SF Weekly has a lengthy article on the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, which is about to move into a brand-new facility. SFCM hopes the new location will enable it to strengthen its ties with the San Francisco Symphony, attract more and better students, and help position those students more competitively for careers in classical music.
The new facility looks beautiful, but the article rightly questions the SFCM's stated goals as it moves. The article notes that SFCM wishes to emulate conservatories like Juilliard, Curtis, and the Cleveland Institute of Music, each of which has historically strong ties to its world-class hometown orchestra. (The article doesn't mention that Curtis is really a different kind of animal altogether, and has unique characteristics and practices that separate it from other conservatories and explain why so many of its graduates find orchestral employment.) But the San Francisco Symphony sounds pretty lukewarm on the possibility of a closer relationship with SFCM: Karen Ames, the Symphony's director of communications says, "It's the kind of situation where your friend moves into your neighborhood. Do you hope that you'll have dinner more with them after they move? Of course. Is that going to happen for sure? Not really. We love the conservatory and are excited about it moving down here, but that synergy is their goal, not ours." Hmm. Not very encouraging sentiments for SFCM.
The most important point raised in the article -- and one on which the author dwells a bit -- is the same one raised in a recent NY Times feature on Juilliard grads (I wrote about it here): is it ethical to cultivate so many young musicians for such a small (and shrinking) number of jobs? SFCM's administrators are of course right that it isn't their responsibility to try to dissuade talented, music-obsessed kids who've been working toward the goal of an orchestra job for most of their lives from pursuing it. But they, along with the administrators and faculty of all institutions that allow students to study classical performance to the exclusion of all else, do have an ethical obligation to make sure students understand what they're getting themselves into. When I was an undergrad studying clarinet, we all basically knew the odds were against us -- but we also all thought we were going to be the exceptions, the ones who actually made it. A little bit of "What if I'm not one of the lucky ones?" would be a useful exercise for everyone.
Posted by Stacie at April 21, 2005 05:37 PM | TrackBack