Posted by Alex (long, rambling followup this time) on June 05, 2000 at 07:34:58:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Juilliard and other schools posted by H.J. B. on June 04, 2000 at 22:28:18:
Ok, Julliard is an amazing school. I have a couple t-bone friends there who are nearly perfect players and they love it. I've known a couple tubists going into and coming out of the program and they are wonderful musicians.
What people are probably looking for most in a conservatory is the environment. Being surrounded by so many consistently fine artists can be the best education of all. We are, however talking specifically about tuba and euphonium artists on this bbs, right? One might consider the background of those who have gotten juicy jobs for the past ten or 15 years. There are fewer people in the conservatories simply because of enrollment limits, but the proportion of successful tuba and euph students coming from "traditional" universities is over whelming.
A lot can be said about having so many graduates from certain studios that some success would be inevitable, but we all know what it's felt like lately at the big auditions (I can only speak for military tubists, really). In ten years, will the Fr. Meyer tuba conferences be IU reunions? It's rare that schools like Indiana, Michigan, Cincinnati and more than a handful of other state universities achieve such high levels of educational artistic excellence. It does happen, though. It has been happening since Bill Bell made IU the first tuba hotspot and Winston Morris made the tuba/euph ensemble more than a joke and since perantoni, kaenzig, philips, pilafian, johnson, stees and so many other important teachers started working in non-conservatory schools.
The price tag is a pretty significant factor. Although we, as students with really expensive instruments, are not for the most part poor, I know at least in my case that if I had acatually gotten into the one conservatory to which I applied as and undergrad (not julliard) that it would have demolished all my parent's money. From what I've heard, I also would not have gotten into the comfortable grad school situation because of the skewed education you can get at some of these places. My undergrad school is not a powerhouse, but the tuba instructor covered all the bases and provided a wonderful role-model. At a conservatory I would have probably been eaten alive the first year for not quite bing on my feet yet, but things have worked out pretty well at my little state school and now I get to go to a big state school and hopefully wind up in an orchestra some day, teaching at a conservatory. And I'll have less debts than some collegues.