<p>We've been visiting small liberal arts colleges across the country, going to the practice rooms, and meeting with various professors in the music departments. However, it just occurred to us that maybe we should also be trying to determine the quality of music instruction? If my son wants to continue with performance, should he be asking to meet and talk to the person providing instruction in that area?</p>
<p>Yes. You need to schedule sample lessons when you visit schools. It takes some pre-planning and research. Read faculty bios, see where they went to school and where their students go to grad school or are now performing. Some teachers give free lessons and some charge. Some will give feedback and perhaps encourage your child to audition. School name, department and teacher are all factors you have to take into account. You want a teacher your child can work with because they will be with this teacher every week for 4 years. </p>
<p>The student should also be prepared to discuss goals as a performer. I taught applied music at a LAC, and while I expected my students to work and improve, I kept in mind that they were not pursuing a professional career. We spent less time on orchestral audition repertoire and more time on the type of music they would encounter as a casual player.</p>
<p>if they are planning to major in music (I assume you mean a BM, though the same thing would apply to a BA), the teacher is critically important. Teacher reputation is one of the big factors, how well his/her students do, but the other factor is how well they can work with your child. There are ‘great teachers’ on violin that would clash with my son, for example, because it is not a one stop shop kind of thing, music teachers and students are basically an apprentice and master kind of situation, and that tends to be very individualistic. So I would recommend highly trying to see the teachers at the potential program, if they seem decent, I would recommend doing sample lessons to see if there is a mesh. The program itself is important, things like the ability to network, the ability to have performance opportunities, the quality of the chamber program, possibility of doing gigs can be really, really important, but the teacher trumps it all. An incompatible or mediocre teacher at a great program will fare much worse then a good to great teacher at a program not considered as great IME. </p>
<p>As far as the name of the school goes, that is of dubious value in of itself, in the sense that graduating from Juilliard for example and auditioning for a gig will not do much for a student (or any big name school), in the end it will be the quality of the playing that does it…there are places where the name might matter, if you want to teach students, having Juilliard on your resume, at least where parents are concerned, might get you some more students, but in terms of being a working musician the name won’t matter much, the attributes of the program that I mentioned before (networking, ability to perform, etc) would have more to do with it I think. </p>
<p>Mentioning Juilliard particularly, for classical music I think there is a Juilliard bias or network. Audition evaluations are entirely subjective and enough excuses can be made to have the Juilliard alum or other favored student come ahead of a less favored student.</p>
<p>In my experience of having a talented violinist middle schooler, the whole music biz is a corrupt snakepit, especially vicious because there’s not really enough money to go around. Connections matter more than anywhere else I’ve ever seen.</p>
<p>But this bias may be only for that one school, Juilliard. And they have good teachers from everything I’ve heard. If Juilliard is not one of the choices, then your child will have to make it on ability (and risk getting bumped by the Juilliard grads anyway) and so quality of instruction would seem to be the ONLY thing that matters, besides cost.</p>
<p>The OP said they’re visiting small liberal arts colleges so it is likely they’re looking at BA’s in Music. Often the instructors are adjunct professors for private lessons and the focus of the music department will be more academic - courses in music theory, music history, orchestration, composition, conducting, world music, jazz, analysis etc. Bard, which I consider to have a fabulous music department in the college (separate from the conservatory) is set up that way. There are ensemble classes, and workshops - but the majority of private lessons, except for composition and vocal music, tend to be with adjunct faculty, and for a small fee. This is not to denigrate the adjuncts - they’re phenomenal musicians and could easily be professors at the conservatory level. However, there is no guarantee they’ll be there all four years of a student’s time, nor is it always possible to get a sample lesson in advance. I think one would need to evaluate the overall quality of the music department and trust that any faculty hired would be of an equal quality.</p>
<p>I used Juilliard as an example, I wasn’t trying to single it out per se, much of what I wrote could also be applied to Curtis or any other big name program for that matter. Juilliard in some ways has a name that transcends the others, it literally is one of the most famous music schools in the world and in some ways, is to music schools what the brand Kleenex is to tissues…</p>
<p>In terms of music being a corrupt snakepit, while there are grains of truth to that, it has to be taken into context. For example, there have been a lot of people complaining for years that kids graduating from Curtis have an in door into the Philadelphia orchestra, that it is biased, that an outsider doesn’t stand a chance, and I think that is kind of a chicken and egg thing…with so many people in the orchestra trained at Curtis, the kind of sound the curtis students produce is what they are used to, so they might choose them. </p>
<p>Likewise, with things like solo gigs being associated with a teacher or program will probably help…and yes, going to Juilliard or Curtis, when it comes to gigs and such, it is a network, very much like the Ivy league network that operates,but to call it corrupt leaves out the kind of networking that goes on in other professions.</p>
<p>On the other hand, to claim Juilliard has this corruption around it or magic goes against reality. Take a look on the violin, and none of the soloists who are getting the big gigs, are current day Juilliard graduates (not talking ‘up and comers’, talking the ones who you see soloing, people like Kavakos, Julia Fischer, Janine Jannsen, et al). The Juilliard trained soloists tend to be older generation, the one exception is Sarah Chang and she, too, goes back many years…kids from NEC, CIM, and the other conservatories land orchestra jobs, as do graduates of foreign conservatories, so to claim Juilliard “snaps them up”, doesn’t fly in the face of reality.</p>
<p>There are biases, in a lot of cases students who are in the pre college programs at a particular music school may have an easier time getting into the parent college program, there are cases where a teacher knows a teacher and that helps a student going in, there can be edges to getting in, but talent does play a role. In any professional endeavor networking is how people tend to get jobs, so it isn’t surprising that in some ways it influences musicians futures, too. I don’t think there is much difference between any of the top programs with this kind of thing, I think it goes on in a lot of places.I also think a lot of people seeing how difficult it is to get into music, assume that there must be skullduggery involved, when in many cases it also is that there are so many uber talented music students and musicians out there that the competition is beyond fierce, violin and piano are two classic examples of that, the level of playing is simply stunning, a lot of the kids entering conservatory are playing way better than graduates did a generation ago on average, and it takes so much just to get into a decent program. A generation ago a talented violinist could be a good school musician with a decent private teacher through high school, and get into a top program, today, no way. </p>
<p>And I don’t think Sarah Chang every graduated from Juilliard. She studied with DeLay when she was a kid, but her career was in full bloom by the time she was college age. </p>
<p>Sorry, we are not looking at conservatories, just liberal arts colleges. My son wants to major in history, but at least get decent instruction. I guess this is something we will need to look at more closely.</p>
<p>@RPianoDad if you look at the websites of the music departments at the colleges you’re interested in, they usually list the faculty for private lessons. If there is no bio for those teachers you can usually google them to find out more. Sometimes to find out who the instructor is for a particular instrument you’ll need to dig deeper and look at the actual course list. I can tell you that many many liberal arts colleges have some great instructors at them. They won’t necessarily only be teaching at the one school - but neither would they be at a conservatory either. For instance, the cello instructor at Vassar, teaches cello at Bard Conservatory. (Or did.) I don’t know whether you really need to have sample lessons in advance - you might wait until after acceptance as a way to help differentiate between his choices.</p>
<p>Sorry, when you said you son wanted to continue with performance, I thought you meant a performance degree. A lot of schools have music opportunities for non majors, lessons and so forth, so it should be possible to do what you wish. From what I know (which is not a great deal), if schools have music performance programs those teachers prob are not available to non majors, so it likely will be adjunct faculty. Some schools like the Ivies I believe will pay for private lessons with teachers outside the school, if I recall correctly. It may be hard to judge how good the teachers on the instruments are, given they are not training kids majoring in music, and you may be taking a chance on a particular school. It is wise to check their resume, and also arrange a sample lesson to see what you S thinks. It also depends on where he goes to school, would be easier to find a teacher outside the school that the school may pay for if it is a populous area, versus a LAC in the middle of nowhere…</p>
<p>Wish you luck.</p>
<p>@GH-
Yeah, Sarah Chang never went to the conservatory, she studied with Delay at pre college and then set out on her career, which if I remember correctly Delay was not happy about (and she may have had a point, but that is another story…). </p>
<p>My guess is that liberal arts colleges which are known to have strong music departments, like Williams, Skidmore, Swarthmore, Bard, Vassar, Sarah Lawrence, Wesleyan etc. are going to have strong faculty, adjunct or permanent, teaching the private lessons. And schools in or near urban areas will be able to draw from a strong pool of musicians for lessons.</p>
<p>If your child is interested in performance it also pays to look at the peer group as well as the instruction. My middle son (who had no interest in performance) went to a small liberal arts school with a very strong music department and he has said multiple times that he enjoys the faculty and the lessons he has taken there. But he had no desire to join an ensemble because the ensembles are just not up to a level he feels would make it worth it for him.</p>
<p>I think the importance of peers and how much they influence you and your musical development is often overlooked when parents and students evaluate future colleges and/or conservatories for their child. Having use attended a senior recital at my son’s conservatory for an incredibly talented boy (not my son)….I can tell you that collaboration between this incredible talent (who could easily have held his own for the entire recital) and his peers is where the magic and real jaw dropping work happens.</p>
<p>At Swarthmore (which I happen to know because D1 attended, you can take lessons (if approved) with teachers in Philadelphia, e.g., Philly orchestra members, etc. Bard, of course, has a conservatory-- but you can also take private lessons and even major in music (as a BA) outside of the conservatory (my niece is doing this. She felt the double track with her double academic major was too stressful, but she continues to take lessons and play.)</p>
<p>@ StacJip-
You are correct with the general quality of peers, it has been talked about on here, about the quality of the program as a whole versus the teacher. It is one of the negatives of going to a program with a good teacher that otherwise may be less competitive, because ensemble work can be spotty, especially orchestra (that full ride school, with the good teacher, might have an orchestra, for example, that has a lot of non majors and is otherwise spotty). </p>
<p>Even top level programs can be spotty on ensemble work, at some of the top conservatories chamber music, for example, can be hit or miss, it isn’t so much the playing level, as they have more than a few kids who either have had no chamber experience, or don’t care about it because they are going to be ‘soloists’ (this is generally concentrated in the violin/piano/cello world), and the same attitude with orchestra can happen as well. Some schools at the top level emphasize chamber, others seem to treat it as some sort of bag on the side of the real program IME. </p>
<p>It is why the whole experience can be important. My S turned down a very attractive school financially in part because of that, the school he turned down had a small orchestra program that wasn’t particularly good, the ensembles he heard were so so, and he was afraid that even with a good teacher, his other experience would not work for him. On the other hand, a program with great ensembles but with a teacher that does nothing for you is not going to be good either. </p>
<p>Musicprnt. Thank you for bringing up the issue of chamber music not being very good at good schools. We visited a top music school and my son was horrified by the chamber music we heard at a chamber recital. We heard one outstanding group out of 7. It still worries me. My son loved the teacher but has doubts because of the quality of the chamber groups.</p>
<p>@ cello -
What you have to keep in mind is that it often is what you make of it. My S’s school emphasizes chamber music, but another school may not, so that is a factor. The other thing is even at my S’s school, the level of chamber performance varies, some kids really are gung ho for it, others are indifferent, and I think you will find that this is true in a lot of schools and that the key with chamber music is to find the kids that care and make the effort. The one area that is still shockingly bad is the kids coming from Asia, from China and Korea, a lot of them are fantastic musicians, incredible technical ability, but even now the programs they come from either don’t emphasize chamber or simply don’t do it, kids can go from age 5 to 18 and never have played chamber music or do Sonatas even. I would be careful judging a program simply by what you heard of the chamber groups, it also could be you happened to get a day when the groups were not particularly good. My son has done chamber in some top level programs, and i have heard chamber performances where I swore I was at a community music school, not a top level prep program, and the next performance I would think I was at Alice Tully listening to the Chamber music society of Lincoln Center…so you never know.</p>