The Musician's Way Blog

Isaac Stern

“To be a musician in the service of music is not a job;
it is a way of life.”
–Isaac Stern, violinist (The Musician’s Way, p. 299)

The music education community is swirling with talk about how best to prepare university-level music students for modern-day careers. And for good reasons.

The music business is undergoing economic and technological upheaval, and many musicians and colleges are struggling to adapt.

Actually, some musicians appear to be thriving – those with entrepreneurial mindsets.

Entrepreneurial musicians
Entrepreneurial musicians find multiple outlets for their talents. For them, loving music and making a living from music are one thing. Like Isaac Stern, they adopt ways of life that bring both fulfillment and income.

For example, a professional saxophonist I know combines teaching, performing, and recording with a penchant for technology; among other things, he’s developing music-related apps for the iPhone.

Similarly, a Juilliard-educated violinist felt the tug of rock music and then built a career as a rock violinist while also presenting hundreds of school workshops and launching a successful line of electric violins. A trombonist in a top-tier symphony composes and teaches and also performs in recitals of new music.

In sum, entrepreneurial musicians don’t wait for job openings to appear. They make opportunities by forming broad artistic visions, expanding their skills, and generating demand for their music and ideas.

Some are self-employed and carve out distinct niches for themselves. Others hold traditional sorts of posts in orchestras, bands, universities, and schools, yet they extend their horizons beyond the conventional.

Music schools and entrepreneurship
From an educational standpoint, then, how can music colleges equip students to be high-level performers – with all of the intense practice and study that musical excellence requires – while also arming them with the entrepreneurial tools they need to succeed in the new economy in which traditional music jobs are scarce?

Although each music school needs to answer that question for itself, taking into account its particular mission and resources, here are a few things that I believe undergraduate music programs would do well to prioritize in their curricula.

1. A required one-semester freshman seminar, such as my Foundations of Creativity course, that enables students to draft preliminary career plans, clarify their artistic visions, establish e-portfolios, and acquire fundamental creative & collaborative skills during their first semester.
2. Seminars, summer courses, and private consultations that follow up on the freshman class and allow students to build up music technology skills as well as develop and implement their career plans while they’re still in school. Such educational offerings could be coordinated through an on-campus Center for Creativity and Entrepreneurship in the Arts.
3. A required two-semester career development course taken in the spring semester of the 3rd year and the fall semester of the 4th year. Students would, among other things, refine their short and long-term career objectives, gain greater insight into the music industry, assemble promotional materials, publish websites, and sharpen their networking, grant-writing, communication, and technology chops.
4. Student career development grants. Students would submit proposals that could fund experimental productions, pay for conference/festival/competition attendance, support touring and community projects, and help defray the costs of photography, recording sessions, mechanical licenses, website upgrades, and the like.
5. A greater emphasis on creative thinking across the curriculum. Given that entrepreneurship grows from creativity, one of our primary educational missions should be to encourage creativity. For instance, we can incorporate composition exercises into music theory classes rather than focusing solely on analysis; we can sponsor competitions in which students submit proposals for ensemble concert programs and a winning proposal receives an award or is even performed; students in career-development courses could present competing business plans with the winners earning cash prizes.
6. Greater cooperation among music faculty and administrators to allow room in the curriculum for students to ripen their entrepreneurial plans. All too often, music students are so overburdened – say, by being obliged to perform in several ensembles each semester – that they’re unable to pursue goals of individual interest. In effect, some students wind up serving the institutions where they study instead of the educational institutions serving the students’ needs. As a result, many students learn more about conformity than independent thinking. Let’s reframe the college experience to better prepare students to flourish as self-directed, creative musicians after they earn their degrees.

Of course, implementing these ideas would require substantial funding and planning. And I’m not suggesting that we should sacrifice high-quality education for some sort of generic ‘vocational training.’

I believe, however, that we must think expansively and act decisively to transform applied music education at all levels.

Related posts
The abundance mentality
The art-career tango
Music: The practical career?
A new classical music revolution

For more information about music entrepreneurship, visit the Music Careers portion of MusiciansWay.com, and check out the section of my book The Musician’s Way titled “Embracing Career Challenges” (p. 299-307).

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What do you think? Are music schools adequately outfitting students to be successful professionals? If not, in what ways might we make advances? If you graduated with a music degree, did your educational experiences prepare you for the realities of the music profession?

© 2009 Gerald Klickstein