 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: GBK
Date: 2013-05-11 14:57
"... he sold his bassoon for $5,300 to pay credit card bills. "It was time," he said. "It got to the point where you're just tired of being poor."
...GBK
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2013-05-11 17:12
I find this article about as instructive as the Washington Post articles on how the band program is draining the Department of Defense Budget.
Where do you think all the graduates of all the music schools over the course of all the years go?
If you want to play music you will. If you don't, then you won't.....don't sweat it.
...................Paul Aviles
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Author: Ed
Date: 2013-05-11 18:47
Quote:
If you want to play music you will. If you don't, then you won't.....don't sweat it.
I don't know that it is quite that easy. Certainly some are more driven than others. On the other hand, I know lots of folks who are fine players with lots of determination, but there is just not that much work out there.
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Author: antaresclar
Date: 2013-05-11 21:46
Greetings,
I am from that very class at Juilliard (1994) talked about in the article. I knew/know all of the people mentioned in the article. The article is written by a very bitter former clarinetist who likes to write negatively about the music world.
My time at Juilliard was one of the greatest times in my musical life. Inspirational in ways too numerous to count. I guess I am one of the luckier ones as I have managed to sustain a career/life in music (chamber music, solo performances, conservatory professor). It has not always been an easy journey but it has been a journey that has been ultimately one which I would do again in a heartbeat.
Just my 2 cents!
Garrick Zoeter
https://www.youtube.com/user/SUclarinets
P.S. Yep, I am still paying off those student loans (for Yale, not Juilliard) and it is indeed painful!!!!
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Author: brycon
Date: 2013-05-11 22:59
Quote:
The article is written by a very bitter former clarinetist who likes to write negatively about the music world.
Definitely reads like a Dan Wakin article. Most of his work gives me the impression that he began with a narrative and attempted to find a story in which to fit it.
If he is going to ascribe to the school a "Juilliard Effect," it would be nice to see how dancers, actors, graduate, and post graduate students- not to mention other classes- either validate or contradict his thesis.
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Author: Taras12
Date: 2013-05-11 23:06
I wonder what the article would read in 2014 (20 years later).
I'm not a professional musician, but a number of my graduate classmates are finishing up paying off their student loans (Class of '82) thirty years later. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
Tristan
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Author: Bob Phillips
Date: 2013-05-12 02:19
30-years to pay off student loans.
I regard that as a significant failure of our country --turning ambitious middle and underclass Americans into indentured servants.
If your kid can speak Greek, s/he can get a bachelor's degree in Greece for around 10% of the cost of an American degree. US tuitions are way out of line, and education has become a loan sharking business rather than a means for keeping USA out in front and assuring the country's future.
... and as a symphony musician colleague of mine says, "I don't know why they give student loans to music majors; they know that they'll never get paid back."
Bob Phillips
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Author: DougR
Date: 2013-05-12 15:32
Hmmm. I skimmed the article, and kept thinking you could sum up the entire piece by saying, "Life Happens." Expecting a blue-ribbon outfit like Juilliard (or for actors, Yale Drama School) to guarantee success for everybody who walks thru their doors, and who exits with a performance degree and lots of hope, is nuts. You plunk down your money (or in most cases, probably, the bank's money) and hope that between the training you get and your own native abilities, you can have a career. And prestige institutions certainly help foster an undeniable standard of excellence, and also furnish a shiny credential that gets you noticed. But after that--? "Life Happens."
It's also true that Juilliard spends a good deal of time and effort in providing scholarships for worthy candidates, but that's perhaps another story.
And it's also true that in other developed countries, education is much cheaper than in the US, so the burden of student debt is comparatively negligible. The social safety net is much stronger; medical care is much cheaper, and young people starting out have a much easier time of it, with much less dire consequences involved as a result of failure to "make it" in the arts.
One of the biggest forces I find that drives people out of the arts and into stupid survival jobs (if you can even find one these days) is exhaustion due to uncertainty: you get tired of wondering if you'll be able to pay your medical insurance this month, or suddenly the car blows a transmission, or there's a baby on the way, or one of your lucrative part-time gigs disappears, or you just get....tired. Anyone would. (As the article demonstrates.)
And there's no news there, really; I doubt that the nearly ten-year-old article would read much differently today, except for many fewer orchestras and many more low-rent playing opportunities. In all events, "Life Happens."
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Author: clarinetist04
Date: 2013-05-13 04:32
"I regard that as a significant failure of our country --turning ambitious middle and underclass Americans into indentured servants."
I couldn't disagree more. There're many institutions out there with very fine clarinet teachers (or teachers of other disciplines) that don't cost an arm and a leg to attend.
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Author: MoonPatrol
Date: 2013-05-13 19:15
I don't know what stand to take on this. But I do know American culture values football above the arts and all the money is going in that direction.
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Author: Tobin
Date: 2013-05-13 20:04
Clarinetist04: Bob isn't talking solely about music schools. He's talking about the cost of undergraduate education in general.
James
Gnothi Seauton
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Author: brycon
Date: 2013-05-13 21:45
Quote:
If your kid can speak Greek, s/he can get a bachelor's degree in Greece for around 10% of the cost of an American degree. US tuitions are way out of line, and education has become a loan sharking business rather than a means for keeping USA out in front and assuring the country's future.
Aside from more government spending in the area of higher education (through reappropriation, increased revenue, etc), how could one alleviate the financial burden of an American degree?
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Author: C.Elizabeth07
Date: 2013-05-14 02:03
"I regard that as a significant failure of our country --turning ambitious middle and underclass Americans into indentured servants."
U.S. Citizen studying in Canada. My tuition even as an international student is less than HALF of what it would have cost me at the other conservatories and universities I was accepted to for my M.M.
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Author: dubrosa22
Date: 2013-05-14 02:08
Good old article but the skew was negative as previously stated and the focus on Julliard being the wrong seems somewhat bizarre:
"He needed a day job. But a Juilliard degree had not prepared him for much besides playing."
Should a music conservatory really provide general career education?
If a musician is failing auditions and can't line up enough session work perhaps there's more to it than Julliard's lack of a career education programme?
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Author: Garth Libre
Date: 2013-05-14 03:21
I found that dancers who graduate with college degrees in dance education or performance never got any jobs in companies. All of the professional ballet dancers I danced with in various companies were not only not graduates of arts programs in universities but many didn't even have high school or certainly not college degrees. I dropped out of first year college when the Harkness School of Ballet offered to accept me as a student and pay me a weekly stipend I could actually live on. Two years later I was working in various professional ballet companies and actually no one in those companies had a story much different from mine. I know it's a little different for musicians but I get the idea that if you play an instrument decidedly better than most other professionals, there will always be a possibility of making a career out of music. The problem with legitimate music is that there are so few openings that the standards become obscenely high. This is the same situation for female ballet dancers. If you don't do everything well and have a perfect body, the company will find someone younger who can do it all. With male ballet dancers the standards are just about as high as they are for women nowadays.
Garth, 305-981-4705. garthlibre@yahoo.com
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Author: Ed
Date: 2013-05-14 12:23
Quote:
Should a music conservatory really provide general career education?
I think that a school should teach more than how to play the audition. Music has become such a specialized business that there is much more to it than playing. Resumes, audition recordings, networking, audition procedures, freelancing, finding opportunities, etc, could be valuable lessons that would give students a better shot at success.
It should be about more than knowing how to play the horn and being told- go figure it out. Anything that would give students a fighting chance.
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Author: Orlando Natty
Date: 2013-05-14 12:35
"If your kid can speak Greek, s/he can get a bachelor's degree in Greece for around 10% of the cost of an American degree. US tuitions are way out of line, and education has become a loan sharking business rather than a means for keeping USA out in front and assuring the country's future."
I don't want to get too political, but Greece is also broke. There is no free lunch; someone has to pay for it. Everyone says American education should cost less, but who is going to subsidize it to make it cheaper? We get back what we put in and people don't want to or can't pay more to subsidize education.
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Author: MoonPatrol
Date: 2013-05-14 13:35
Stop paying doctors and engineers so much money. I think they both have a God complex. Doctors work on the achievements of history and engineers have an explanation for everything. Why not pay ministers more? They are keeping healthy that which lasts longer than physical life. Doctors only fix so that you can die later. Musicians are underpaid because of all the rock stars and video image crap is stealing all the funds. How about composers? What they do is harder than any engineering feat, except maybe the space shuttle. Musicians are never going to be part of the popular working world as long as this imbalance exists. I must have played 20 gigs in the last few tears and not made a red cent! Actually lost money if you count driving. Yes I love playing but if I loved doing wallpaper and wanted to do my friend's house for free it would be odd to say the least.
Post Edited (2013-05-14 13:42)
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Author: MarlboroughMan
Date: 2013-05-14 13:39
My take:
First, it's important for those outside of the performance world to realize that music (or dance, as Garth points out) is not exactly like other degree situations. You never hear of a down-and-out accountant going back to school for that applied clarinet degree. There are reasons for that. Sadly, there are many music programs (at least in the US) that stay afloat on adolescent daydreams and uninformed parents who actually think going into music is just like going into [insert marketable degree here]. In many such schools, the only careers being made are those of the professors. That's not bitter: it's just true. I know folks in such jobs, and believe me it's sometimes a moral quandry for them: they have to support their family...how do they break it to their students that none of them have a shot at a career performing music? Very few profs out there are as honest as Ed Palanker's website.
Having said that, if you're going to plunk down your money and take a chance, Juilliard is one of your best bets. If you're good enough to get in, and if you get some breaks, and if you stay healthy and financially afloat long enough to take advantage of those breaks, and if you have enough street sense about you to realize it's as much a business as an art, you just might grab the brass ring. That's a fragile ecosystem of "ifs"--and you need all of them. But it's possible--and if played right, a Juilliard experience is going to give you many more passes at that ring.
Ulitmately, I thought the article was pretty sober--successes were documented too, and enough of them to show Juilliard's strength. Coincidentally, I would have been Juilliard class of '94 too--and with quite a bit of debt--had I gone that route. Instead, I took a full scholarship elsewhere. That, in turn, was a different sort of gamble: could I work hard enough and improve enough at a less prestigious school, making the most of my (far fewer) chances? My choice was further mitigated by the fact that I wanted to double major in jazz and classical performance, and the school I chose had placed professional jazz musicians well. At the time Juilliard had no formal jazz program (but that didn't stop Miles or Wynton...so draw your own conclusions.)
Any way you cut it, the conservatory biz is a risk/reward game, with real risks and very few potential rewards. These days there are fewer chances (more orchestras going under, worse options), so young people would do well to consider career viability, even if they land one of those elusive jobs. In other words, the "ecosystem of ifs" doesn't end when you win a professional audition.
Some schools are getting better at offering music marketing courses. This is, in my opinion, an ethical necessity for music programs these days. Beyond that, some transparency about actual job placement would be helpful for prospective students. (I remember one music school boasting 100% employment of grads when I was auditioning...leaving out the salient fact that virtually none of them were employed in music performance).
In the end, regardless of the frustrations, I'm grateful for a life pursuing music--and I hope all of those who have gone down this unusually tough road of gambles, losses, and rare wins feel the same way. This world's priorities can be pretty messed up (another fact that doesn't change with winning auditions), but even if you get the shaft you can say "I have a right to sing the blues" at the end of it all. And if you're a good enough musician, you might even be able to play them well enough to point to something better--whether or not you ever get paid for it.
Eric
******************************
The Jazz Clarinet
http://thejazzclarinet.blogspot.com/
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Author: Taras12
Date: 2013-05-14 19:08
MoonPatrol Wrote on Date: 2013-05-14 13:35
<Stop paying doctors and engineers so much money. I think they both
<have a God complex. Doctors work on the achievements of history and
<engineers have an explanation for everything. Why not pay ministers
<more? They are keeping healthy that which lasts longer than physical life.
<Doctors only fix so that you can die later....
Interesting comment...No one ever makes anyone go to the doctor. And another thing, if people would take better care of their bodies, they might not need a doctor. Often you go to the doctor when your body has sustained years of self-inflicted damage. Then the doctor is supposed to make it all better. Not.
You might also want to check into what it takes to become a doctor or engineer. Personally, I wouldn't go to a doctor unless he knew he was the best...would you let someone cut on you who didn't?
Going beyond this tangent, MarlboroughMan is on the "money." As ignorant as I am about the music industry, I've heard several similar things regarding my discipline, the sciences. My liberal arts undergrad was a preprofessional school, which boasted about a 95% placement into graduate study programs. What they didn't initially tell you was that you better have "Plan B." That was the shocker at the end of your Freshman year. For instance, our Pre-Med program started freshman year with about 200 students, that was cut to 92 students by the end of your Sophomore year. If your Cum wasn't > 3.4 you were cut from the program, period. Everyone has dreams of becoming a doctor, but not everyone does. That's life.
By the way, I was the 13th in my class to be accepted to medical school. A couple of my friends didn't make it, but found satisfying careers and graduate programs. Nope, I'm not a "rich cardiovascular surgeon" (Sorry, Allan), just a poor ole' country doctor who spent 21 years on active duty and then retired into the Department of Corrections as a (you guessed it) Prison Doc. (And having the time of my life doing this and learning the clarinet)
Tristan
Post Edited (2013-05-16 23:47)
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Author: Dileep Gangolli
Date: 2013-05-15 20:03
Don't speak Greek. Learn Mandarin. And plan on working in China when you graduate from Juilliard.
Post Edited (2013-05-15 20:03)
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Author: scotch
Date: 2013-05-18 08:05
Taras12: Everyone certainly does not dream of becoming a doctor. I, for example, never had any medical ambition whatsoever. (I did live in a house for a few years with several advanced medical students.) I think it's unfortunate that so many of those who want to become doctors do so for the money and the prestige. Although it's true that doctors in the United States have to pay an enormous amount of money to earn their degrees, such that they're often paying off debt for a considerable time, that doesn't mean that the doctors aren't overpaid; it means their tuition is too high. On the other hand, private medical insurance is a bloated racket.
So "no one ever makes anyone go to a doctor"? Nonsense. People are taken to doctors without their consent all the time--especially when they aren't conscious. In any case, medical conditions require that people seek medical care, and "taking better care of their bodies" isn't going to prevent anyone from needing medical care at some point in his life. Adequate prevention, in fact, requires medical care in itself.
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2013-05-19 14:03
The problem is not just with Julliard. In America we produce far more musicians then we have jobs to fill. In the orchesta field, especially clarinet, the ratio is probably 100 to 1. One job for every 100 clarinet players graduating. There just aren't enough jobs yet every school with a music department puts out more and more performance graduates looking to fill the one or two vancies.
ESP eddiesclarinet.com
Post Edited (2013-05-19 16:12)
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