• Home
  • About
    • What’s happening here
    • Greg Sandow
    • Contact
  • AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal

Sandow

Greg Sandow on the future of classical music

Energizing visit

February 10, 2017 by Greg Sandow

I’m pretty much wowed, after spending a long weekend — last Friday to Monday — at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University.

Of course it’s a big place, so there’s a lot I missed. So of course this is just a partial impression.

But I was the guest of the school’s Office of Entrepreneurship and Career Development, and I’m confifdent that this functions wonderfully. From what I saw, and what I know elsewhere, it must be one of the top entrepreneurship programs at any conservatory.

Smoothing the way

For one thing, Alain Barker, who heads it, is a dynamo, with very sharp ideas. He came to his job after (as he told me) 10 years as the school’s head of marketing and communications. To understand what an advantage it is, note that at many conservatories, the entrepreneurship program is to some extent dropped in from outside, with ideas and concerns that may be new to many on the faculty (and most of all to some of the most senior faculty members, the studio teachers, some of them famous, who teach voice and instruments).

But at IU, the program hit the ground with someone in charge that everyone knew and liked. And who for 10 years had been looking out for their interests, making faculty members better known, giving them publicity. Of course that eased the transition. Gave so many people confidence in what the Office would do.

How it functions

Alain Barker and last year’s Jumpstart team

Well, first — the Office has three full-time staff, counting Alain. And four students who actively run Project Jumpstart, in which students  help students develop entrepreneurship initiatives. Among much else, they run an innovation competition, in which student projects compete for mentoring and financing. (Modest financing, but that makes sense, because entrepreneurs should find their own funding. I was a judge for this year’s competition; more on that later.)

That’s more staffing than most entrepreneurship programs I know of.

Of course the Office gives career counseling. Teaches business skills. Mentors projects. And, which I found notable, it makes students aware of ways they could work in music after they graduate. The Jacobs School, I learned, of course knows that many conservatory graduates don’t end up working in music, is concerned with the problem, has studied it (gathering extensive data on how its own graduates are doing). And is proud that a surprising percentage of their graduates are in fact musically employed.

One example I was given, which really struck me: People from some of the U.S. military bands came to the school. There are many military bands, which in effect give musicians fulltime work. They’re located around the country, not just in Washington, and by no means only play patriotic marches. They play challenging concert music, too.

Letting students know these exist is hardly a pathbreaking move, one that redefines classical music. But it’s important! Students need to find jobs when they graduate, and a program that works hard helping them proves its value to the school every day. Which then makes it easier to push far-reaching change.

So many good things

I could go on for a while about what the Office does. You can look at their website for more details. There’s a day each year devoted to the Office on campus. All prospective students who come to audition are told about the Office, and have a chance to meet with Office staff to find out what’s going on.

And one thing very much worth mentioning is a Certificate in Entrepreneurship, open to the most capable students, and — this is crucial — given jointly by the Office and by the Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at IU’s Kelley School of Business.

Certificate students take two courses at the Office, and three  at the business school. To say that this is a major good thing would be an understatement, especially since the Johnson Center has been ranked (by US News and World Report) as the top entrepreneurship school in America.

Which turns out to be just one of the good things that happen because the Jacobs School doesn’t just stand on its own, but is part of a major university.

But this post is getting long. So I’ll continue all of this — including something on the talk I gave on the future of classical music — in another post.

Truly, I had a great time.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Greg Sandow

Though I've been known for many years as a critic, most of my work these days involves the future of classical music -- defining classical music's problems, and finding solutions for them. Read More…

About The Blog

This started as a blog about the future of classical music, my specialty for many years. And largely the blog is still about that. But of course it gets involved with other things I do — composing music, and teaching at Juilliard (two courses, here … [Read More...]

Follow Us on FacebookFollow Us on TwitterFollow Us on RSS

Archives

@gsandow

Tweets by @gsandow

Resources

How to write a press release

As a footnote to my posts on classical music publicists, and how they could do better, here's a post I did in 2005 -- wow, 11 years ago! --  about how to make press releases better. My examples may seem fanciful, but on the other hand, they're almost … [Read More...]

The future of classical music

Here's a quick outline of what I think the future of classical music will be. Watch the blog for frequent updates! I Classical music is in trouble, and there are well-known reasons why. We have an aging audience, falling ticket sales, and — in part … [Read More...]

Timeline of the crisis

Here — to end my posts on the dates of the classical music crisis  — is a detailed crisis timeline. The information in it comes from many sources, including published reports, blog comments by people who saw the crisis develop in their professional … [Read More...]

Before the crisis

Yes, the classical music crisis, which some don't believe in, and others think has been going on forever. This is the third post in a series. In the first, I asked, innocently enough, how long the classical music crisis (which is so widely talked … [Read More...]

Four keys to the future

Here, as promised, are the key things we need to do, if we're going to give classical music a future. When I wrote this, I was thinking of people who present classical performances. But I think it applies to all of us — for instance, to people who … [Read More...]

Age of the audience

Conventional wisdom: the classical music audience has always been the age it is now. Here's evidence that it used to be much younger. … [Read More...]

Return to top of page

an ArtsJournal blog

This blog published under a Creative Commons license

Copyright © 2025 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in