The state of music education, player's prospects

chas smith R.I.P. · Post by **chas smith R.I.P.** » 9 Apr 2006 5:59 pm

THE STATE OF MUSIC EDUCATION
Players' prospects

By Chris Pasles, Times Staff Writer

With more music school graduates than jobs, what does their future hold?

"There are now too many musicians in San Francisco, more than enough to fill all the 'jobs.' What we need is work, not musicians. Stay away from San Francisco. You will find it cheaper in the end."
— Notice signed "By order, Board of Directors, Local #6, San Francisco"
and posted in the American Musician in 1898.

For The TimesAnyone who supposes that American musicians have a tough time finding jobs compared with their forebears obviously hasn't looked into the matter. The advisory at above shows just how little times have changed.

Yet in at least one respect, the situation for musicians at the beginning of the 21st century differs markedly from the one that prevailed a hundred years ago: In those innocent days, there were just a handful of American music schools.

USC had opened its music department in 1884, four years after the university was founded, and upgraded it to a college of music only in 1893. The Institute of Musical Art — precursor of the lofty Juilliard School in New York — started 12 years later. But even then, USC's music enrollment was a mere 100.

Things began to accelerate in 1924, the year that Douglas Fairbanks soared through "The Thief of Bagdad" and George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" premiered. Meeting in Cincinnati, representatives of six American music schools decided they needed to band together to work out problems and curriculum concerns. In short order, the National Assn. of Schools of Music and Allied Arts was formed, with an initial membership of 16 institutions. USC joined in 1925. Within three more years, there were 32 member schools. In three decades, there were more than 200. Today, the figure tops 600.

In the 1980-81 season, according to one study, more than 1,100 members of the American Federation of Musicians competed for 47 full-time positions. Now, an estimated 2,700 music performance majors graduate from American centers of higher learning every year. The usual number of jobs available: 160 or fewer.

There's always room at the top for the very gifted, of course, in any profession. Even in academia, Yale announced last fall that, beginning in 2006-07, it will join the prestigious Curtis Institute in Philadelphia in providing free tuition to all its advanced music students. But keeping a music school healthy requires something more than the cream of the crop — it takes a steady stream of hopefuls. As one music school recruiter bluntly put it: "If you want a circus, then you've got to have animals."

No easy answer

Still, that raises the question: Does he mean a nurturing playland or lambs about to be slaughtered? What are the real prospects for music students today?

The answer depends on which side of the academic fence you're standing on.

"We have too many outstanding music colleges turning out too many graduates for whom there will be no work in music," says maverick British critic Norman Lebrecht.

"It's close to false trading. You take the kids into schools, fire them up with the idea of making careers, knowing from the outset there will not be opportunities for most of them. Very few conservatories are giving students any kind of alternative programs or a sense of the reality ahead for them."

Nonsense, counters Derek Mithaug, director of career development at Juilliard.

"That's the vocational prism that people use in their evaluation of music colleges," he says. " 'What is the placement rate?' That model is disturbing. The idea behind a college or conservatory training goes way beyond being a performing musician."

Juilliard graduates enter many fields, says Mithaug. "Performing is just one of them. Education is another." Others include producing, consulting, directing, journalism, publicity, marketing, advocacy and community outreach. "In these areas, you'll find a wide range of our graduates."

Robert Cutietta, dean of USC's Thornton School of Music, agrees.

"Our students get a full college education that prepares them for all kinds of things," he says. "So many of them are involved with teaching, playing, recording, almost running a small business — and they are the business."

Cutietta is happy to report that 74% of USC's music alums over the last 10 years earn their primary income from music.

"I'm surrounded by people who make a living at music," he says. "It's a very lively profession, especially in a city like Los Angeles."

Such issues were more recently brought to the fore in freelance oboist Blair Tindall's book, "Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music," which details Tindall's and other musicians' successes and failures in securing livelihoods. But most critics focused only on Tindall's kiss-and-tell adventures, dismissing her analysis of the job situation as sour grapes.

"OK, maybe I failed," says Tindall, who attended the Manhattan School of Music. "But what about the 99% of the other grads? We can't all be untalented, undisciplined and without goals. There's just not that much work available."

Others argue the opposite. There are jobs available, says Raymond Ou, a former pianist at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, part of Johns Hopkins University. But they might not be your first choice — and you have to go where they are.

North Carolina was "ripe with possibilities," says Ou, 31. After earning a master's in piano performance at Peabody in 1998, he headed south for three years to teach at a North Carolina private music school and work as a church organist.

"With a performance degree from Peabody, doors opened," he says. "But in the end, what made it work was I was willing to do the jobs instead of just aiming for the top. Lots of conservatory graduates aim high, not wanting to do anything they consider beneath them. But the bottleneck is tight at the top."

For all that, Ou is now on the other side of the fence. He switched fields, going back to Peabody in 2001 to become director of the residence life program. Although he occasionally performs, he sees his immediate future in administration and recently buttressed his credentials with a second master's, in clinical psychology.

Even musicians who make it have complaints. In 1996, J. Richard Hackman and Jutta Allmendinger surveyed members of 78 professional orchestras in the U.S., Britain and Germany, examining their sense of job satisfaction in comparison with 12 other professional groups.

For general job satisfaction, orchestra players ranked seventh, right below federal prison guards. They ranked ninth, again just below prison guards, for growth opportunities. (On the other hand, members of string quartets ranked No. 1 in both categories.)

This unhappiness squares with a recent report in Britain focusing on orchestral musicians who had quit their jobs because of low pay, lack of opportunities for advancement, the repetitive nature of the repertory and the necessary stifling of individuality to fit into a group.

"To be told every day to play a passage in a way you might not agree with — it's like being told to sing out of tune," former Hallé Orchestra violinist Morris Stemp told the Guardian Unlimited in February. "The notes get played but without your own feeling. And the money is so poor that if you lose your artistic integrity, what have you got?"

Soloists are not immune. Naida Cole, a 31-year-old Canadian pianist who won prizes at the Van Cliburn International Competition and recorded two discs for Decca, is abandoning her concert career to study medicine.

She feels her life wasn't "balanced" by being on the road all the time, and she missed having more contact with people.

"As much as I love music, what I enjoyed most was meeting people afterward, after the concert," she says. "I looked forward to the receptions, where I connected with people and found out if I communicated something. When you go onstage, the audience is 10 feet away, sitting in the dark. You go on alone, leave alone and wonder, 'Did I actually do anything?' "

She also felt constrained by what she called the "compromises" required to build a professional career. "You're very restricted in what you can play at a concert. It gets in the way of making the best music you can because you're told you must do this and not do that. It's a struggle."

Given this turmoil, some members of the academy are posing alternative ideas about how best to educate their students.

"We are not producing too many musicians," says Leon Botstein, a noted conductor and the president of Bard College. "We are producing too many musicians the wrong way, too many in a very old-fashioned, very out-of-date system of professional training. Conservatories are still training people to win the Queen Elisabeth Competition 50 years ago. And to that, nobody's listening."

Botstein thinks that every musician should be trained to improvise, "to write his or her own material the way pop musicians do and classical musicians used to do." He also feels they should rethink concerts as "a form of theater that is not reproducible on a recording" and learn to connect more immediately to audiences.

Last fall, to supplement these goals, Bard started a mandatory double-degree program requiring all its conservatory students to also earn a bachelor of arts with a major in a field outside music.

"We're not doing this because we think there will be no jobs and this will be a safety net," says Robert Martin, Bard's Conservatory of Music director and vice president for academic affairs. "We think it's what musicians should have, what young musicians deserve and need. Our view is that musicians need a broader education."

A bigger-picture approach

Bard is not alone in offering double degrees. So do such other schools as Peabody, the Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio and the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y. But only Bard's program is mandatory.

Still, it's not always easy to navigate between the two worlds, as Juliette Wells found when she embarked on a dual-degree track at Peabody and its affiliate, Johns Hopkins, studying violin and English.

"I was constantly explaining at both ends," she says. "It was a lot harder to explain at the music school than at the college. At the music school, from the beginning, I was asked, 'Why are you doing this other thing? If you were a real musician, really committed, you wouldn't be doing this.' So I found a lot of resistance to even trying to train in both things."

A repetitive stress injury — a result, ironically, of typing too many term papers, not over-practicing — ended Wells' music career. She's now an English professor at Manhattanville College in New York.

"Both careers are really competitive," she says. "But it's harder to win an orchestra position when it comes down to three minutes to make an impression. With academic jobs, you have more of a chance to make an impression."

As things stand now, many if not most graduates of even the best conservatories will fail that three-minute test. And they may not find themselves prepared to do anything else.

"Some will make it," says Tindall. "Somebody has to make it. But there are so many music conservatories out there, cranking out more people than the market can bear, it's important for people to consider what they're going to do with their training in music when they're out of school."

Short of an unlikely explosion in job opportunities, "the tragedy," writes "Music Matters" author George Seltzer, "is that there are so many fully qualified applicants for any orchestral vacancy.

"For each outstanding talent that is permitted to be heard in our orchestras, there are probably 99 equally outstanding talents that will fall silent. A terrible waste." [This message was edited by chas smith on 09 April 2006 at 07:00 PM.]

Jim Cohen · Post by **Jim Cohen** » 9 Apr 2006 6:52 pm

Thank you for posting this. It's appearance is particularly timely for our family, since our 16 year old son is considering applying to a conservatory for college and my wife and I are advising him to have a second iron in the fire. The double-degree programs are interesting, though hard to pull off, as the article notes.

Thanks again for posting this.
Jim[This message was edited by Jim Cohen on 10 April 2006 at 04:24 PM.]

chas smith R.I.P. · Post by **chas smith R.I.P.** » 9 Apr 2006 8:00 pm

Jim, you're welcome. I have a couple of degrees in music composition. When I went back to school, it was because I had a chance to study music in a program that I really, REALLY wanted to be involved with. At the time, I was 24 and I knew full well the potential "consequences", but I didn't want to look back, when I was 50, and say, damn I wish I had done that.

Also, I was getting a lot of criticism, mainly about how I was going to be 29, when I graduated. My feeling, at the time, was, I was going to be 29 anyway and I wanted those degrees.

When I got to the summer before the last year, I had to address the "now what am I going to do to make a living" that was rapidly approaching. So I enrolled in a night school, concurrent with finishing the degree during the day, to get my welding certification.

I'm not suggesting that your son take up welding (hard on the chops and hard on the body, when you're 58), but having a second career not only provides more choices (+) and distractions (-), it creates a contrast, that at least for me, is sometimes needed.

There was a period of time when I made enough, doing music, to live comfortably, by my standards. That isn't the case now and if I had to depend solely on the music income, I'd be eating cat food out of the can......

Post by **Dave Mudgett** » 9 Apr 2006 8:10 pm

I was constantly explaining at both ends, she says. It was a lot harder to explain at the music school than at the college. At the music school, from the beginning, I was asked, 'Why are you doing this other thing If you were a real musician, really committed, you wouldn't be doing this.' So I found a lot of resistance to even trying to train in both things.

Oh, yeah, she speaketh the truth. I guess that's why I wound up with degrees in Physics and Electrical Engineering. I found science faculty somewhat more tolerant of my musical interests than most music faculty were tolerant of my technical interests. I studied music, but I would have had to give up the technical stuff to get degrees in it.

I do agree that it is a good idea to keep another iron in the fire. The reasoning to my approach was this: science demands the degrees - try being a serious scientist or professor at a university or research organization without a Ph.D. On the other hand, music performance demands that - well - you can perform, and also have enough theory and reading skill to function professionally in your chosen musical environment. So I tried to take enough music courses to give me the background I needed, without crippling my technical work. It gave me enough to take a 6-year hiatus from science and academia to be a musician, and then go back. Of course, I'm not talking about being a symphony musician, but neither did I want to be a symphony musician.

Of course, this dual existence can be a bit schizophrenic at times. Musicians I work with sometimes wonder why I "won't fully commit and go on the road", and scientists sometimes wonder why I don't move into the lab and crank out 20 technical papers a year. C'est la vie.

Bill Hatcher · Post by **Bill Hatcher** » 9 Apr 2006 8:35 pm

One of the larger counties here in the Atlanta area just announced that it would no longer fund the music programs in elementary school. Just this year there was a push in the legislature to force high school students to take a mandatory physical Ed. class that would totally wipe out the music programs. It did not pass, but will come back up with some revision.

The writing is on the wall for public school music programs.

I have friends who teach music in universities. They know that the grads don't have much of a chance, but they have a job teaching them. They don't offer a class in reality in the music biz.

I am 55 this year and have made a good living playing music all my life. I see a lot of great young players coming out of schools, but the biz is such that most cannot get a foothold to further their career. I am glad I am not their age. So fewer outlets to play and make a living than 20 or 30 years ago. Turn on the radio and listen to the mirror of public butt level conciousness in regards to music--pretty sad.

Jim Bob Sedgwick · Post by **Jim Bob Sedgwick** » 9 Apr 2006 9:21 pm

As Red Rhodes was fond of saying...."Don't give up your DAY JOB

Dan Beller-McKenna · Post by **Dan Beller-McKenna** » 10 Apr 2006 2:41 am

Interesting post (espcecially for a college music educator like myself!)

Here at the U of New Hampshire things look little different. For one thing, we accept very few students into the professional performance program, specifically because we know how few will be able to make it in that highly competitive market. Instead, more than half of our students major in music education with many others earning a B.A. in music (we are not a school of music, but rather a department within the College of Liberal Arts).

For years we have been getting statistics from various professional education organizations telling us that there is a surplus of jobs in public school musical education in the northeast, and our students are generally very successful finding jobs.

That said: I have strong reservations about the way our department pushes incoming freshman into music ed. This is a demanding four-year professional prep degree that leaves little time for a real liberal arts education. Many of these students find out in the sophomore year, when they go out in the schools for the first time to get their feet wet, that this is not necessarily what they want to do with their lives. But by the end of that year they have already invested several "methods" courses (learning to pay well enough and numerous instruments to teach a rank beginner) and music ed classes that the thought of switching concentrations or majors seems impractical.

So what should an aspiring musician do in college? First of all, a bachelor's degree in music is as practical as any other liberal arts degree (assuming one actually gets a liberal arts education through it!); it prepares you for life, not a job. Vast numbers of people graduate every year with such degrees (English, History, Political Science, Languages, etc.) and go on to productive careers in any sort of field. They have become better thinkers and well rounded citizens for their four years of study. Many people who become doctors and lawyers hold these sorts of degrees (although the clever ones will have made sure to pick up the necessary pre-requisites along the way).

I always tell students that college is the best and, in most cases, last chance one will ever have to indulge one's mind for four years. Most students who are motivated enough to go to college and finish a degree program will have the wherewithal to find a career after they graduate, even if it is not within the field in which they majored. If one wants security, a professional degree program or a trade school is a good choice. But there is much to be said for the four-year liberal arts program in preparing young people to be good thinkers and good citizens.

Just my 36 cents.

Dan

------------------
Dan Beller-McKenna
Durham, NH
[This message was edited by Dan Beller-McKenna on 10 April 2006 at 03:47 AM.]

Dan Beller-McKenna · Post by **Dan Beller-McKenna** » 10 Apr 2006 2:44 am

p.s.--

my B.A. is in journalism.

Dan

David Mason · Post by **David Mason** » 10 Apr 2006 3:17 am

America has had an amazing burst of creativity AND productivity fueled by a hundred-year conjunction of cheap energy, cheap water, cheap land and cheap food - in that time our population has gone from 100 million to 290 million. Consequently, we who are alive today have gotten really, really used to the notion that you can "follow your dreams" and "become whoever you want to be", and the media pumps this - how many stories do you read about people whose small businesses fail, the blind kid who can't get a teaching job, the trailer-park classical musician who's still working at WalMart (and will be the rest of his life)? Nobody likes to hear about all the losers....

Now that the cheap energy, water, land and food are running out, I think it's almost impossible to make too many predictions about what the future will hold, but you can still gather a few clues from history - they're not very encouraging for someone who's planning to make a living in an unnecessary, luxury field like the performing arts, unless you drastically redefine your idea of "a comfortable living."

Lest you buy into the notion that technology will "save" us, I just read that building a practical hydrogen-fueled car will cost about $250,000 a pop, and the fuel cells will wear out every three years or so. There's a reason that there aren't more hydrodynamic plants and solar cells and whatnot - they all cost more than $50-a-barrel oil. And, there hasn't been an electrical power generating plant built in the northeast United States for 35 years, the power companies have been feeding the profits to their stockholders (themselves) rather than reinvesting (true of most of our production base).

In twenty years the best possible musical career may very well be as a traveling minstrel, playing your acoustic guitar at the campfires for a hand-out meal and singing songs about the glory years. Have a GREAT day!!!

Charlie McDonald · Post by **Charlie McDonald** » 10 Apr 2006 4:29 am

Everybody wants to be a musician.

I tell young players "Your day job is your best friend."
Yes, the times they are a-changin'.

David Doggett · Post by **David Doggett** » 10 Apr 2006 7:34 am

Music is not the only field with this problem of teaching for the impossible dream. Most undergraduate degrees don't train students for any particular job that is waiting for them. There are lots of latte makers with college degrees. Everyone in business school hopes to be a top corporate CEO, or at least a VP, but only a tiny fraction will ever make it. Even in the hard sciences, Ph.D. programs still train everyone as if they will all take the teaching/grant writing/academic research track of their professors, though very few will. College and graduate degrees are really just glorified union cards. You have to have one to get the good jobs, but they don't guarantee any particular job. Medicine is about the only cookie cutter career path left, where if you get into medical school and persevere all the way through, you are guaranteed a career as a medical doctor.

But since almost nothing is guaranteed, regardless of the degree, maybe it makes sense to study something you are really interested in while you have the chance. Maybe a philosophy degree will help you be philosophical as you make those lattes.

Post by **Dave Mudgett** » 10 Apr 2006 9:28 am

... maybe it makes sense to study something you are really interested in while you have the chance.

Yes, I totally agree. IMO, what it takes to really succeed in most things is to really pour oneself into it, and loving something is the best motivator to really get intense about it. I don't think that money alone is enough of a motivator in this culture - most people at the college level have a lot of potentially good career choices if they just apply themselves.

On the subject of a "liberal education", I'm in favor of it, but I think that whole idea is seriously eroding, at least in the U.S. educational system. The popular culture does not really value serious thinking the way it did, let's say, 40-50 years ago, IMO. It pays a lot of lip service to it, but I don't think it translates well right now. I think this is reflected in all areas of society. For example, there's a helluva big difference in intellectual mindset between, let's say, Edward R. Murrow or Walter Cronkite, and Katie Couric (who was announced last week as the new CBS Evening News anchor). The change in public discourse from thoughtful discussion to happy-talk and ad hominem is pervasive, IMO.

To a point, I agree with David D. that scientific and engineering training is still somewhat slanted to preparing future academics. But I think that has changed in the last 10-15 years - I think much more than in the humanities and arts, from what I see. Further, more and more fundamental science and engineering research has moved to industrial or governmental research labs. I view a science-engineering Ph.D. these days more as basic training in doing research. Many people change their research and teaching focus when they finish their degrees, and may change periodically through their career. I view this as healthy.

Earnest Bovine · Post by **Earnest Bovine** » 10 Apr 2006 9:31 am

From Los Angeles Times last week, here is an article about how much money you can make working in the arts:
http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/suncal/cl-ca-compensation2apr02,0,4046430.htmlstory

And here is an excerpt from the Music part of that article:

MUSIC

Los Angeles Opera

# General director Plácido Domingo
Salary: $598,465.
Annual budget: $43 million
Bonus data: Domingo draws an additional $450,000 or more yearly for running the Washington National Opera. Music director Kent Nagano, who earned $680,000, will be succeeded by James Conlon in September. If you do your tallying per diem, the richest L.A. Opera paycheck lately may be the $250,000 paid guest performer Mstislav Rostropovich for conducting five widely scorned performances of the company's "Nicholas and Alexandra" premiere in September 2003.

* Stagehand Steve McDonough
Salary: $160,556

Los Angeles Philharmonic

* Music director Esa-Pekka Salonen
Salary: $1,260,639 (plus income from guest conducting elsewhere) for the year ended September 2004

* President and Chief Executive Deborah Borda
Salary: $799,970
Annual budget: $74.8 million
Bonus data: By contract, orchestra players earn at least $112,840, with pay rising to $348,988 for concertmaster Martin Chalifour. And those page-turners who sit next to the pianists in Disney Hall? $40 per concert.

Music Center of Los Angeles County

President Stephen Rountree
Salary: $311,325
Annual budget: $41.1 million
Bonus data: The Music Center operates the Ahmanson Theatre, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Mark Taper Forum and Walt Disney Concert Hall, serving as landlord to the Center Theatre Group, the L.A. Phil, L.A. Opera and the L.A. Master Chorale.

President Stephen Rountree
Salary: $311,325
Annual budget: $41.1 million
Bonus data: The Music Center operates the Ahmanson Theatre, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Mark Taper Forum and Walt Disney Concert Hall, serving as landlord to the Center Theatre Group, the L.A. Phil, L.A. Opera and the L.A. Master Chorale.

Larry Strawn · Post by **Larry Strawn** » 10 Apr 2006 9:43 am

I the 70's when I was actually making a decent living playing music, everyone in the family except one sister wanted to know "When are you getting a Job"?? Are you going to be a Bum all of your life? Then I could make more money playing than welding in a fab shop.

Now at 58 yrs. old [tommorrow] I'm thankfull for the 3 Trade, and Tech. schools I attened!

Larry

------------------
Fessenden S/D 12, 8/6 Hilton Pedal, Sessions 400 Ltd. Home Grown E/F Rack
"ROCKIN COUNTRY"

Dan Beller-McKenna · Post by **Dan Beller-McKenna** » 10 Apr 2006 10:22 am

Sadly, I have to agree with Dave about the status and state of a liberal education today. I see it first hand in my classroom. In my courses for non music majors, (too) many students are merely taking my course to check off a list of general education requirement. They don't display much in the way of intellectual curiosity (which is not to slight the many students who are engaged and interested.) And among my music majors many don’t see the relevance of studying history (musical or otherwise) since they will be teaching and conducting mostly modern band music in the schools.

For all the students I consider it my task to make history and the humanities relevant to them and to introduce them to more complex ideas than they get from popular culture nowadays. It's a challenge, to be sure, but one I enjoy. And as one of the previous posts said (Dave?), monetary reward is only one way of measuring success in life. I could have made a lot more money doing other things that being a college professor, but I love what I do and that counts for a heck of a lot. (And, of course, it leaves me time for playing the steel!!)

Dan

------------------
Dan Beller-McKenna
Durham, NH

John Macy · Post by **John Macy** » 10 Apr 2006 10:45 am

Interesting article, Chas--thanks a lot. Like Jim above, my 16 year old daughter is headed into the modern dance world, and most likely will skip the schooling route and she has been making inroads over the years with various choreographers and such. She is immensely talented, and knows what she is up against as she has seen what I go though, and the dance world tracks the music world in similar issues.

I figured out pretty early on that to survive, especially in a smaller market, you need to branch out so all my eggs were not in one basket. I play a lot of steel guitar, but make the bulk of my income as a producer and engineer. I have a pretty deep background in the business of music, including spending almost 4 years heading a record label, am well versed in music law and publishing. I design and install studios and do so for many of my clients, interfacing their overdub rigs to be easily compatible with my tracking/mixing setups. All of this has made it possible to make a really good living doing what I love to do--my wife is a stay at home mom and we do pretty well. The downside is my average work week is 60+ hours and often more than that, not to mention a good bit of travel.

I think anyone trying to make a fulltime living at this needs to really look at being as versatile as possible, no matter where they live, as it will become harder and harder to make a go of it with just one skill. I am getting my daughter into such things as video editing and production, voice training and anything else that might make it easier to survive in an arts based world.

I am constantly at all the graduates coming out of the recording schools expecting to make a living in an ever shrinking recording business, many with very warped expectations...

Barry Blackwood · Post by **Barry Blackwood** » 10 Apr 2006 1:34 pm

After reading these posts, it would appear that the lions share of the money is, as always, going to pay the administrators .....

David Mason · Post by **David Mason** » 10 Apr 2006 1:48 pm

b0b showed me a neat trick (also on that page that pops up when you click on "*UBB code is ON" - put and around the link address, and it un-blows the address length and consequently un-blows the following responses.

Post by **Dave Mudgett** » 10 Apr 2006 3:21 pm

Barry, you took the words out of my mouth. It's about power, isn't it. I really do believe that musicians should be well versed in the principles of business, since it's like a shark tank out there. So much for the "sensitive artiste" concept.