Music industry playing a sour jobs tune
The Philadelphia Orchestra filed for bankruptcy in 2011. The New York City Opera followed suit two years later. The struggling Minnesota Orchestra was effectively shut down for more than a year over labor issues until early 2014. The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra was shut down twice in two years due to lockouts of musicians.
Ultimately, the rarified world of Ravel and Kalliwoda faces the same mercantile business problems as Radio Shack or Eastman Kodak Co. — a product that fewer customers want.
"We've always imagined the elitist part of society were the people who'd patronize that, so we've marketed ourselves into a dumb corner of our own making," said Robert Freeman, former head of Eastman School of Music and author of The Crisis of Classical Music in America (2014, 243 pages).
Part autobiography of his time in music education and part critique of that educational system and the classical music world it feeds into, Crisis is Freeman's attempt at kickstarting a broader discussion in the classical music universe about the oversupply of classically trained musicians and the dearth of jobs waiting for them.
"I'm going to be 80 this summer — I'm going to retire to do some other kinds of things like promote the ideas in the book," said Freeman, who was director of University of Rochester's Eastman School for 24 years before he left in 1996 to become president of the New England Conservatory and then dean of the University of Texas at Austin's College of Fine Arts. He remains at UT Austin today as a professor.
It's a business and marketing message increasingly being echoed in some corners of the fine arts world. The Eastman School in January put on a one-day seminar as part of Chamber Music America's national conference that featured a variety of presentations about such issues as branding and sponsorships. The keynote of the event was a talk by the founders of the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival about how they built that into a successful annual event.
Freeman was in Rochester last week to receive an honorary degree from UR and for a ceremony as the atrium in its Sibley Library was renamed after him. He sat with the Democrat and Chronicle to discuss the book, the classical music industry woes, and why one salve may have purple hair and play rock music.
"You can either act as a musical performer as somebody who comes out, bows, plays, gets up, bows again and goes away or you can engage the audience through," Freeman said. "They may get to like you."
D&C: What do I face when I step out the door into the job market?
Freeman: When you're in school, you're hoping to be the principal oboe. Then you get out of school and it turns out there are 500 candidates for the job, 100 of whom are perfectly well qualified.
D&C: What are the origins of this labor market problem?
Freeman: One is that we keep increasing the number of music schools and thus annual music graduates. Well over 30,000 a year. Orchestras are going in the other direction. We're graduating too many, too narrowly trained musicians.
Largely what it comes down to is you can't make productivity gains in the performing arts. It still takes 85 players to play a Beethoven symphony and you don't get anywhere trying to play it twice as fast with half as many players. At the same time, the musicians need to be paid more. You can't put the New York Philharmonic into Yankee Stadium — acoustically it doesn't work.
D&C: So if a young performer wants to have a chance in the marketplace today, what should that education look like?
Freeman: First thing they need to know is not only how to play the instrument well (but) learning how to read and write and think and speak in public. If you're part of the the society that thinks I'm not much good with words, so I play the oboe, you're digging your own grave. In addition to those, business skills, computer literacy. The kind of thing any leading citizen in the United States needs. If you learn while you're a student at a music school something about music and how to play your instrument, you also come to the conclusion the world of orchestras is failing and if you're a part of that you have to be a part of the solution or get into another field.
In the history of music, before the French Revolution, musicians were generalists. (Then) musicians turned toward specialization — 'I'm a violist, I don't play the violin and I certainly don't play the piano.' What I've been pushing is in the other direction.
D&C: It sounds like one big part of this is trying to build that classical music audience.
Freeman: (Eastman graduate) Caleb Burhans, I've never met him. But he was taken to task by an orchestra for wearing purple hair. He was told 'Are you trying to ruin classical music?' No, I'm trying to save classical music from itself.' In New York City he makes a living singing counter tenor in an Episcopal Church. He's also a composer, has two rock bands, plays keyboards, violin, percussion, he's fully occupied in repertories classical and otherwise. Because he's versatile.
D&C: It's funny and it's strange that one of classical music's problem is it's entertainment that's not entertaining.
Freeman: It takes itself too seriously. I strongly suspect (the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra) knows most of the audience comes from Brighton and Pittsford. Why it shouldn't come from Greece and Gates is largely a mystery and shouldn't be. If you and I were selling soap suds in Rochester, we'd figure out why the people in Greece and Gates don't like soap suds and start working on that.
MDANEMAN@DemocratandChronicle.com