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

This close look at how things work "out there" sparks curiosity in the students. Scheduling field trips and inviting guest speakers also have an impact. After a semester of gathering ideas from books and lectures, students are ready to roll up their sleeves and get involved. One young woman was inspired to undertake a grant-writing project. This resulted in the establishment of a digital piano lab at the community center of the Little Rock Air Force Base, where she teaches.

Music majors have a natural tendency to want to follow in their applied teacher's footsteps. They don't realize that amounts to looking backwards and are unaware that conditions have changed too much for that to be practical. I want my students to be well-informed about the musical world we live in now.

Innovations

Approaches to career guidance are not "one size fits all." Rather, they are tailored to meet the needs of students and alumni, the strengths of the faculty and regional conditions.

At the University of Arizona's Camerata Center for Musical Entrepreneurship, Gwen Powell explained, "Camerata has three tenets: Careers in Music class (juniors, seniors and graduate students), Independent Study in Music Business and Camerata Internships. The internships provide career-starting experience in one of three areas:

* Recording industry internship

* Working for a private, public or nonprofit organization related to career goals

* Performance internship on the Camerata roster

Powell has served as the center's director for three years and recently created the impetus for students booking short tours regionally and abroad in nearby Mexico. After establishing a relationship with the double community of Guaymas and San Carlos, she discovered that Americans renting vacation properties in the area were especially interested in increasing the number of available musical events.

Participants in Camerata touring activities mostly are graduate students in chamber music ensembles, and at least one member of the ensemble must have taken the two-semester Careers in Music class. For the Mexico tour, they travel from Tucson in a university-owned vehicle, but they are responsible for all the artistic and logistical planning of the tour themselves. The tour typically lasts from noon Thursday to noon Sunday. Students are guaranteed $50 each per concert. The sponsoring agent also pays for their roundtrip mileage from Tucson and arranges for students to reside in area homes. "This is about empowerment," Powell emphasizes. "It teaches students how to survive as musicians outside of the university."

In January 2003, Juilliard began piloting a mentoring program, a second-semester supplement to its popular first-semester freshman course, Colloquium. Communication, time management, self-reliance and self-determination, or "how to succeed artistically, academically and personally at Juilliard," is the focus of Colloquium. In the second semester, the student will be paired with a cross-discipline mentor, not his or her applied teacher, to more fully explore the arts. "The hope," explains Derek Mithaug, Juilliard's director of career development, "is that this will lay the groundwork for more advanced career development thinking when the student becomes an upperclassman." The program invites students to experience the arts beyond their own instrument, to broaden their musical horizons at concerts, plays and gallery showings. This especially is important for foreign students, who may be more inclined, due to English being their second language, to shy away from social situations and confine themselves to the practice room.