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Training the 21st-Century Artist By ERIC BOOTH
If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got. The way we "do" the training of young artists is changing because we need 21st-century artists, not 19th- or even 20th-century ones.
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| On August 31, Eric Booth led an orientation workshop titled "Exploring the Big Picture in the Arts." The seminar addressed the kinds of exploring, inquiring, and thinking essential to the development of a fully-rounded artist. In one exercise, students worked together wordlessly to create shapes to be viewed by an imaginary overhead camera. (Photos by Lisa Yelon) |
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While training at Juilliard has continually evolved in its remarkable hundred years, the pace of change has quickened. When I ask alumni of even a generation ago what it was like to study at Juilliard, they remark on how different they hear it is now. Their comparisons range widely—from "it sounds so much easier since you got the residence hall" to "students have it so much harder today; all we had to do was practice and get better." Whether the comparison casts today's students as heroes or wimps, the impression is accurate and universal: the process of becoming a great artist is changing fast.
There is another accurate impression growing widely across the conservatory field. A few years ago, I led a conference called the Assembly of Conservatory Leaders, hosted by the Kenan Institute in North Carolina. It brought together leaders from the major U.S. conservatories (Joseph Polisi was there along with eight others), key arts funders, and leaders of national arts service organizations like the American Symphony Orchestra League, Chamber Music America, and Theater Communications Group. For three days, we searched for common ground in our exploration of the essentials of training a 21st-century artist. There were agreements and disagreements. They agreed that the technical training of artists is being accomplished at a higher level in American conservatories today than at any time in history. This high level is more widespread than ever before; there are a lot of places to get solid training. At the same time, there is an increasing scarcity of employment for this expanding pool of highly competent talent. For me, the landmark recognition among these conservatory leaders was that there is an emerging set of additional skills that are essential to build successful careers, and that conservatories are only beginning to discover how to address these extra skills.
Living a life in the arts is changing fast. Many people still have a sense of a "typical career" for a musician: graduate with a master's degree, get an orchestral job, get a better orchestral job, and then get the orchestral job you want and keep, do that and other more interesting musical work till you retire. Fewer than 10 percent of Juilliard music students will have a career that even vaguely resembles that—and no actors or dancers will follow a predictable path. All young artists, even those trained at Juilliard (which is about as good as it gets), will have careers that require flexibility, entrepreneurial skills, artistic resilience, multiple ways of earning income, teaching skills, communication (oral and written) skills, emotional stamina, and irrepressible curiosity and imagination. A generation ago, Juilliard's training barely took such necessities into consideration, except in the one-on-one conversations that sometimes popped up with studio faculty. As Ira Rosenblum (M.M. '76, piano), who is now director of publications, put it succinctly: "In my years here at Juilliard, I heard not one word about anything to do with my career apart from being onstage." Careers took care of themselves—musical skills were all we needed to focus on in the training of musicians. This has already changed, and greater change is on the way.
In just the last decade, Juilliard has launched the Morse Fellowship program (which combines arts and education), the interdisciplinary exploration in InterArts, the electronic music lab, new outreach programs, and the Mentoring program. A new humanities center is in the pipeline. Other conservatories are expanding their offerings too: Eastman has a focus on the business of careers, New England Conservatory now officially graduates not musicians, but "artist-teacher-scholars."
These changes emerge in response to a changing world for artists, in response to need for artists who embrace the roles of leader, creator, explorer, advocate, as well as fine artist. Let me speak in detail about two programs I have been able to lead at Juilliard that break new ground in providing the training in these "additional skills" in a way that complements and expands the artist's role.
In the Morse Fellowship program, students learn to become teaching artists even as they learn to become artists. They don't intend to become middle-school music teachers; rather, they wish to master the educator's skills to deepen their effectiveness in schools, in community and senior centers, in speaking in general, and in creating education programs for their ensembles. This two-year program has been extremely successful, with graduates making a real mark as leaders in the field. These skills of education do indeed lead directly to rewarding employment as teaching artists (most of the New York Philharmonic's teaching artist faculty are graduates of the Morse Fellowship program), and they certainly lead to imaginative ensemble programs that are widely booked. But there is more.
The education skills these students learn change the way they think as artists. The kinds of questions they learn to ask of themselves, the different ways they come to look at scores and texts, the changed view of audiences and what actually happens in the listening process for most Americans, the broader repertoire of ways to open up music, changes the way they function as artists. Interviewing graduates of this program and working with them as well as many other musicians, I conclude that the skills of teaching artistry make them better artists. They become more than the gifted and skilled artists Juilliard has trained for 100 years; they are models of the 21st-century artist. And they also happen to be happier in their careers, more exploratory and creative, than the musician struggling to find a way into the elusive traditional career track. That is a big discovery—if focused right, the development of these "additional skills" can actually deepen, rather than diffuse, development as an artist.
Similarly, the Mentoring program (of which I am the artistic director) builds one-on-one relationships to change the traditional tunnel-vision training of conservatories. Just a decade ago I heard a Juilliard faculty member say, "Any moment not spent practicing is wasted." That traditional view is fading fast. The two levels of the Mentoring program (faculty mentoring and professional mentoring) nurture the capacity to engage in the big questions of artistic life, to explore widely across disciplines and genres, to gain a personal grasp of the larger issues in art and life that give different meaning to the parts of learning that happen in the studio, practice room, and classroom. Faculty mentoring pairs interested students with faculty members from different disciplines who have been trained as mentors, and together they attend works of art, to engage in dialogue that expands students' thinking and discovering—modeling what a big, curious, passionate life in the arts looks like. Jointly they experience the fun and fulfillment of such a life. There are many downsides to the life of an artist, especially in creating careers in America today; these fine mentors share the profound but usually overlooked upsides.
Students apply for the professional mentoring program with projects that spring from their expansive artistic curiosity. If accepted, students refine their projects with faculty mentors, and then are connected to professionals in the New York arts community who mentor them in the particular projects. For example, last year, senior dance student Luke Wiley choreographed and filmed a site-specific dance, and piano master's student Ching Yun Hu investigated ways to fund and launch a performing arts foundation in Taiwan in 10 years. Students in both the faculty and professional mentoring programs learn, one-on-one, how to open up their understanding of, participation in, and creation of a 21st-century life in the arts. We hear again and again from students that experiences they have had with their mentors, seeing an opera for the first time, learning how to watch modern dance or a Shakespearean play, enhances their work in the studio.
At the threshold of its second century, Juilliard is breaking new ground in this most crucial area for the future—discovering the ways that development of these "extra skills" enhances both artistry and career opportunities. For many years, conservatory training resisted the inclusion of these extras because they took time and focus away from practice. This is beginning to change as the Juilliard community of educators begins to discover ways to expand the reach of artistry, the very definition of what it means to be an artist, without losing the necessary core. This is the way we will grow to develop the artists who will answer the needs of the 21st century. As Gertrude Stein said, "Art isn't everything; it's just about everything."Eric Booth is the author of The Everyday Work of Art and editor of Teaching Artist Journal. |
