Mo’Money: Musical Entrepreneurship Outside The K-12 classroom $$$
Thomas Amoriello Flemington Raritan School District tamoriel@frsd.k12.nj.us
Matthew S. Ablan Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, Charlotte, NC matthew.ablan@cms.k12.nc.us
If you became a public school music educator during the last decade you would know all about post hurricane Katrina gas prices, furloughs, double-dip recessions, the subprime mortgage crisis, balloons, bubbles, real estate price drops, stagflation, and all things which would make an economist’s head spin. Throw in attacks on public education, cuts to arts funding, frozen wages and things may be cutting close to home. If this opening paragraph finds you financially depressed, keep reading because we have a stimulus package for you! When funds are tight many of our non-musical colleagues can be found working a variety of side jobs to make-ends-meet, which may include: tutoring, coaching, waiting tables, stocking shelves, life guards, teaching summer school or even landscaping. Unfortunately for them, many work in fields which are not only outside their degree field, but one in which they have no passion. As musicians we possess a unique set of skills which can earn us $40 plus an hour or up to few hundred dollars for an evening. In recent decades the music industry has been going through a rough patch. There are numerous reasons for this, but the result is the same: declining sales in music, poor live music attendance and waning incomes for musicians at all levels. This downward trend has not gone unnoticed in higher education and colleges/universities are re-thinking how they train music students. A new mode of thought has come forward and many schools now offer classes in “entrepreneurship” as part of the training young musicians receive so that they may compete in the 21st century landscape.
and thoughts about earning income beyond your contracted salary. Today more than ever musicians must become entrepreneurs if they wish to survive and although we are educators, we are musicians first and as such have a marketable skill-set which can be capitalized upon outside of the classroom. Hopefully this article will inspire readers to either get started or re-examine their approach to earning extra income by using their talent and business savvy to fiscally benefit themselves and their families.
Gerald Klickstein
Gerald Klickstein directs Peabody Conservatory’s Music Entrepreneurship and Career Center and is a veteran guitarist, educator and career coach with more than 30 years of experience on the concert stage and in higher education. He believes that “there exist abundant opportunities for well-prepared independent musicians,” but that “many recent graduates struggle as a result of the outdated training they receive.” Whereas, “music schools, in general, equip classical music students for narrowly defined, unlikely roles as full-time orchestra musicians or virtuoso soloists who will be handled by managers.” Furthermore, he sees that “the main thing lacking among applied music graduates is that they aren’t aware of the many ways in which they can create value through their musical abilities, through performing, teaching, directing, contracting, church music and more. By creating value in multiple ways, they can tap diverse income streams and promptly craft sustainable arts careers.”
Various Schools With Music Entrepreneurship Classes Florida State University – Tallahassee, FLA Berklee College of Music - Boston, MA Peabody Institute/John Hopkins – Baltimore, MD San Diego State University - San Diego, CA The University of the Arts in Philadelphia – Philadelphia, PA University of Nebraska – Lincoln, NE Belmont University -Nashville, TN South Dakota State University – Brookings, SD
Most music educators have at some point in their career been paid as working musicians outside the K-12 classroom. The working musician can wear many hats which range from church musician to instrument repair person, but regardless of the path you choose to follow keep in mind any experiences you have outside the classroom can be shared with your students in the classroom. Part of your professional development as a music educator is to have new experiences involving music, and if these experiences earn extra income so much the better!
Though the word “entrepreneur” usually conjures up images of Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Sean “Puffy” Combs and so on, the information in this article is not about trying to appear on the next episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, but are suggestions TEMPO
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JANUARY 2015