Jason Heath has produced a series of articles on the realities of life as a professional musician. I especially enjoyed "Rethinking the Music Performance Degree" and "Adjunct University Teaching."
A couple of excerpts, first from "Adjunct University Teaching:"
This basic assumption underlies everything else I discuss here. I know that we musicians did not go into this profession for the money, and the purpose of this series is not to carp about how little we all make. My concern is that we musicians are compensated fairly for our work and allowed to earn a living doing what we do. My experience, unfortunately, has been that the hidden costs of the freelance life quickly erode any seeming profit from far too many gigs.Since teaching is a component of nearly every freelance musician's employment palette, I will analyze a university teaching position I held for the first installment in this series.
And from "Rethinking a Music Performance Degree:"
Music schools, then, are doing a good job (despite the above concern in program emphasis) of producing graduates who are great performers, but a rotten job producing graduates with applicable job skills in today’s musical environment It’s like producing soldiers with no army for them to serve in, teachers with no schools for them to teach in, or business school graduates with no companies for them to work in. Training musicians to become great performers of symphonic literature but not providing them with any extra-musical skills for success in today’s challenging employment market is irresponsible, shortsighted, and just plain lazy on the part of our academic institutions.
No comments:
Post a Comment