A Revolution for an Evolution! – Part 1

This series is going to be a long term project that I hope starts a discourse.

I have written in the past that the Orchestra business needs an intervention but college music education needs a revolution.  Shadowing the angst felt by Orchestras to maintain both relevance and control of their destiny is the fact that the next generation of musicians and administrators are essentially being trained for a world that no longer exists……

Recently when I visited Eastman (not for any official purpose) I noticed the place was busting at the seams.  There were students everywhere and in the foyer a massive banner proclaiming it to be the Hottest Music School by Kaplan/Newsweek.  I’m thinking to myself, that’s great but what are these students going to do once they graduate? Certainly only a small percentage are going to make it as full time performers, the jobs just aren’t there and what are schools doing about that?  I don’t want to ladle too much criticism on Eastman directly as they are actually implementing some worthwhile courses that deal with this topic through their Institute of Musical Leadership.  From what I can ascertain though the old models of educating musicians and arts administrators are still predominant and therefore chances are there will be less and less arts jobs for graduates in the years to come and more baristas who can play Brahms!

A revolution starts with an idea that hopefully grows into a consensus for change followed by implementation.  At Eastman I met with Greg Sandow, and we discussed this.  His post called Teaching on March 13 is well worth reading (including all of the attachments) about what he’s trying to implement to both modernize and revolutionize teaching to suit the ever changing world that artists still find difficult to relate to and vice versa!  This quote encapsulates several great points:

And here the mountain gives birth to what might seem like a tiny mouse. I ask my students to present some work they’ve played or sung (or written), talking about it in very personal terms, trying to interest people who don’t know anything about classical music. In a world where the audience is growing older (for the past 50 years!) and shrinking, and where the culture at large has moved in directions the classical music world can’t grasp, my assignment may seem like no more than a tiny step.

But it’s a seed from which many things can grow. As I told my Eastman class: The problem, overall, is that classical music – at least as we currently see it — doesn’t speak to contemporary culture. And yet here we have my students, and so many other young classical musicians, who inhabit both worlds. They’re in the classical music world, as young professionals, and they’re also in the mainstream world, sharing the same culture as their friends who don’t pay attention to classical music. (Nobody should underestimate how true this is. Many of my students follow pop music far more closely than I do, even some who, if you ask them point-blank, say classical music is more profound than pop. And I’ll never forget an Eastman student a couple of years ago, a conservative Christian who with wild delight explained why a song cycle she was singing reminded her of Sex in the City.)

So if these students can, even in a small way, bridge the gap between themselves and the culture at large, they’ve done something potentially revolutionary.

The course I teach at Drury University The Audience Connection has many of the same goals and it’s now a core subject for arts administration students. I believe training in connecting skills is seriously lacking judging by the ever continuing labor situations, declining sales which can be linked also to boneheaded marketing ideas that we continually hear about.  Music students currently can take it as an elective also. I would suggest that for music students studies that have to do with a personal connection including public speaking skills should also be implemented, and further to this, new media really needs to be core subject for all arts and arts admin students.  Here is Drew’s great series on New Media that shows the enormous potential it has.  Bottom line, studies should always have a current affairs component.  Each student in my class picks an area of interest to them and brings one current article each week to discuss with the whole class.  Big things continually happen in the arts world and so it worries me that music students in particular insulate themselves in a 5 by 5 practice room without windows for 4 years!

A couple of years back when I was designing my course I spoke to my uncle The Honorable James Jacob Spigelman Chief Justice of the New South Wales Supreme Court, Sydney Australia.  I asked him this question: If there was a new precedent set in his court, how long would it take for that to be incorporated by law professors in their lectures? He told me that if it related to the particular area of law they were teaching usually within the same day if the judgment was issued in the morning!  About the most current thing I have seen in some Music colleges is “Singer needed for band” on the help wanted notice board!  We need a mechanism to recalibrate and make current affairs a central part of college music and arts admin education so that students once they leave can apply their skills to create opportunities, integrate into a community, and become relevant through their knowledge of what is waiting for them out there.

When my uncle was sworn in he said this about law and the courts, but it could apply to the arts also:

“We are the inheritors of an 800 year old tradition which represents one of the most extraordinary constructs. The common law and the adversary system – a manifestation of the power of Socratic dialogue – is one of the greatest mechanisms for the identification of truth and the maintenance of social stability that has ever been devised …. The judgments of this Court are part of a broader public discourse, by which our society and polity affirms its core values, applies them and adapts them to changing circumstances.”

Someone once said to me that for teaching to include more of a current affairs based approach,  an idea would be to only grant tenure to a college professor when a pre-determined percentage level of  their students achieved success after they graduated.   I’m not saying this is the answer, but this person remarked that if this was the tenure policy, teaching would change and professors everywhere would be finding out what is going on in the world to help their students chances of success.  I know many that look out for their students, but I don’t think they’re required to.  I know potentially this idea and the whole issue of revolutionizing college education is a Pandora’s box, however after Pandora opened that box, letting out all the evils of mankind, she closed it fast enough to leave one value inside…Hope!