Teaching Musicians to Be Entrepreneurs

Why entrepreneurship training is beginning to strike a chord with faculty—and students—at top music conservatories

by Kerry Miller

Juilliard student Gillian Gallagher and her group, the Attacca Quartet, playing with two members of the Tokyo Quartet

Manhattan School of Music President Robert Sirota Photo credit: Peter Schaaf

Story Tools

• post a comment
• e-mail this story
• print this story
• order a reprint
• suggest a story
• digg this
• save to del.icio.us

In most areas of higher education, entrepreneurship has long lost its stigma as a career path for those without one (see BusinessWeek.com, Fall, 2006, "Hitting the Books"). But at the nation's top music conservatories that stigma is still very much alive, despite the fact that the "traditional" career path for classically trained musicians—one that ends with steady employment in a symphony orchestra—is difficult.

At Manhattan's Juilliard School, one of the country's preeminent performing arts conservatories, Career Development Director Derek Mithaug admits that the business-y connotation of the term "entrepreneur" still rubs a lot of artists the wrong way. "We try to avoid that word," he says. But getting support for entrepreneurship training is about more than semantics: Some in music education still firmly believe that the role of the conservatory is to train musicians, not businesspeople.

That's why at many conservatories, entrepreneurship training—where it exists—has tip-toed into curricula under less-threatening guises. Most schools offer at least one elective or workshop in "career development" or "the music industry." At the Eastman School of Music, entrepreneurship programs are run out of the Rochester (N.Y.) school's Institute for Music Leadership.

Converting the Old Guard

The Institute's director, Ramon Ricker, says it took some effort to convince some old-guard faculty—firm believers in "art for art's sake"—that the school wasn't selling out by offering courses that emphasized practical skills. At one meeting, Ricker went around the room pointing at each faculty member: "You've got a summer chamber music program, you've got a string quartet, you publish books— you're entrepreneurial!" And teaching those skills, he says, is about more than building individual careers—as the nation's symphony orchestras continue their struggle for survival, they're also vital to the future of classical music.

Bringing music schools in line with the future of classical music is exactly what Manhattan School of Music president Robert Sirota is most interested in. "The whole infrastructure of music is experiencing seismic shifts, and music schools have to move with those changes," Sirota says—and just adding a business course or two in isn't enough to keep up with the times. Although getting even one required course on entrepreneurship into a packed conservatory curriculum is more than most schools are willing to commit to, what's really necessary, Sirota says, is a radical rethinking of the whole centuries-old conservatory model.

One of Sirota's sea-change ideas: Instead of requiring all graduating students to perform a senior recital, conservatories could give students the option of producing their own recording. "It sounds like a small thing, but it would be revolutionary," Sirota says. "Can we do it? Well, that remains to be seen."