Rising 9th grader - music performance hopeful - things to do in HS

College Majors Music Major
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Yes! To informing yourself about the cost side of college so it’s not a shock and so you can apply to schools that are likely affordable. It’s hard to make a good college list for music and it’s harder if money is not unlimited. You want some affordable acceptances!

Yes! To keeping a list of repertoire and of accomplishments. You’ll need it.

As far as all state, and summer programs and such, all good advice. But my son had zero summer programs. He was so busy during the school year that he needed the break in summer, and we didn’t have a ton of money to throw at those things, and he also had a local summer music camp for younger kids locally that he loved to volunteer at, and would not give that up to go to a camp for himself. We offered. He had no camps on his resume. He had no awards in competitions beyond local piano competitions prior to high school that we didn’t include. My son did have the All state ensembles on his resume—Lots of them. Lots of kids have all state ensembles because all the states have them, but honestly most of those kids don’t major in music. For acceptance, it’s all about the audition, in the end, and the camps do help, but they aren’t essential.

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The advice on keeping track of repertoire is brilliant. S24 has been playing since he was 5 and this spring we were asked for a list for the first time. It was impossible! Keep track of it all, chamber music, solo works etc.

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Much good advice in this thread. It’s been a while since my son was in high school (when I joined this forum), but a few things I would say in looking back that helped him on his path to becoming a professional musician:

  1. Make music for the joy of it. Music should never be a chore. Let him practice and play because he wants to, not because anyone is forcing him to.

  2. Subject to (1), play as much as he can. Sessions with friends, jams, school groups, extracurricular groups. Even paid gigs if they present themselves. Never too young to be putting yourself out there.

  3. Listen to music. My son had probably a thousand albums on his computer hard drive, including multiple versions of all the standards. He listened and learned. Also went to as much live music as he could. (It helped that he was in NYC, where there are amazing musicians playing at many venues every day, but you can find live music wherever you are.)

  4. Develop repertoire. As a jazz musician, the more music you know, the better.

  5. Summer programs. My son’s first was at Eastman, where he realized, being surrounded by students as passionate about the music as he was, that this is what he was meant to do. He also did summer programs at Stanford Jazz and Skidmore. But there are many great summer programs.

  6. Find older mentors. Mentoring is a tradition in jazz and there are older jazz musicians who are open to taking the young ones under wing.

  7. Not sure whether this is more unique to my son, but even after he made the decision to focus on jazz, he continued to play classical music and take classical lessons. Even in college / music school and even after graduating and becoming a full time jazz musician. He feels it helps him both with technique and with musical ideas.

As a rising 9th grader, your son still has a lot of developing and exploring ahead of him. Let him find his own path and decide what excites him and what motivates him. From fairly early on, my wife and I took the approach of being there to encourage and support, but otherwise just to stay out of his way. Also, all of the foregoing are ideas and suggestions, not a checklist. Again, let him find his own path.

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The only thing I will add to this is that NAfME All Honors ensembles are impressive to admissions and the only way to get there is by getting All State so there’s that

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Hi @GuitaV! Exciting times for you and your son.

My son is currently a senior jazz performance major at Peabody (Johns Hopkins), majoring in jazz drumming and also a pianist, singer, songwriter, composer, and arranger, plus he has also gotten heavily involved in the business side of music (marketing, business development, promotions, operations, artist management, etc) and loves both performing and business side of music equally. He’ll be startin his Masters of Science in Music Industry at USC Thornton this fall. (Congratulations, @bullet318, and Fight On! :v: ).

The advice on this thread is excellent and I don’t disagree with any of it. All important, and the good news is that you and your son will probably be able to get to most of it (summer programs, resume/repertoire prep, outside programs and honors ensembles, AP music theory, gigs and community performances, etc.) fairly organically. In other words, you don’t have to force it and make it all happen now.

The two things I’d add to the great things already mentioned:

  • Make sure your child’s private teacher has a track record of helping kids get into the kind of jazz programs your child is targeting. While my son started taking typical piano lessons at the age of 7, he started playing the drums in the middle of 6th grade, and we finally started him on private lessons at the local “School of Rock” that summer once it was clear it wasn’t just a fad. When he was in 8th grade, we found a local drummer who had graduated with a BM in jazz performance from one of my son’s target schools and was performing locally; he was fine for a while, but then I realized he didn’t really have a plan of attack on what my son needed to do to get him into any college program (beyond what he did himself). In my son’s sophomore year, we then found a local jazz drummer who was a great professional as both a performer and educator who knew what it took to succeed in college auditions and applications in general AND the variations in approach and preference different schools had. This was a game changer. I doubt he would have had the necessary technical knowledge, musicianship, confidence, and awareness in the college audition and application process without having found him.

  • Start to consider the difference and eventual pros/cons for your son of attending music school at a university vs. a dedicated music conservatory. Universities with music programs, particularly the most prestigious and competitive ones like USC Thornton, Northwestern Bienen, University of Michigan, NYU Steinhardt, just to name a few, will care equally about grades and SAT/ACT scores as they do about audition and musical experience; in other words, the academic profile of their music student is fairly similar to that of their student population in general. On the other hand, conservatories and music schools like Juilliard, MSM, Berklee, etc, skew heavily towards musical chops only. And obviously, the vibe, environment, and focus is going to be very different at universities vs conservatories. Start to guide your son into the pros/cons of each NOW so that you can manage the balance between high school academics and musical endeavors accordingly. You/he don’t have to make any final decisions now, and many students end up pursuing admission to both types of school, it’s just not something you want to wait until he’s a senior prepping audition videos to consider.

Assuming he wants do focus on jazz, I’ll re-emphasize the importance of performing and gigging as much as possible, particularly with as many different people as possible, ideally of comparable or better musicianship. While performing is critical to both classical and jazz musicianship, the improvisational and conversational (music not verbal) back and forth nature of jazz is best developed by playing with a greater diversity of musicians. My son played in high school jazz band and with a local extra-curricular ensemble with multiple skill levels (at the Colburn School) which grounded him in fundamentals and rigor; however, his gigging with a handful and ever-changing set of high school musicians helped him hone his live performance chops, his confidence, and broaden his repertoire. As important as everything else was for his resume, I doubt he’d be as good a musician without having done that.

I could go on and on, but I’ll stop here. If you happen to live in California or if your son is particularly interested in USC Thornton, JHU Peabody, NYU Steinhardt, The New School, and U of Miami Frost, I may be able to share some additional and more targeted insights. Feel free to DM if you have questions.

Lastly – and most importantly – music is to be enjoyed, both by you and your son. As much effort and dedication a pursuit in music requires, He PLAYS music, he doesn’t WORK music. It’s an important and non-trivial distinction. I hope you guys never lose the love for music.

Enjoy the ride!

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100% to all of the above!
Gigging! YES! Mine plays in a full band (rock), acoustic duo and solo (he sings), and with his school/outside jazz ensembles.
You explained WHY summer camp really well. Yes, getting to know schools and professors but also for audition experience. Mine actually had a “trial audition” with the professor who eventually won him over by auditioning at summer camp. He was SO nervous this first time and it make his actual audition a breeze.
Music theory, improv, etc…eat up everything you can! My son’s were built into his magnet program (the teachers there also taught at Yale, Wesleyan, Hartt etc)
FUN! Important as well.

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This!

My D pivoted away in HS from wanting to go to conservatory when lessons, composition, and competitions were “sucking the joy” out of playing. Her expression, not mine. She said it was work and no longer a pleasure. The joy returned after a studio/instructor change and while she still competed, accompanied, and performed she realized that wasn’t her career path. Thankfully by then she had a teacher who supported her in that decision. Ironically she played amazingly well those last two years without any of the pressure on her shoulders.

And she still plays and performs, but she’s graduating college next month with an engineering degree.

OP - your student is young. Support and encourage but be open if the path ends up changing too.

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To repeat myself: I don’t think that the choices are limited to university/college music schools or free standing conservatories (the latter tend to be expensive, as a generalization). Again, he is young. He may end up wanting a BA or BS in music or something else and continue to play.

The focus on enjoyment, suggested by everyone, suggests that music be enjoyed for the present, not for the sake of admissions, while you, the parent, know full well that certain things need to be done. As I wrote before, it is a difficult balance.

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So S24 is a classical musician, has played since he was 5 and been in a preparatory program in NYC since he was 12. He loves music but is not planning a career in it. My advice at this point is to have him explore all of his musical options, especially those outside of school, send him to a music camp (NYO Jazz would obviously be the pinnacle but a bunch of places including NEMC offer good Jazz programs) and have him make sure not to forget about academics. S24 is planning on applying to Ivy’s, LACs and some medium sized universities with excellent music departments to keep music in his life but not as his primary goal and by having excellent stats he will hopefully be able to do all of this.

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Such great advice here; just to add that my dd24 is a joint first study (strings and woodwind) plus is a chorister; piano lessons were stopped some time ago. I would say it’s time for her to choose first study ready for auditions etc later this year - some schools will take her joint first study, but many studios will not welcome it even if its allowed. I also think she will do better focusing on one now, but of course still playing the other but that’s because she is so busy and covering so many ensembles etc that she simply doesn’t get practice time to cover two. So something to keep an eye on with your DS over the next few years, and of course piano is a much more usual joint instrument esp for jazz players. And there is no one size fits all on this journey!

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I don’t disagree. My comments were obviously in relation to someone who had decided to major in music (whether BA or BS). If they decide to not major in music, the point is moot.

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In regards to All State, it depends entirely on the type of school you are applying to, the state you are in, and also the instrument.

  1. If you are applying to a top conservatory (Juilliard, Colburn, Curtis, etc.) they could care less about All State. In fact, it probably would look strange to them. On the other hand, lower level conservatories and especially universities (including Ivies) really like All State.

  2. If you are a string player, All State is not of as much significance as it is for winds/brass, who need to obviously demonstrate more orchestral experience. Generally, higher level conservatories want to see string players doing a wider range of solo and chamber music opportunities than just orchestra. For the same reason, top conservatories don’t look at orchestra summer programs for string players as highly as they do for winds/brass. (NYO might be an exception to this, but generally top-level string players aren’t going to places like BUTI or Interlochen.) I don’t know about choir, but I suspect All State is viewed as more important.

  3. Your state matters a lot. In my state, each region sends an equal number of kids to All State. Since there are really only one or two good regions near the city, the level of the ensemble on a whole is pretty low. On the other hand, in some states like Texas, it is much more of a high level experience.

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I think this post is a perfect first step! We went into the situation “blind” and while my daughter had a good outcome, I don’t necessarily think it was the most advantageous one in many ways. This forum is a huge and generous resource that I didn’t really start using until we were already well down our path.

Depending on your financial situation, an alternate option is to work with a consulting firm that specializes in music. We had a free consultation with one, and he was incredibly knowledgeable and helpful. We did not end up pursuing it just because of cost. In retrospect, I wonder if it might not have been worth it. There was just simply a lot we did not know, and all of that information probably would’ve been customized and consolidated by him into something very useful that would probably have resulted in us taking a different approach, and I’m sure walking away with more merit.

Finally, someone said this before and I want to echo it. My daughter was a YoungArts finalist this year, and the experience was transformative. She attended for a different discipline than she is pursuing, which I think was not necessarily ideal to her admissions profile. However, overall these kids were very very very successful in their college admissions. I can’t say how much those results are due to YoungArts obviously but the experience alone was well worth it. My point is more that that you have to be proactive about going out and finding the opportunities that matter. When my daughter applied, I randomly found it two weeks before the deadline. I had never heard of it before, and no one in her music life had ever mentioned it. I didn’t even know if it was legit at the time. I know it’s a longshot, but there are classical music and jazz music categories, so it’s worth looking into as he gets older.

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Another great benefit of YoungArts for my son was that he used all of the same YA recordings for his college/conservatory pre screening submissions. And I agree that at least for classical instrumentalists, YA awards are well regarded.
One other bit of advice I would offer. If your kid has time and interest in activities completely removed from music, support them. At some point, there will be a time constraint issue which will necessitate music to be the major part of the schedule. But at least in early high school years, my son was involved in sports and had a great group of friends who did not know (or care) that he was involved in music. It was very healthy for him to have an identity outside of being that music kid.

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Our musician did one sport per year…we felt that was important too. Not one per season…one per year. He was very careful…as instrumentalists cannot injure their hands…

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MSM Precollege, Mannes Precollege, Juilliard Precollege also. It may not be too late to apply to MSM, and they are as serious as can be about the program.

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If you’re on the West Coast, three summer jazz programs for 13-17yo musicians worth considering (listed from north to south):

  • Stanford Jazz Workshop
  • Colburn Summer Jazz program
  • Idyllwild Jazz in the Pines.

My son did Stanford and Colburn multiple summers and they were VERY formative in his development and eventual success in college auditions. We also know people involved with Idyllwild and know that is also well-regarded and has great faculty.

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Great programs. If you’re in the Midwest it is also worth considering Interlochen Summer Camp as well.

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