Over the past 15 years, schools have become increasingly oriented towards providing practical career development assistance along with a top-quality music education. Most conservatories and universities now offer a range of music-career development services and programs.
The challenge vocalists face is how to build satisfying and rewarding careers in a competitive and evolving profession. The challenge music schools face is how to provide the appropriate musical training, as well as the necessary life skills and practical experience to deal with this changing profession.
Redefining music career success
Most voice students come to performance degree programs with tunnel vision: many are star-struck, dreaming of a career performing at the Met. It is important to be ambitious, but it’s a problem if singers view doing anything other than operatic work as a failure.
Ultimately, career development is about finding, or creating, a satisfying niche in the professional marketplace. Most professional singers are multitalented, and most have multi-strand careers. Their work may include oratorio, recital, and other free-lance, non-stage activities. Most professional musicians combine performance with teaching as well as other projects ranging from creating entrepreneurial ventures to working in arts advocacy and arts administration. Many create a sustainable and rewarding life by supplementing their music work with other types of employment. The difficulty music schools face, in part, is in helping young singers broaden their ambitions, helping them become curious and open to a spectrum of career options.
It is no longer enough to simply sing well. Building a career in music today takes much more. Singers need broader career preparation than just learning roles and gaining stage experience. To build careers that are rewarding, satisfying, and sustainable, students need to be flexible and entrepreneurial.
Since 1994 the Network of Music Career Development Officers (NETMCDO: www.musiccareernetwork.org) has held annual conferences to exchange ideas, resources, and information. NETMCDO members work at conservatories and universities in the United States and abroad, comprising 120 faculty and staff who focus on music career development. Many of the member institutions, such as Juilliard, the Manhattan School of Music, the New England Conservatory, and the Royal College of Music, have both music career development courses and specialized music career centers.
Entrepreneurship
No longer exclusive to business majors, entrepreneurship has recently become the hot-button topic at many music schools. Music entrepreneurs are self-motivated and project-oriented. Entrepreneurial musicians take charge of their future. They create opportunities for themselves and others. The increasing numbers of start-up chamber opera companies, community choruses, and vocal chamber groups are examples of entrepreneurship in action.
In terms of supporting entrepreneurship interests and skills, the University of Michigan includes the student-initiated Arts Enterprise Club (www.artsenterprisemi.com), a collaborative project between the School of Business and the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance. At Oberlin, the new Creativity and Leadership Entrepreneurship initiative (www.oberlin.edu/creativity/resources.html) allows for special entrepreneurial workshops, courses, and funding for start-up projects. The University of Colorado at Boulder features the Music Entrepreneurship Center and the University of South Carolina has launched the Carolina Institute for Leadership and Engagement in Music.
At Eastman, the Arts Leadership Program (ALP http://esm.rochester.edu/iml/alp/) offers courses and certificate programs focusing on community work, teaching, and arts administration. Baritone Casey Molino Dunn, former coordinator for the Eastman careers office and an ALP alumnus, writes, “I was fortunate to take a very helpful class on arts media and promotion, which included developing a press kit, headshots, and a marketing identity.” Dunn also credits his solid liberal arts undergraduate background and piano skills with helping him transition from student to professional. He now
works in New York City as a church musician, free-lance singer, and part-time publicist, the quintessential multi-faceted musician.
Technology
Providing students with training and incentives to use newer technology is another important focus at music schools. At the University of Texas Austin, Martha Hilley teaches a graduate career seminar in which students, “learn to use a high-end, high-definition camcorder to video both a performance and a teaching segment,” she says. “This includes learning about different types of microphones and microphone placement.” It also includes using software programs such as iMovie to format segments for uploading on their own websites, “which they have also learned to create using either Dreamweaver or iWeb,” says Hilley.
At the University of Arizona, Kelland Thomas directs the Camerata program and teaches music-career development. Through the Camerata program, students learn to book performances and negotiate fees at venues ranging from exclusive retirement communities to K-12 schools and churches. His course covers, “press materials, Web-based press kits, social networking sites for self-promotion, but most importantly, the techniques of networking and communication: following up with phone calls, e-mails, and personal thank you notes after performances, masterclasses, and workshops,” says Thomas. “This kind of awareness is often not the focus of studio teaching, but is very important in an artist’s career.”
Connecting with Audiences
Singers today also need “teaching artist” skills, to present community and educational programs to audiences of all ages. Over the past 15 years opera companies, festivals, and concert series presenters have all invested in providing education programs, audience engagement activities, and community collaborations. Opportunities are available for singers with these skills. Teaching artists work in primary and secondary schools, hospitals, prisons, shelters, community clubs, retirement homes, galleries, science museums, and historical homes—and most Young Artist Programs focus on community performances for school-age audiences and traveling children’s opera.
For example, a number of programs combine a graduate voice degree with professional Young Artist Programs. The North Carolina School of the Arts’ Fletcher Opera program offers performance-based training at graduate and post-graduate levels. The institute’s commitment to community service is built into the program’s charter—the program presents 40 educational performances for school children every year. These children’s programs have included productions of Sid the Serpent Who Wanted to Sing, The Butcher of Seville, and The Case of the Missing High C. Since its inception the Fletcher Institute has presented programming to more than 21,000 students in 15 North Carolina counties.
Multiple Access Points
No single office or service provides career development in a music school. It takes a village. Music schools typically offer career development assistance in bite-size pieces through their voice, choral, and opera departments, usually via departments such as the gig office, community performance, music education, alumni relations, and career development.
Viewing this from the perspective of a music career center director and faculty member of undergraduate music career courses, I can offer my own school, New England Conservatory, as a case in point.
Many schools offer music career and entrepreneurship courses. For example, undergrad singers at NEC take the required Professional Artist Seminar: Classical Voice course, which focuses on self-promotion skills. Students create MySpace pages with their recorded demo clips, photos, bios, repertoire lists, and a sample recital program with program notes appropriate for booking performances. Many music schools also offer a “gig” service and programs in community and educational performance training.
At NEC, the Music Referral Service receives nearly 1,000 requests per year asking for students to perform for local weddings, corporate events, benefits, and church services. The NEC Community Performances and Partnerships Department presents more than 300 programs and events each year at local schools, hospitals, and senior centers, including a graduate-student touring children’s opera program that recently performed Bizet’s Doctor Miracle and Menotti’s Help, Help the Globolinks at 12 Boston elementary schools.
Music school career centers these days offer an expanded range of programs, resources, and contacts. At NEC, the Career Services Center offers workshops on vocal performance health, freelancing, financial management, launching music projects, and teaching. The center also hosts mock voice auditions, with adjudicators from local opera companies and professional choruses. NEC’s online database of musician opportunities, Bridge: Worldwide Music Connection (www.newenglandconservatory.edu/career), has more than 3,000 listings of summer festivals, local auditions, competitions and grants, plus national and international performance and teaching jobs. NEC is just one school among many that offer an array of career assistance appropriate to today’s changing culture.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Many schools are examining new ways to inspire students to broaden their definition of success, to help them gain experience with technology, entrepreneurship, and teaching artistry, and to expand their options in the profession. Schools have expanded career development programs significantly, but the truth is that no school can ever fully prepare students for the profession. In the end, much of what musicians need is the real-world experience that comes with life after graduation.
If you want to help your music school alma mater, offer to mentor current students and younger alumni, and offer suggestions and perspective to your school’s career and alumni staff about ways to assist both students and alumni. We’re all in this together!
