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Where the sidewalk ends: helping music majors connect with the musical community after graduation

American Music Teacher, April-May, 2003 by Linda Holzer

"There is a place where the sidewalk ends And before the street begins ..."

--Shel Silverstein

The fanciful "place where the sidewalk ends" is a good metaphor for music majors as they approach graduation, wondering, "Where do I go from here?" The safe sidewalk of the degree program featured an accredited range of courses in performance studies, music history, theory and pedagogy. It has stimulated their imaginations through encounters with great music. But building a career after graduation looks like a trip into uncharted territory for many young musicians. Is that inevitable?

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Too often, a college or conservatory piano major is not aware of how to get from the end of the sidewalk into the busy street of professional life. Stewart Gordon pointed out in his 1995 book Etudes for Piano Teachers, "Most traditional pianists are trained from their early student years to play--and be prepared to play--but once or twice a year. Like a plant or tree, they bloom for a short time, then lapse into months of silence except for practicing and lessons."

Surely this describes the majority of freshmen. Enrolling in college is, for many, their first encounter with the musical world beyond their neighborhood teacher's studio. Career guidance and interaction with professional musicians on and off campus are essential to broaden their horizons. By graduation, the college teacher's studio should not have become an island that a student is afraid to leave.

Beginning with the 1999-2000 handbook, the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM) added the following statement to section VIII. Competencies, Standards: "Other goals for the Bachelor of Music Degree are strongly recommended.... Students should be especially encouraged to acquire the entrepreneurial skills necessary to assist in the development and advancement of their careers."

To that end, major revisions in undergraduate curricula are in progress at schools such as Eastman. The goal is to move beyond the nineteenth-century conservatory model and include courses that are responsive to the conditions of the twenty-first-century musical marketplace. Like any other small business owner, a young soloist and chamber musician, a beginning piano teacher, freelance performer or church musician must know the facts about the market to have a chance to succeed in it.

Career Guidance

Some career guidance is provided by the teachers who oversee performance studies when they give lessons and vote on student auditions, juries and recitals. But in a more meaningful sense, career guidance comes from such things as a referral service for local freelance gigs; a service for handling letters of recommendation and vacancy listings for salaried positions (public school music K-12, college/university, church music and allied professions); posting information about competitions and internships; organizing workshops and courses on professional employment; and locating assistance with concert bookings. Providing these services requires staff, equipment and office space.

One leader in the field of on-campus musical career guidance is Angela Beeching, who, since 1993, has been the director of the Career Services Center at the New England Conservatory of Music (NEC) in Boston. In the mid-1990s, she was one of two authors to contribute thoughtful articles on this topic to Chamber Music America.

What makes an effective career guidance program? Office set-ups vary. Beeching explains, "We'd always like to have more money. We're moving to a larger space soon." Currently, at the NEC, the Music Referral Service is separate from the Career Services Center. Music Referral Service has one full-time staffer to field requests from the community. Career Services has two fulltime staffers to address the needs of student and alumni clients. Both offices also have full-time coverage of student assistants. Career Services publishes a job bulletin twice a month. The Center organizes approximately nine career workshops a year, as well as stocking a reading room with advisory handouts on writing a resume, cover letter and bio, a press packet and interview essentials, summer festival audition information, competition listings, scholarship and grant information, and graduate school catalogs. In addition, Beeching teaches the two-semester Career Skills course for undergraduates.

What does Beeching find most encouraging about the students in her courses? "I've taught Career Skills for several years now," she says. "Students no longer complain that the course scares them. After all, these are very creative people. When they're encouraged to think about ways to connect their music with the community, I'm amazed. Technology! Dot-coms! Entrepreneurial spirit! They are eager to carve their own niche. That's part of what's needed in the arts. There are so few established structures left for funding, so few ready-made platforms to build a career on."

Beeching elaborates, "When I first came to NEC, my focus was `Do I have enough databases? Handouts? Books?' Now, my concern is `How do I create the teachable moment, presenting the right information at the right time?'" She is sensitive to the fact that, to a greater extent than most of the rest of the curriculum, the Career Skills course makes students feel vulnerable. It requires imagination and emotional energy to engage in this kind of self-assessment. It is one thing to dream your dreams in the privacy of the practice room. There, everyone can fantasize about becoming a musical celebrity: "The next--!" (Joshua Bell, Sarah Chang, Cecelia Bartoli, Van Cliburn and so forth). It is quite another thing to outline the dreams on paper and craft an action plan, filling in the blanks about household income, project costs and timelines--then implement it. That is where fantasy meets reality.

Where the sidewalk ends: helping music majors connect with the musical community after graduation

American Music Teacher, April-May, 2003 by Linda Holzer

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