My daughter is going to graduate from a Univ of Calif music program with a BM in Violin Performance in June. She will also graduate with a BS degree in Math. She is not prepared for prescreens because she’s going to graduate with these double degrees before she’s 21 years old, and hasn’t has time to prepare specific pieces. She wants to go to one of the best music schools, and she could be competitive with her auditions because she has a month off in winter, but she won’t get the auditions because of the prescreens. So we are looking at a gap year between her BM & her MM. She’s looking at Northwestern, Indiana, USC, and a few more. So my question is, is a gap horrible, and what should she do while she’s not in a music program. What do you think? Are there any specific short term programs or festivals that would look good? She could continue into an MM where she is, but there is only 1 violin professor, and she’s done 4 years with him already.
My S graduated last December with BM in cello performance and BA in math and auditioned last winter for MM programs. It took him 4 1/2 years rather than 4 to get both degrees. So he was still in school in the fall, but the extra time in the winter and the extra time in general helped him be prepared for prescreens and auditions. He finished all his BM requirements the previous spring so had already done his last senior recital and didn’t have to participate in orchestra his final fall semester which freed up a lot of time. So he didn’t have as much time off as your D will but I think the extra time was very beneficial to him. He was not quite ready and didn’t have the time to devote to getting ready for auditions while doing everything he needed to do to complete both degrees.
He went to a summer long festival that summer which kept him immersed in music and gave him time to practice and prepare his prescreen and audition material. He landed a spot in a high quality regional orchestra for his last year and subbed in some others, again keeping him playing in and practicing for orchestras and also giving him spending money. He kept playing in some chamber music groups that he had formed in college and worked on a new performing initiative with one of those groups. He continued to take lessons from his professor even after he graduated to polish his audition repertoire. Also auditioning while not in school was much less stressful, he was able to spend more time at each school where he auditioned, took lessons with professors, went to classes and performances and got to know each school well.
Would your D be able to stay in her college town and benefit from those ties she has formed and possibly keep taking lessons with her professor to polish her audition material?
She has relationships with Colburn/:LAPhil/USC faculty, and there are many good teachers here. I think she could work with several people over the course of the summer and next fall . It’s a year until prescreens are due then, but she’ll probably just concentrate on her senior recital and keeping her math GPA up. It would be hard for her to extend her time at school without starting a masters in math or music, they are very sure they want you out at the UCs. We would qualifiy for financial aid this year, and I hate for her to not take advantage of that by being in some sort of degree program. Math doesn’t take a lot of time for her, but I wonder if the music schools would think she wasn’t serious. She could take two years gap and finish a math masters, and then she’d be starting the MM at 23 yo. At her school, there are a lot of freshman who are coming in to the BM program at 19 yo., so that doesn’t seem too old. And I think she’d make more progress just studying with various violin coaches and not having to do all the mm theory, orch, etc. while she’s trying to get better. Would 2 years gap and the math masters look really bad?
Sorry if I wasn’t clear, I didn’t mean to suggest that she stay in her current school for a new degree during her gap year but that she could stay in the town and benefit from the ties she has there while she gets ready to audition. If she has ties in LA then that sounds really good, she could take lessons and get other gigs and just keep immersed in making music while she prepares for her MM auditions. I don’t think getting a masters in math would necessarily look bad, but if what she really wants to do is pursue music I don’t see why she would want to take the time and spend the money to do that.
I also don’t mean to offer very specific advice because each situation is different, just wanted to say that what worked for my S was to keep active in the local music scene and take lessons and use the time to prepare for his audition. Hope this helps!
Music is a different kind of world, and because basically admission comes down to that audition, a lot of students take gap years, and I doubt age would be a big factor in admissions. There are a lot of kids who go back to music when they are older, in MM programs, kids whose parents made them get another degree then decide to do an MM, and so forth. If she decided to get her math master’s first it wouldn’t hurt her on her auditions/admissions, I don’t think anyone would say “why did she get a math masters instead of going for our world renowned MM program?” .smile.
The key thing is going to be her level of preparedness, and obviously I don’t know what level she is playing at (I probably would listen to her playing, say it was great, and she would roll her eyes and say “It wasn’t, I slipped here, my intonation there was off,etc”, get that all the time from my S, a violinist as well). If she knows people at Colburn, she may want to schedule an assessment with one of them (Lipsyte or Beaver), they both are top level teachers and know what is required, to see where she stands, she may have specific areas that would hold her out of getting into an MM program, the level of tolerance of certain things is much lower there.
Whether she goes for the master’s in math or not, I would highly recommend she keep working with a high level teacher, if one of the guys at Colburn would do it, or someone at USC, or maybe one of the LA Phil people (though I don’t know any of their violinists as teachers, so couldn’t recommend anyone), to get her ready for pre screens and auditions when she is ready, that is going to be key. If she gets the assessment, she will have a road map going down the road, and if she works privately with someone once she graduates (or even before, if her teacher doesn’t mind), that would do a lot for her.
In terms of festivals, that is a much debated topic on here. One thing the festivals do, the higher level ones, is they are music intensive, and it will give her an idea if she wants to go on, and that is huge. The other thing with festivals is to look at who is teaching there, if teachers she might want to study with at the MM level (to use a hypothetical example, Martin Beaver at Colburn, if he does the festival stuff) are there, it is more than helpful as she should be able to do lessons with them there and see if a)she likes them and b)they like her…and that exposure can pay off when she auditions, if they re member her, will make getting admitted easier (not guaranteed, but easier). If a program has a lot of teachers she thinks she might like, well, that is a kind of holy grail smile. One thing I try and tell anyone who asks (and is willing to listen or read my explanations) is not to overthink things, it is very easy to get tied up in all the negative possibilities or overthink strategy, in the end the admissions comes down to how well she can play on the audition and if a teacher wants to teach her, going to Aspen (one of the ‘big’ music festivals) in of itself won’t get her into a program because someone saw it on her resume, it would help if teachers she wanted to study with were there and if the lessons helped her improve, so the focus should be on getting her playing level as high as possible and whatever might help with finding teachers she can work with and teachers who like her:)
She did go to Elizabeth Pitcairn’s Luzerne camp when she was in high school and studied with Danielle Belen there (who was Robert Lipsett’s teaching assistant at the time and now at Northwestern). It was really valuable for her in terms of being constantly immersed in music, but I was more wondering if it really matters to have something like Aspen on her resume, to which your answer seems to be not really. I will look for places with good fit teachers (feeling like a helicopter mom again after all these years). She has played a lot of new music and works well with composers. She’s played a huge amount of chamber music, and I’m not sure if she’s considering a chamber program or wants to stick with a straight-up performance place. With more time, she can meet more faculty before applying, which is a really good thing.
It does not matter if you have festivals on your resume. A festival might help establish contact with a teacher, and festivals are great for other reasons, but it’s not a big deal not having big festivals on the resume. The audition is what matters most.
One more question - is it bad or good to play with small regional orchestras? I have no sense of this as some of her teachers foster the primadonna thing. She sits behind the concertmaster, 3rd chair, and they pay. Seems OK? Hard to use any specifics here, due to it being pretty easy to figure out who she is in real life.
It was good for my S. He played in a very strong regional orchestra, high caliber musicians because it is located in the same town as our state flagship with its excellent school of music so a lot of the musicians are graduates of the music school. Excellent conductor too and strong community support.
I think it can be a good way to retain ties with other musicians and keep playing in a collaborative way as long as it does not take the focus away from preparing for auditions. It just depends on how busy overall your D would be and whether it would serve as motivation or as an added stress. My S also definitely enjoyed the income and received other paying gigs as a result of his involvement in the orchestra.
With the orchestra, it all depends on the orchestra, regional orchestras kind of range from being pretty darn good, to aweful. Will that help on getting into an MM program? Nope, because that is based on the audition. Is there value in doing that? If the orchestra has a decent conductor and plays at a fairly high level, then it can be a learning experience depending on how good the orchestra is at the school she went to. The other advantage is with regional orchestras or ‘non big orchestras’ that exist all over, it is also a form of networking, you get to meet other musicians (if they have professional musicians in it), and later on that can lead to other things. If the orchestra is mediocre she might not get much out of it (and usually those kind of orchestras have a range of playing ability within them, you can have strong professional musicians and not so strong semi pro musicians shrug). My son has done gigs like that with a relatively known local orchestra where he is, and I think it did him some good in that he met some people who could help him down the road, the conductor and the concertmaster liked him it seems, and that never hurts.
Has she considered going to Europe (Netherlands, Germany, France) or UK? They have different application dates. I know German schools also have a winter entrance as well as fall.
Is she going to want to do a PhD or DMA?
Does she have any interest in new music/ living composers and so on?
She plans to do an MM then a DMA. I don’t think she’s thought about going to Europe for a degree, maybe for something shorter term. She speaks French - but every time I see Paris on the news it scares me, so I’ll wait until she thinks of it, lol. She went to the UC because she wanted to be at a university rather than a conservatory, and I think that still holds true. She’s the kind of person who is good with the self-contained town of a large university. That’s why USC, Bloomington, etc. are high on the list. She has a lot of experience with new music/composers, she does extra chamber every semester with contemporary music and she reads for the composition students when they need it. Does anyone have experience with Lina Bahn at USC?
Some European schools are in English…Royal Conservatory of the Hague for instance. And masters are often one year. German schools are tuition free. SUNY’s have later application dates and SUNY Purchase is excellent. Has she considered UCSD (very contemporary)?
I will check out the European schools for her. Neither of us really knows much about them. UCSD just has one of each cello, viola, violin teacher. That’s kind of the situation she is in and it’s been limiting. There also is no MM, just the MA. New York has so many options for music. I have a friend who lives across the street from SUNY at Stony Brook, so that was already on the radar, I can add Purchase. Comparing from web pages is difficult. With a gap year, we can really see so many more places.
Purchase’s deadline for prescreens is Jan. 1, for fall semester. It is an excellent conservatory with an MM and of course close to NYC. Also affordable, relatively.