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According to a June 2011 article on the Arts Management Network, two-thirds of the major orchestras in the United States have a budget deficit and will need intervention and innovation to turn things around. To encourage a healthy future, orchestras are rethinking their programming and restructuring their organizations.
As orchestras adapt to this changing financial and cultural environment, the College of Music remains dedicated to ensuring that students are aware of the evolving competitive environment we face, and the new roles of orchestral musicians that student musicians must consider as they go forward in their music career.
“There are clearly challenges in all of this for students training to be professional musicians,” said Daniel Sher, Dean of the College of Music. “Yet we haven’t seen a change in the commitment of our students. They major in music because they have a passion for our art, and they are at a level where they can succeed if they work hard and embrace and develop a broad set of communications skills.”
College of Music faculty provides the tools and techniques to prepare students for careers as professional musicians while presenting a strong background in pedagogy. While many COM students pursue a career teaching music, some of them will also seek a satisfying career as a performer as well, according to Sher.
It’s the goal of the COM to produce skilled musicians by offering conservatory-level performance training and encouraging students to excel in their musicianship and their studies. Trendsetting initiatives—like the Entrepreneurship Center for Music and the Musicians’ Wellness Initiative—ensure that students are prepared to guide and shape the future of music while pursuing a fulfilling career.
Through its numerous free student and faculty performances as well as the world-class guest artist performances offered by the Artist Series, the COM nurtures a vibrant musical culture for students as well as for the surrounding communities. Students are encouraged to become engaged in outreach activities in such non-traditional venues as K-12 schools, senior centers, and civic organizations—even prison.
Orchestras are trying to attract new audiences with novel formats, such as offering shorter performances in non-traditional venues, and changing performance times to earlier in the evening to accommodate busy concertgoers.
As the music industry finds its way through a changed landscape, musicians are finding new ways to connect with their audiences on a more personal basis.
Gary Lewis, director of orchestral studies at the COM, strives to instill in his students and the performers with whom he works the idea of proactively taking music to audiences and engaging them on different levels. That includes how the orchestra presents itself, ways musicians commit themselves to a performance, and being smart and agile in programming, structuring, and operation.
One of the ways Lewis has reached out to audiences is by having orchestra members greet the public in the lobby before concerts as a way to establish a more personal relationship. So, when the audience looks up on stage, they see that third-stand, second violinist as a person, not just a component of a faceless ensemble.
“Music is a matter of communication,” said Lewis, who also leads the graduate program in orchestral conducting and conducts the University Symphony Orchestra. “We’re either reaching out to communicate something that is inexpressible through any other medium or we’re not. We can’t just phone it in.
“The level of energy, investment, and commitment on the part of the performer makes a huge impact on our audiences,” he said. “Audiences may not understand that a particular augmented sixth chord was really awesome in the third measure of the second movement, or that the intonation was flawless, but they’re going to know if those musicians are really committed to the performance.”
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