<p>Then my prejudice is revealed…</p>
<p>As musicamusica asked and woodwinds put it out there, I too would like to know why the singers left. If any young singer has to leave a school due to injuries there is something more than a little wrong with the training. The fact that there are two is frightening.</p>
<p>@stradmom, I understand where you’re coming from!</p>
<p>Thanks for all the responses! I am still reading through as I have been preoccupied with other things (Superbowl 
) I haven’t abandoned it and will read through and do some invited messaging when I come down off my post game high.</p>
<p>This is a really interesting thread. My d is in the belly of the audition season. Because we live in California and ALL of her first and only visits to the schools will be during the auditions. I appreciate the information and realize it’s a single data point of information, but it would be great to know which conservatories or colleges they are. </p>
<p>I didn’t mean to frighten the singers! Yes, two of the vocalists have injuries to their vocal chords. I think my daughter said they have taken a leave of absence to recover, not left the school. There are instrumentalists with injuries as well, but they haven’t needed to take any semesters off.</p>
<p>Woodwinds, please know that I am not picking on you, in fact, I’m grateful that you posted what you did because it illustrates that just sending a kid off to a school (one with a “name” or not), does not guarantee their safety or even good training.
Singers should be frightened by reading what you wrote, because there is something very wrong (at least at that school) if two have had to “recover” at this point in time.No matter what their level entering in the fall, no young voice should be worked to the point where vocal injuries occur. My D looked at many programs when she was considering graduate schools and that particular school was on the list because of a teacher that she was interested in working with. While the instrumental programs may be fine, the requirements for the VP master’s degree audition there are patently absurd- 10 pieces for an audition? No panel needs to hear that many works to evaluate the ability and potential of an applicant at that stage- the major YAPs and competitions don’t even have such requirements Again, if you drop a trumpet, the valves can be repaired or you can reset a soundpost and bridge on your violin; nodules may disappear or improve with vocal rest but polyps, cysts or lesions can require surgery or end a career.
I know that it’s difficult for youngsters to say “no” or even to understand that something is really wrong, but I can not stress the importance of vocal health and not overworking the voice. Parents, if you find out that your youngster is practicing several hours a day or is singing a full role in an opera in the first couple of years (especially over a full orchestra as opposed to a piano accompaniement), or that a teacher is pressuring them to take on roles or many solos, please do something and make sure that your kid can say “no thank you”. While it may be flattering to the kid and you may love to tell friends and family that Esmerelda is “singing Violetta and she’s only a sophomore”, the pain of watching them spend months on vocal rest and fight back through the fear isn’t worth it. They need to be in it for the long run and there’s plenty of time for those roles and the “big girl” (or guy) arias when they’re in grad school or beyond.
Rant over!</p>
<p>Schools do ‘weeding out’ from what I can tell in various ways, and it seems to depend on the program and the teacher. Friend of mine went to Indiana in performance on a brass instrument, and he said it became evident he wasn’t going to make it when he wasn’t getting into the higher level ensembles, and they also kind of ‘encourage’ kids to think of doing other things, as he did…in my son’s current studio, there is no sense of ‘weeding out’, in fact the studio is mostly upperclass/grad students, with relatively few freshman, but on the other hand it is a studio where the teacher has their pick of students (I am sure kids have transferred to other teachers or dropped out over the years),so they don’t have many students who ‘fail to make the grade’ I would guess. I suspect that it is more common to ‘weed out’ in programs that admit a lot of kids, or where the level of student is wider then let’s say at a Curtis or Juilliard etc…</p>
<p>And yes, Juries can get kids told to leave, from what I know it is usually after Sophomore year (not surprisingly, that is when "academic’ Students choose their major, so makes sense). That said I would suspect Juries weeding out students is a lot more common in big programs or ones that admit a lot of kids, that getting into a tough studio or schools where there is so much competition to get in that it is less likely for a student to fail juries. </p>
<p>I also suspect that a lot of the ‘weeding out’ is done via other means, such as my friend not getting into the good ensembles, or by teachers who use old school "kick them in the butt’ methods to separate the wheat from the chaff so to speak, by getting kids to drop out rather than leave (kind of like in the movie “Officer and a Gentleman” when the drill instructor tries to get the candidate to DOR, drop on request…</p>
<p>None of this is gospel, it is just based on what I have seen or heard about, the key thing is every program is different. A large program doesn’t necessarily practice weeding out either, if they want to maintain a large program for financial reasons, likewise a ‘top’ school might think weeding out shows it is the survival of the fittest, it all depends on the culture of the school and the teachers. With the OP’s case, wouldn’t surprise me if the teacher thought that giving a crappy grade will ‘motivate’ students, that exists out there, reminds me of a manager I read about in a case study that was proud to have a 20% turnover rate…</p>
<p>I have an observation representing another point of view.</p>
<p>Recently my daughter’s former instrumental teacher (from when she was in high school) told me about a PhD recital on flute (since I’m a flutist, though no longer professional) he’d just attended (he is also an adjunct professor at the music school). He told me it was very bland, and that he’d expected a much higher level of playing from someone getting awarded a Ph D in a music performance field. We got into a discussion about how this flutist had been admitted to the program in the first place. Seems that he and others had recommended earlier that she not even be admitted into the program–but she knew the Dean of Music and got in anyway. </p>
<p>My point is there should be standards maintained, which means that at some point a student who isn’t making the “grade” should not be admitted to the next level. </p>
<p>Mezzosmama, I don’t feel picked on. I think I should add, however, that perhaps the reason there are a tad more students with injuries at my daughter’s conservatory is that it has reputation for working with musician injuries. it may mean that students who already have had an injury during high school determine that this conservatory is the best place to go. The school helps them work on their issues and recover; it doesn’t throw them out like some others would. I can’t speak directly for all the studios, but I know for a fact that is the case in my daughter’s studio.</p>
<p>Thanks, everyone for contributing the view from your angle. It is a sort of blind man and elephant proposition where the more singular views one has the more well rounded and complete a picture one gets of the whole animal.</p>
<p>Some very valid points made all around. The conservatory experience can be daunting and some attrition is bound to occur. The kids arrive, most having been the best in their towns & schools, often lauded as “future stars” and heaped with awards- then they find out that everyone else comes in with the same accolades and that lo and behold, there are even kids who are better and who have more on their resumes. Whereas at home, they auditioned for a chair in the area youth orchestra and knew where they stood, now every day is an audition of sorts; chairs shift in the orchestras, they jockey for participation in the best chamber groups, go up against their studio mates at concerto competitions…the stress is intense. Practice routines have to be adjusted and one has to get used to a new teacher with new methods and different expectations. It’s a lot to deal with. I’ve seen kids thrive, some merely survive by getting through day-by-day and others party until they fail out.</p>
<p>Woodwinds, injuries to a singer are to the body, because that is the instrument. No school should encourage or accept a young singer with an obvious injury, but with the explosion of VP- and MT- departments and the large number of applicants, it’s been feared that some schools would begin to see those students as “commodities” because they can be replaced with little trouble. A big problem is that students and their parents have no way of knowing how to differentiate programs and that’s where CC and the whole support system we build here is so valuable.</p>
<p>I agree that an injured singer is different from an instrumentalist with tendinitis. Pretty serious indeed. </p>
<p>I agree that an injured singer is different from an instrumentalist as well. But mezzosmama, keep in mind that I shared some anecdotal information–I don’t know anything specific at all about those singers who left, what they came to school with, or went on leave. </p>
<p>Agreed, woodwinds. I’m just trying to point out that young singers are at risk and that parents do need to be very aware of this and assure their students that it’s OK to question rep choices and to say “no” when something just doesn’t feel right. Many youngsters have voices that haven’t “settled” or need time to grow and teachers may give them incorrect rep (as in completely wrong fach) or things that are too large for them (baby Wagnerians will often be handed big Verdi, which they should not be working on yet) and a student should be able to say that they’re not ready or not comfortable without being penalized by the teacher/program or feel that they’re disappointing their family. Sadly, all too often that is not the case.</p>