Success in the Private Lesson Studio Part 4: The Path to Music School
This is the fourth installment in a multi-part series on private music teaching. Check out part 1, part 2, and part 3 as well, and stay tuned for more installments in the near future.
Choosing a Life in Music
Planning on going to music school, huh? Congratuations. Despite the many roadblocks, twists, and turns facing a prospective musician, a life in music is really a wonderful thing. Every time I have my doubts about this fact, all I have to do is listen back through all the archived Contrabass Conversations episodes with bass players from all walks of life sharing why they chose to be a musician. This reinvigorates me and makes me realize how fortunate I am to do something that I love.
Where Should You Go?
One important thing differentiates music school applicants from other prospective college students: your success as a performer is much more strongly influenced by specifically whom you end up studying with. While a liberal arts student can floursh in a wide variety of academic settings (big schools, small schools, “Great Books” liberal arts schools, and everything in between), options for serious music students are more limited.
I’ve blogged about making this decision in the past before in a post about seven considerations for prospective music majors, so I won’t rehash what was in that previous post, but check this post out for more specifics about prioritizing and winnowing down your list of potential schools.
Can’t students be successful no matter where they attend college? Sure, but there’s certainly a statistical relationship between where you decide to go to music school and your likely procpects, so school choice can help to stack the odds at least a little more in your favor.
After boiling down your school options to between five and seven possibilities, you have a task that nearly every prospective music student faces:
The “List”
How do you balance the requirements of a half-dozen schools in such a way that you’re well-prepared for each and every auditon? This dilemma faces most prospective music students, and finding a way to intelligently and efficiently chart a long-term practice strategy is a major concern.
The following steps may help to organize your practicing in preparation for those impending auditions:
1. Get repertoire lists from potential schools – The first step to getting your audition repertoire ready for music school auditions is to figure out what each school requires. One of my former bass students did a great job putting together a list of required repertoire for many of the major music schools for double bass, but most people will have to a little phone, email, and internet research to get a solid list of requirements.
2. Winnow down the list to the least number of pieces – You’ve done your research, finding that every school wants a concerto, some want sonatas, solo Bach, and others want an etude from a certain composer. Your task is now to figure out the smallest number of pieces that satisfy these requirements. What you don’t want to be doing is playing one concerto for school A and another one for school B. This might not seem like a big deal six months before your auditions start, but you’ll discover that there’s an “audition season” of about 4-8 weeks in January and February, and you’ll likely be doing one or more auditions each week for a period of time. Travel, fatigue and keeping up with high school homework is going to be sucking up a lot of your available time, and the last thing you want to be thinking about is having to switch gears from one concerto to another.
3. Prioritize your practicing – So much to practice, and so little time! How, you may wonder, should you approach organizing your practice time? The answer is both extremely simple and frustratingly elusive: practice what needs the most work. The challenge, of course, is recognizing exactly what needs the most work! The objective perspective of a teacher can be invaluable for this kind of decision-making. Sit down with your teacher and try to come up with a general plan for practicing. Do you need to be spending an hour a day on that etude that is only required at one school (which isn’t your first pick of schools anyway)? Maybe…but maybe not. Are there some fundamental skills–intonation, rhythm, spiccato, vibrato–that need to be solidified prior to your auditions? Fundamental skills take months and years to improve (most bassists are still working on all of the aforementioned skills every day!), and the time to identify what you really need to work on is not days or weeks before your auditions, but months or even years before.
4. Generate a “recital” mentality – I’ve found that looking at our audition repertoire as a kind of mini-recital rather than as a disassociated glob of etudes, excerpts, and solo movements is a very healthy way to approach this repertoire. If you feel like you’re putting together a recital that just happens to be made up of short little bits from different sources, you may be in a better place mentally–you’re not doing an audition (well, you are, but you see what I mean), but rather doing a performance, and your goal is to assemble this list into a unified whole that you can play at a moment’s notice. This is a tough distinction to draw in a text blog post (as I’m discovering right now!), but there’s a bit of a different mentality between recital preparation and audition preparation, and if you can harness the healthy things about the former for the latter, your preparation may be more peaceful and confident.
5. Start preparing early! – No matter how hard you try, if you’re auditioning for five or six (or more!) schools you’ll probably have a lot of repertoire t get under your fingers. Should you completely ditch technique and any other repertoire to focus on your college audition music, or should you keep a more balanced approach? I’d recommend keeping up a balance until 6-8 weeks before “audition season,” at which point I’d transition into an audition preparation mentality. Starting early and devoting a healthy percentage of practice time (perhaps 50% of your time) to this repertoire about a year before your college auditions should put you in a good spot by the time those stressful couple of months roll around your senior year.
Auditioning
Good morning readers! Peter Tambroni here from MostlyBass.com.
There’s gigabytes of information on auditioning out there. Here’s a page my book, “An Introduction to Double Bass Playing” – it’s just a short, clean checklist to get you on track.
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Auditioning
A competent teacher in a quality college program will be of the utmost importance when preparing for auditions. Find out who is winning auditions and what school they attended. There are many classes, masterclasses, and books on the subject of auditioning. Here are my suggestions.
• Preparation, preparation, preparation. The primary cause of nervousness is the lack of preparation.
• Decide on an interpretation and stick with it – don’t change things at the audition.
• Video-tape yourself regularly. This cannot be emphasized enough.
• Simulate nerves by running for a few minutes then play excerpts. This increases your heart rate and can you give you that ‘under the gun’ feeling.
• Play for many different people including musicians that do not play the bass (cellists are particularly unforgiving).
• Do mock auditions with teachers, colleagues and friends.
• Study with musicians in the orchestra you are auditioning for.
• Study the music. You should own several recordings and printed versions since editions do vary. Get an urtext or unedited / original edition. Edited editions such as the Zimmerman excerpt books are very helpful for getting a traditional bass perspective. However, don’t limit yourself to those fingerings!
• Solos – some auditions will specify the solo, most will not. Some will give parameters – a movement of Bach, a movement of a concerto, two contrasting movements. If you have the choice, play something you play well. It is better to play an easier piece well than a difficult piece poorly.
• Practice auditioning – set aside time in your practicing to run through excerpts with minimal time in between and without speaking, judging, or correcting.
• Count rests accurately – know the other parts so you can hear them in your head.
• Be musical!
• Arrive on time – which means early. Give yourself ample time to warm-up, tune, and be at ease.
Top-notch musical experience with National Arts Centre of Canada
The following is a short excerpt from the E-Bass Line Newsletter from the International Society of Bassists. Receiving this newsletter each month is one of the many benefits for ISB members, including special rates on instrument insurance, the excellent journal Bass World, the paper edition of the Bass Line, and much more! Check out the International Society of Bassists website for more information on joining if you’re not a member–I’ve been a member since I was a teenager, and I highly recommend it for bassist of all ages.
Also, doublebassblog.org will be doing live coverage of this summer’s ISB convention at Penn State (June 8-13, 2009). That’s only a few months away, and it will be a real blast, so be sure to join up with the ISB and check out this fabulous event!
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Canada’s National Arts Centre is now accepting applications for the 2009 NAC Young Artists Programme in Ottawa, June 9 – July 1, 2009 (Junior Strings June 14 – July 1). The Programme identifies and fosters young, exceptional musical talent through intensive instruction led by Artistic Director Pinchas Zukerman and an internationally-renowned faculty. Outstanding private instruction and chamber music coaching. All students will perform in public chamber music concerts and may perform in public masterclasses, as well as closed works-in-progress and recitals. Click here for further details and an online application. The application deadline is February 16, 2009. Full and partial support is available.
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More information available to ISB members–sign up online today, and be sure to check out the new ISB online store for all sorts of cool recordings, DVDs, and sheet music.
Auditoning – a young person’s game?
As a guy who’s been freelancing for quite some time now, I’ve got some thoughts on the hidden dangers of getting too enmeshed in the freelance scene while you’re auditoning for jobs. While I’m being a little overly dramatic with the title for this post, there is a real danger to getting spread too thin when you during your prime audition years.
Most people have a window of prime auditioning years, during which it is most likely that they will get a job. This window is usually from around 22 years old to 30 years old. This age bracket is when the typical musician completes an undergraduate degree (perhaps entering grad school during this window) or an advanced training program like the New World Symphony and is the period of life with the most concentrated period of professional study (lessons, coachings, etc.) and the least amount of outside distractions.
This window has less to do with a muscian’s actual age and more to do with the amount of non-musical committments and distractions that inevitably crop up in life. As you get older, you have to worry about silly little things like:
-marriage
-kids
-bills
-health care
-car
-mortgage
Each of these things, while a natural part of life, take away time, energy, and focus from the audition circuit. Combine that with the less intense musical skills grooming of non-academic life and you have a steep decline in auditon success for many people.
If you think it’s hard to prepare for auditons while in school or just after finishing school, wait until you have some of the above responsibilities! The amount of time spend honing your craft will probably never be greater than while in school, and most auditons these days (2008 and beyond) are won by musicians still in school or just out of school.
Does this mean that it’s impossible to win an auditon after this time frame, or when you have a wife, house, and three kids to drop off at school? Of course not! Many people in their 40s and beyond win positions with all these responsibilities and then some, but the odds of success diminish on average due to these factors.
It really doesn’t have anything to do with actual physical age, just what tends to happens in a person’s life as they reach a certain age. A 40-year-old who immerses himself or herself in a musical environment (music school, New World, etc.) similar to that of a typical 22-year-old is likely to have results similar to these younger colleagues. Most people, however, find diminished time and resources for audition preparation-style practicing–the kind with 5 hour daily practice sessions and frequent lessons/coachings–as they get older.
So, is auditioning a young person’s game? Yup. Does that mean that older musicians can’t succeed? Of course not. Some musicians (though not most) actually find that diminished time focuses their preparation and gives them the fire to play their best–gotta get a job that pays the bills! Most musicians, however, have a distinct window of opportunity for auditioning.
With this in mind, I have six brief tips for making the most of these prime audition years:
1. Guard your time! – We all have to find a way to make a living, and locking yourself up and doing nothing but practicing eight hours a day can end up driving you nuts, but take great care not to spread yourself too thin. Most musicians cannot play out of town gigs every night, teach a large private studio, and effectively prepare for an audition. Some people, if they need to work while they’re taking auditons (this probably includes most people) actually find it easier to have a 9-to-5 regular job rather than freelancing.
2. Put yourself out there – This may seem like contradictory advice to tip #1, but it’s not. In order to make progress in the music world, you’ve got to be willing to put yourself out there and take a chance on things. Go to concerts (you are going to concerts, right?), then go backstage and meet the performers. Attend masterclasses, audition for summer festivals, and make appointments to play for the best performers and teachers on your instrument. Your persistence will pay off in spades in the long run.
3. Seize opportunities – if you keep working hard and attempting to make inroads into the professional music scene, opportunities will present themselves. Learn to distinguish between valuable opportunities and time wasters. This can be difficult at times, so consult a trusted teacher or mentor when deciding whether to go on that tour, take that fellowship, move to that city, or any other such life-changing decision.
4. Be wary of the freelance scene – Freelancing is a great way to make some cash, get some experience, and get known as a valuable commodity in your particular scene. Be wary of going “gig crazy” and clogging up all your time with commutes to far-flung locales. If you do decide to become a freelancer, you’ll have many years of this lifestyle ahead of you! Leave time for practicing and attending live performances, and take care that you don’t burn out early.
5. Take a lot of auditions…but prepare! – Some people take every audition that comes along, regardless of how much they’ve practiced. Others never take any auditions, being perpetually dissatisfied with their playing. The correct balance for most lies somewhere between these two extremes. Take auditons that you’ve prepared for, but don’t freak out if you haven’t reached some arbitrary level of preparation you’ve set for yourself. You get better at taking auditions by taking auditions, but only if you’ve practiced enough to set yourself up for success. You may play poorly due to nerves, but you shouldn’t play poorly because you haven’t done your homework!
6. Set yourself up for success – Sometimes the simple things in life, like being friendly to people and showing up on time, are the determining factors in a person’s success. Step outside of yourself for a moment. How do you come across to others? Are you the type of person you’d want to hang out with? If not, why? Believe it or not, sometimes all it takes is not being a jerk or wierdo!
Audition preparation advice with Matt Heller
Calgary Philharmonic bassist Matt Heller (a frequent subject of posts here at doublebassblog.org) recently put out an excellent audition preperation breakdown on his blog hellafrisch.blogspot.com. Matt is an excellent bassist and blogger (and a swell guy to boot–we’ve been friends for years) who was featured in the New York Times by columnist Dan Wakin while Matt was a member of the New World Symphony. 
Matt writes:
When it comes to learning long audition repertoire lists, we bassists don’t have it nearly as bad as percussionists. I used to manage mock auditions at the New World Symphony, and for most instruments the excerpt materials would be about the thickness of a Time magazine, 40 to 50 sheets at most. When one of our percussionists was playing a mock, though, he would hand me a book the size of the Miami telephone directory, which I would flip through in a daze before handing it to another percussionist to pick out a few excerpts.
Still, there have been some comparatively long lists at recent bass auditions, and even a shorter list can wear you down if you don’t budget your practice time intelligently. How many pieces can you expect yourself to practice every day, and really benefit from that work? How much time should you set aside for technique and scale studies, solos and repertoire for your job or school — not to mention listening to recordings, visualization exercises, and other useful work away from the instrument? And how much should you set aside for rest, recreation, and having a life outside the practice room?
Read the complete post here.
If you’re not familiar with Matt’s blog, take a moment and poke around his blog archive. Matt is an outstading writer and a top-notch musician with a wealth of content. He was a featured author for Drew McManus’ Take a Friend to the Orchestra initiative (I participated in this in 2007), and he injects wit and charm into everything we writes.
Ripping Off Your Teachers
I’ve got story for you, and I promise it’s true!
When I was getting started as a freelance musician at the tail end of my masters degree, I was quaking in my boots about my future prospects. After all, I was regularly buying CDs at Borders and Barnes and Noble from former Northwestern doctoral music students. If the best they could do was retail bookstore work after getting a doctoral degree, what were my prospects going to look like?
Fortunately, a lot of stuff fell in place for me in a hurry, and I found myself with three regular gigs (the Elgin Symphony, IRIS Orchestra, and Milwaukee Ballet) by the fall.
Now I just needed some teaching!
I got a call for at the…. well, I’ll call it the Jimbobo School of Music for the purposes of this post. I’m sad to say that this “school of music” still exists here in metro Chicago, and it’s a truly rotten operation—the perfect representation of everything that’s wrong with the private lesson “music school” system.
In fact, I’ve got some choice words about this whole system at some point in the near future. Oh man, do I ever have some stuff to share about this system. But that’s for another time…..
Landing the Teaching Gig
I was delighted to be called for an interview at the Jimbobo School of Music. A gig teaching the bass? This sounds great! Adding some private students into my freelance mix seemed like the perfect thing to complement the work I’d already lassoed. I drove out and met with the director of the Jimbobo School. Everything sounded fine to me. I was to get $34 an hour (the parents were almost certainly being charged $80 for this lesson, but hey, those administrative costs are mighty high, right?), and I was to have one student. I was to travel to their house in the Gold Coast neighborhood of Chicago to teach them.
But wait! This was only going to be a half-hour lesson. So only $17 for me per trip. Um, OK…
Hmm…. $17… plus traveling to the Gold Coast, where there is absolutely, positively no parking whatsoever…. well, I could take the train…. if I left 1 1/2 hours early I should be able to make it… and then there was the train ride home… another hour or so.
OK, so I’d be getting $17 for teaching plus the 2 1/2 hours of commuting, minus the $3 I’d pay for the train (or $12 for parking if I chose to drive). That came to $4.67 an hour if I took the train, and $1.67 if I drove (crappy Chicago traffic made the commute by car about as long as the train ride).
Alright, $4.67 a lesson after getting a masters in music from an expensive private school! I was on my way up in the world, sure to pay off those $40,000 in loans in no time flat. Right? And hey, if I chose to drive, I’d actually have enough money for a coffee… before taxes.
But hey, some teaching was better than no teaching in my mind, and maybe I’d get some more students…. in the Gold Coast…. that I’d have to get to…. but whatever, sounds good to me!
I made it to my first lesson with time to spare, and I sat in the south end of Lincoln Park doing some people watching. This area of Chicago has always fascinated me, as the truly opulent bump right up against homeless people sleeping in the park. Fur coated women walk poodles walk past men wrapped in blankets, and limousines drop dapper young hipsters at The Pump Room (where Sinatra used to hang out when visiting Chicago) just down the street from the Cabrini-Green housing project.
All this was happening nearly ten years ago, and the Cabrini-Green housing project has largely been demolished to make way for more high-rise condominiums. But the homeless still sleep in the park, right next to statues of Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Schiller, and other historical luminaries.
Meeting My Student….Yikes!
My student was a seventh grader at a prestigious private school in the area, and though I was pretty green as a teacher, I knew from the outset that he was trouble personified. To call him spoiled would be an insult to spoiled children—he was basically every private teacher’s nightmare: inattentive, inappropriate, uninterested, and just basically impossible.
I was led upstairs to his room, where our lessons were to take place (the worst possible place to teach a student—don’t teach them in their room!). He promptly flopped on the bed, closed his eyes, and refused to respond to my cajoling.
This lesson was going great! This was worth the $4.67!
I finally convinced him to stand up and play a few notes, though he tried at one point to climb back on his bed with his bass (don’t teach lessons in kid’s rooms, remember?). I think that we got through a D major scale…. maybe…. before calling it a day.
Teaching experience! Yay!
Needless to say, at this point I did not think that teaching was something I was interested in developing, career-wise. These early experiences made gigging seem like striking the jackpot.
One quick aside—I now love teaching and actually prefer it in many cases to playing. You can read a more contemporary reflection on my thoughts on teaching here. I’m just trying to illustrate how truly bad this situation was, and how it turned me off of teaching altogether for a time…but only a time.
Where’s My Paycheck?
Weeks went by, with these agonizing lessons continuing. I had been instructed at the Jimbobo School of Music to send in a timesheet (fax-not mail) at the beginning of every month. Lacking a fax machine in my grad student hovel, I trudged down to my local Kinko’s and plopped a few bucks down to fax this over to them.
I faxed my September timesheet.
No paycheck.
I faxed my October timesheet.
No paycheck.
I called the office.
No answer.
I left a message.
No call back.
I called again.
No answer.
I left another message.
No response.
The Lessons Grind On – Still No Paycheck
November came, meaning that I had taught this student for two months with no compensation and no response to my faxes or my phone calls. I could drive out to the Jimbobo School, but this place was located on the opposite side of the suburban area, over an hour away from my place in Chicago at the time. Did I really want to spend more money on collecting my $4.67 hourly wage?
Coming out of one of my lessons in late October, I ran into a former colleague from the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. He was heading in to teach violin to another sibling for the very same family!
I stopped him for a moment, determined to get to the bottom of this:
Jason: Let me ask you something…. does this school take a long time to pay?
Violinist: Oh, heavens, yes! I haven’t gotten paid for months! I call the office and yell at Ms. _______, but nothing seems to get done.
Jason: [incredulous guffaw]
Violinist: You know, none of the teachers are getting paid. the husband of one of the piano teachers calls the office all the time, yelling at them in Russian to get paid, but nothing ever happens. I am just about to quit myself.
Scammed?
Even though I was new to the “teaching business,” I knew that something was rotten in Denmark. I mean, c’mon—no paychecks and no phone calls for two months? In no way, shape, or form was this worth it. Not for experience, not for musical satisfaction, certainly not for income! Just not worth it.
I decided that quitting time for my association with the Jimbobo School had arrived, and I called the office to “tender my resignation,” as it were.
No answer.
I left a message
No response.
I faxed all my timesheets again, having to go to Kinko’s and shell out some more $$$–I was well into negative figures on this teaching “gig.”
No response.
Taking it to the Board Members
I went to this student’s house a couple more times in November, noticing that the leaves had changed on all the trees in Lincoln Park. The residents were dressed in their finest, like 19th century industrialists, while the homeless continued huddling in the park.
I recalled the Jimbobo School’s director mentioning that the parents of the student I was teaching (really quite nice people, despite the frustrating behavior of their son) were on the board of directors for the school. I decided to tell them about the whole situation.
Jason: Sorry to say it [keeping true feeling bottled up deep below surface!], but this will be our last lesson.
Parents: Oh no!
Jason: Did the Jimbobo School fill you in on this?
Parents: This is all news to us. We had no idea you were quitting.
Jason: Well, I haven’t gotten paid once since starting to teach for the Jimbobo School, so I told them last week that I’d have to quit. I just can’t work for free!
Parents: What?!? We’ve been paying them! We donate to them and everything.
Jason: Well, I though you’d like to know that none of the money is reaching any of the teachers.
At Last: A Response!
Guess What? The next day, I get a frantic call from the school’s receptionist.
Though I’m a stickler for calling people back, I decided to let this one sit and marinate on the answering machine.
Later that day, guess what? Another phone call! This time from the director of the Jimbobo School.
I let this one marinate as well. Apparently, I’d gotten their attention! They informed me that a check was being issued and would be mailed that day.
Getting….Paid?
Sure enough, a check arrived in the mail.
I opened it.
It was for half of the first month’s lessons! A whopping $34.
For years, I’ve kept a file folder labeled ‘Evidence’ (kind of like my lame version of Nixon’s enemies list… only not about enemies…. uh, never mind). I’d put any material directed at me that I thought I’d need to possibly refer to later. I’ve got all my car explosion papers, nasty notes left under my windshield wipers from 10 years ago…. and the pay stubs from the Jimbobo School! I kid you not.
Scammed!
I got on the phone and called up the Jimbobo School, quaking with frustration and anger.
The receptionist picked up. Caller ID? Maybe they were instructed to actually answer calls from my number this time.
The conversation that ensued only added to my frustration:
Receptionist: Hello?
Jason: This is Jason Heath, the bass teacher. I just got a check from the Jimbobo School.
Receptionist: Good. We sent it out earlier this week.
Jason: Right….the problem is that it’s only for half of one month’s pay!
Receptionist: That can’t be right. We sent you a check for all of September.
Jason: No, I only got a check for half of…. wait a minute! You only sent a check for September? What about all the October lessons I taught and the one I did in November?
Receptionist: We’ve only issued checks to teachers for September at this point.
Jason: Well, actually, you didn’t send me a check at all until I told your board member I hadn’t gotten paid. When will I get a check for October?
Receptionist: We don’t have that information at that time.
Jason: Don’t have that… information? OK, I need to get paid for all my lessons now.
Unsurprisingly, this encounter ended without resolution. Lovely.
Up the Chain of Command
The next day, I got an angry call from the Jimbobo School’s director:
Director: The ____________ family says that you’re quitting? What’s going on? You can’t quit! This is unacceptable!
Jason: Why haven’t I gotten paid? That’s unacceptable!
I won’t bore you with all the details–suffice it to say, I was informed that I would be paid the remaining amount owed promptly.
After finally making it clear that I was in fact quitting, I was asked if I could recommend anybody for the “position.”
Why on Earth would I recommend that anyone deal with this organization? I wouldn’t inflict that o my worst enemies, let alone my double bass friends and colleagues. I informed him that he’d not be getting any recommendations from me and hung up.
Least Profitable Venture Ever
Not only had I invested all those hours teaching and commuting, plus shelling out money to park or take the rain, but I’d also frittered away considerable time on the phone, walking to Kinko’s, and gnashing my teeth in frustration as I tried to fall asleep late at night, fuming about this ridiculous situation.
My compensation? After 2 1/2 months of frustration, indifference, and lack of communication?
$34.
I love teaching! Especially for private music “schools!”
Angry Jason Takes the Stage
Determined not to let this school continue getting away with scamming inexperienced music graduates 
like me (my violinist colleague was going through the same exact thing, remember?), I called up the Civic Orchestra of Chicago office (where the Jimbobo School had gotten my name) and filled them in on all the gory details, strongly suggesting that they refrain from giving any more teacher names to this organization.
They let me know that I wasn’t the first musician to complain about this school (!), and that they weren’t planing on giving out any more Civic Orchestra member names to this school.
Full Payment at Long Last
My check for the complete amount finally arrived by early December, along with a Post-It note imploring me to come back and work for the Jimbobo School. I ran to the bank as fast as I could and deposited the check.
I’d now make a little over $100 from teaching, and I only had to invest $40-60 in commuting costs plus a few dozen hours of my time.
Teaching rocks…and it sure is profitable!
The Final Confrontation
I got one more phone call from the Jimbobo School, this time from the executive director. He was a doctor with a practice near the Jimbobo School, and he seemed like a very nice fellow. I’ve probably never let loose in a professional situation like I did with this person, and though I am convinced that I was completely justified in my frustration and anger, I definitely feel more than a little chagrined as I remember my words. He called me as I was walking into the local grocery store, and I remember standing in the entryway ranting and raving for a solid fifteen minutes on my cell phone, the spitting image of the eccentric musician.
He listened quietly as I said my piece, apologized for the treatment I had received, and filled me in on the background of the school. Apparently, this school had been run into the ground financially and had reorganized the previous year, and all efforts were being made to get things on the right track financially.
I felt ashamed at becoming so frustrated, at telling my board member parent about not getting paid, at calling the Civic Orchestra office and warning them about this organization. After all, arts organizations are always dancing on the precipice of financial disaster, and I as much as anyone want to see them succeed.
But this wasn’t a case of a symphony financially imploding, a summer festival losing their funding, or a school budget facing governmental shortfalls. I was teaching a private lesson to one student, and this group couldn’t pay me the less than 50% cut I was owed? C’mon, we’re talking about a hundred bucks here!
Final Thoughts
This is a prime example of why I like teaching private students privately, and not through some music school framework. Local music schools offering private lessons to K-12 age students often charge twice as much (or more!) as they pay their teachers. Why should a parent have to pay a 50% premium for a lesson? Aside from providing the teaching space (which is usually at a premium in local music schools anyway), what benefit does this arrangement offer either teacher or student?
There are many examples of stellar programs that incorporate private teaching, music theory, orchestra, and chamber music into a cohesive experience for their students. The Merit School of Music here in Chicago is a prime example of such a school, and many others exist in the United States and beyond. Many people prefer this kind of arrangement, allowing the school to handle student recruitment, collect payment, and in many cases even arrange teacher schedules.
I prefer to handle these things privately and maintain my own studio. This is not a ideal arrangement all teachers, but it works for me. In fact, the whole private music academy versus independent private teacher topic is worthy of a more extended discussion, and I’ll try to get into it at a future time here on the blog.
For now, however, just take this tale of the Jimbobo School as a cautionary lesson in assessing a teaching situation. Could I have avoided this situation? Probably, though I was so inexperienced that I didn’t really know what sort of teaching situations existed out there.
Readers: How have your experiences working for private music schools been? Better? Worse? Similar? Have you gotten reeled into inequitable teaching arrangements like this in the past, and if so, how did you disentangle yourself? What benefits (and there are certainly many, despite what I’ve written here!) to such schools provide in your eyes? I’d love to hear from you!
CBC 83: Jack Budrow interview part 3
We’re concluding our chat with Michigan State University and Interlochen Arts Academy double bass instructor Jack Budrow this week on Contrabass Conversations. In addition to helping place students in major orchestras across the globe, Jack has had a very distinguished performance career as a former member of the Houston Symphony, Santa Fe Opera Orchestra, and as Principal Bass of the North Carolina Symphony.
We had a great chat, and I highly encourage listeners to check out part 1 (episode 73) and part 2 (episode 76) to get the full context of this interview.
Co-host John Grillo has appeared on many Contrabass Conversations episodes as both host and guest. Check out his bass recital, orchestra excerpt breakdown, and opera excerpt breakdown for some additional musical and educational bass content. Enjoy!
About Jack Budrow:
Jack Budrow is professor of music and co-chair of the string area at the Michigan State University College of Music.He has enjoyed a long and varied career in double bass performance and teaching. Budrow has been a member of the Houston Symphony, and principal bass of the North Carolina Symphony, Santa Fe Opera, and the American National Opera orchestras. A well-known teacher, Budrow’s students play in many of America’s symphony orchestras, including Cincinnati, San Francisco, Atlanta, Houston, Charleston, San Antonio, the Michigan Opera, and the Army Band. Internationally, he has placed students in the Oslo Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic, Munich Radio Orchestra, and the Caracas Symphony.
Each summer, Budrow teaches at Interlochen Center for the Arts and Indiana University. He serves on the board of directors of the International Society of Double Bassists, and was a judge for their most recent International Solo Bass Competition. Budrow has presented master classes throughout the United States, including the Cleveland Institute, Florida State University, University of Houston, Indiana University, University of Michigan, Peabody Conservatory, and University of Texas. In addition, he served as the bass section coach at the National Orchestral Institute and New World Symphony. Budrow received his B.M. from Bowling Green State University.
Music Provided by:
- Eric Hochberg - www.erichochberg.com
Special thanks to Daniel Chmielinski for technical assistance - www.carsleuth.net
Show Notes:
Release Date: 6/14/08
Length: 58:10
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Look out! Here come the violas…
Anyone who’s spent some time in Chicago on a Wednesday morning knows that this is when the city tests its emergency alert system. These loud sirens can be heard all over downtown Chicago for a few minutes each week, letting folks know that the city is ready for emergency situations.
The Grant Park Symphony was recently holding viola auditions in the beautiful new Pritzker Pavilion, the outside doors shut to keep the elements out. This new arrangement is much better than the pre-Pritzker days of renting out various downtown facilities for auditions.
Well, moments before the preliminary round of viola auditions began, these sirens started wailing, resonating through the pavilion. Even knowing that these are tested at this time of day every Wednesday, I can’t help but smile at the timing.
Look out! Incoming violas! Danger….must evacuate…..
Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/duckiemonster
Double Bass Audition Roundup for April 2008
The following is a guest post from Double Bass Blog contributor Phillip W. Serna. Here is audition information for April 2008 posted every month on doublebassblog.org. Check out Phillip’s recitals and interviews on his Contrabass Conversations page, and visit him online at http://www.phillipwserna.com
How NOT to audition for the Chicago Symphony
The Chicago Symphony doesn’t pre-screen audition candidates for their orchestra, allowing anyone who sends a resume and deposit check to get an audition time. While this is an extremely egalitarian approach to the audition process (anyone who wants a shot gets a shot at auditioning for the Chicago Symphony), it also makes for some amusing behind-the-screen moments.
I’ve heard dozens of great stories from members of the Chicago Symphony (and other orchestras as well) resulting from the audition process. Here’s one that always makes me smile!
___________
While interesting characters come out of the woodwork for any unscreened audition percussion auditions at the Chicago Symphony often seem to draw a lot of, well, rock drummers who think that it would be ‘cool’ to audition for the Chicago Symphony. While many of these people are undoubtedly also excellent classical percussionists, if you hand the typical rock drummer the Gershwin Porgy & Bess xylophone excerpt (or other such classical warhorse) you’re likely to get…. interesting results.
I recall hearing about one particular percussion candidate who, coming out onstage for his audition (behind a screen, with the audition proctor next to him to answer any questions), stared in puzzlement at the cymbal part for the Symphony No. 4 by Tchaikovsky.
He looked at the cymbal part.
He looked at the proctor.
He looked at the part again.
He looked back at the proctor.
He asked:
"Hey man…. how does this tune go?"
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Recent Podcasts- CBC 124: ISB 2009 Impressions
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