Performance

JUDITH COE, BOARD MEMBER FOR PERFORMANCE

This has been a year of deep reflection and research for me and my Advisory Committee. We focused on how higher education can become an agent for social and cultural change in the arts by creating innovative and entrepreneurial leadership curricula, knowledge and skills, and experience. Many of us were taught within the framework of a traditional and replicative performance pedagogy, but students in this new century are best served through preparation for real world experiences. Michael Drapkin, Founder and Executive Director of The Foundation for Entrepreneurialism in the Arts, points out that US colleges and universities graduate 16,000 music performance majors annually without any significant planning as to their part in the larger role of the arts in our society, especially in a market-driven economy that specifically responds tosupply and demand.

Contemporary music performance students, along with vigorous and broad performance skills, must develop knowledge and skill areas in music business, entrepreneurship, law and intellectual property, and technology learning areas which supplement curricula in traditional music courses and which significantly contextualize and inform a present-day educational experience within a diverse and complex real world market.

Professional concerns

• Developing professional and entrepreneurship skills
• Developing and maintaining an audience for classical and jazz music
• Considerations of music outside the common-practice canon— how do jazz, world music, etc. fit into the current curriculum, and how do these musics fit into a performance curriculum? A theory curriculum?
• Do/should improvisation and creativity be integrated into performance? What are some ways of linking improvisation/ creativity with common practice performance pedagogy?

CMS Assistance

• Developing professional and entrepreneurship skills
• CMS Workshop on entrepreneurship that would follow up on San Francisco panel and address pedagogy and professional practice strategies for both students and performing faculty
• Considerations of music outside the common-practice canon—how do jazz, world music, etc. fit into the current curriculum, and how do these musics fit into a performance curriculum? A theory curriculum?
• Exploring strategies that embrace both tradition and innovation, bringing new ideas into the discourse
• Exploring multidisciplinary and collaborative strategies, across disciplines and customary boundaries

New Initiatives

The CMS Players Initiative is beginning to create a wonderful bridge between composers and performers. In thinking about the broad objectives of this initiative, several auxiliary initiatives seem potentially promising.

• A Virtual Concert Hall which features streamed audio/video clips of CMS Players
• A Performers Showcase which features performers and professionals in an online “promo-pak” environment
• Mentoring/Training in Entrepreneurship skills for CMS Players and CMS performers aspiring to be CMS Players
• Specific workshops in targeted disciplines, offered throughout the year, perhaps as pre-workshops for regional conferences, or stand-alone workshops
• Motivation, marketing, consumer behavior, ability skills and development, ideas, resources, strategies, trends, issues, communication, networking and planning and operations
• Online workshops in targeted disciplines that could be offered 24/7

CMS Recital Exchange Clearing House

• Provides information and networking possibilities and strategies for formal recital exchange programs between CMS performers at institutions across the country
• CMS Performer Workshops that explore multidisciplinary and collaborative teaching and performance strategies, across disciplines and customary boundaries
• Classical, jazz, world and other musics
• Improvisation and creativity

Other concerns or issues

• Performance and pedagogy initiatives in collaboration with other organizations exploring a wider range of musical styles and platforms, including technology