IN A CHANGING MUSIC WORLD, EASTMAN’S DEAN LOOKS TO MEET THE
CHALLENGES
Eastman, and was executive associate dean from 2007 until September 2013. Following the illness and resignation of former dean Douglas Lowry (who died in October), he was named interim dean of the school. Rossi, a saxophonist and professor of woodwinds, oversaw the $47 million renovation of the Eastman Theatre and construction of the Eastman East Wing. He also founded RocMusic, a partnership of arts and education institutions in Rochester to provide a free afterschool music program for Rochester inner-city students. In a recent interview in his office, Rossi talked about the rapid evolution in the music world and how Eastman will charge straight into that future. Following is an edited version of that conversation. CITY: In your speech last week, you talked about the changing face of the classical music world and about Eastman needing to be innovative. Tell us more about your thoughts on the classical music world and where Eastman fits into that world.
When I think about where we’re heading, it’s important to start with where we are today. Quite frankly, I think the school is absolutely remarkable. It is one of the great schools of music in the world; there’s nothing broken. We have the most remarkable faculty; we have truly remarkable students. We have great
programs. Our undergraduate, our master’s, our doctoral degrees: these are the bedrock upon which most music degrees in the country have been built. Things are really healthy and very, very good. But there is no doubt that the classical music world is changing. It’s always changing; it always has been. I hope it always does. It’s changed in ways that are scary, and we saw in the last five years the number of symphony orchestras, opera companies, or other cultural institutions that have really struggled, and some have even closed their doors. With symphony orchestras shrinking in size, closing their doors, where do you feel the classical world stands today? What are the struggles they face to reach audiences?
It’s interesting, because when we talk about the classical musical world, that’s like talking about “the faculty” or “the students,” as if there is only sort of one body. But just as I look at our faculty and say there’s not just “a faculty” – I have 100 full-time faculty, all whom are very different and unique in their own ways and special – when we think of the traditional classical music areas, the first thing we think about are symphonies and operas. There is no doubt they have faced financial pressures in the past few years, most of them stemming from the economic troubles of 2008.
There was a bit of a perfect storm which impacted corporate giving, individual philanthropy, ticket sales, all of those things together threatened the financial vibrancy of a lot of institutions. But we would be foolish to think that the RPO or any other group has not had financial struggles in the past. It’s part of what goes on.
us in the future? It’s not necessarily saying that we’re going to change our direction, because we’re not; we’re still going to keep our focus on artistry and excellence. So those are the kinds of things we have responded to, and I think by and large it’s been both exciting and healthy to do that.
How did it affect the Eastman School?
Are there specific programs that you want to implement?
Our sources of revenue are primarily our tuition and our endowment. So like every other institution, every higher education institution, when that stock market trouble came, it impacted the value of the endowment, which ultimately means there’s less money to support the day-to-day operations. That put us in a challenging situation of saying, “How are we going to continue doing what we want to do if there’s less money?” At least for a period of years. It does come back and in fact has come back. It forced us to think about: What are additional sources of revenue that we could think about? How do we use technology for that? How can technology help solve this? Are there projects there that can further our mission, increase our visibility and create some revenue for us? If tuition is one of the keys of revenue, are there degree programs that might attract a different kind of student that might not have looked at us in the past but might look at
There are degree programs that we started formulating this year and will launch next year and the year after. We started with what we were calling a Bachelor of Music in Convergent Media. When you read the New York Times and see the groups that are really thriving on stage, they tend to be doing more than just music, or just dance. Our own students today take on these projects outside the curriculum because they’re intrigued by it. And so they do these amazingly creative things that I would have never conceived of. That has morphed into three degrees. One we’ve had on the books for years is a degree in Jazz and Contemporary Media. We have an amazing jazz program, but we haven’t really engaged in contemporary media. Even in the area of composition, our students study jazz composition, but we want to re-enliven film scoring, writing for games, writing for digital media. A second is a degree that we’ve had, but no one really knew about it, called the Bachelor of Musical Arts. This is for a student that has come to Eastman and they realize once they’re here, “You know, I came to be a trumpet player, but there’s so much more that I want to do.” We enabled students to really create their own degree. They still continues on page 12
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