; if it suddenly becomes work, it's over."