(Originally published in Saxophone Today, January/February 2015)
I am pleased to celebrating fifteen years on the faculty at James Madison University, where I have the somewhat unique privilege to serve as an all-purpose saxophone professor, teaching both traditional and jazz styles. It is a very stimulating job, even if the demands of playing and teaching everything at a high level can sometimes be overwhelming. I do my best to set an example to my students as a model of a 21st century musician (I started at JMU in 2000, after all), striving to perform, teach, improvise, and compose in diverse styles and settings. Obviously, there are times when one must temporarily focus on one particular thing at the cost of others, but this game of plate spinning is a fairly realistic analogue of the life of the contemporary entrepreneur-musician.
So, I was more than a little interested when I discovered that the College Music Society had appointed a Task Force on the Undergraduate Music Major. Even more exciting, the team would be made up of a diverse group of university professors that includes Ed Sarath, internationally renowned expert of creativity and consciousness and Professor of Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation and the University of Michigan. I’ve been a great fan of Ed, since I saw him conduct UM’s Creative Arts Orchestra in the mid-1990s. Ed Sarath’s presence on such a task force indicated a willingness of the College Music Society to include some progressive perspectives in the discussion.
The report was published in November of 2014, and it is not surprising that it has turned out to be a thought provoking document. Without claiming to be a panacea for the future, the report manages to make some very strong points about the condition of music in the academy, and it provides a launching point for reinventing what it means to study music. Rather than paraphrasing everything in the report, I encourage you to read it for yourself at the following URL:
My own perspective, forged by 25 years of combined collegiate study and teaching, is very much inline with the report. Personally, I find the references to the “21st century improviser-composer-performer” a particularly compelling notion. Of course, this polymathic model of musicianship is equal parts stepping forward and looking back. It should not be controversial to say that no respectable conservatory would dare present a curriculum that failed to place sufficient emphasis on the mastery of J. S. Bach. His music sits at the very foundation of the Western tradition. Bach is well known as a prolific composer, but in his time, he was primarily known for his prowess as an organist. He was also a virtuosic improviser, able to invent three part fugues on the spot. Mozart and Beethoven are also fine examples of revered composers that were known in their lifetimes as genius performers and improvisers.
As a student, I spent significant time studying the compositions of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, but their abilities as performers sat far in the background, and their talents for improvisation remained a mere footnote. There was certainly no curricular pathway presented to me for this kind of mastery, and I attended some of the best schools around. The academy has primarily separated these skills into discrete areas. Frankly, my pursuit of these three areas (performing, composing, and improvising) made it difficult for me to fit in, and frequently made me more of a misfit. It took me five years to complete an undergraduate degree in jazz studies, mainly because I insisted on studying more classical music and performing in more classical ensembles than my program required. As I continually studied the composer-improviser-performers of the past, none of this irony slipped by me. These great masters, the ones whose shoulders are used to hold up the conservatory itself as very models of the art, these legends are actually treated as aberrations. If you wish to be a performer, a composer, or an improviser (and improviser usually means jazz only), there are very specific degrees for you. But from a practical standpoint, there is no degree in becoming Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven.
There are many ways of looking at this problem, and every individual will have a bias that is unique to their specialty. For example, I fully concede that my own opinions are hopelessly married to my commitment to the improviser-composer-performer paradigm. A non-improvising performer might view improvisation with suspicion, and a non-performing composer could easily doubt the performer-composer. Conductors frequently become specialized to the point of leaving their instrument behind, to focus more completely on their chosen specialty. There is undoubtedly a huge amount of truth in the assertion that specializing in any one musical area is a tremendous achievement; If it was easy, we wouldn’t have room for these specialists, as they would be pushed out of the market by the inevitable masters of everything. This is clearly not the case!
In the jazz saxophone world, we have legendary improviser-composer-performers such as John Coltrane, Michael Brecker, and even Charlie Parker (although his status as a composer is not quite in the same category, even if it is significant by historical standards). Perhaps Niccolo Paganini was the Michael Brecker of his time, reinventing the technique of the violin through staggeringly virtuoso performances of his original compositions. While these names hold prominent places in musical history, there are plenty of well-known performers that did little, or no composing. Sonny Rollins is hugely important as an improviser, but his compositions are not one anyone would consider particularly innovative - and this does nothing to diminish his place in music history. Stylists like Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett are deeply important, even if they never really composed or improvised, beyond what is required of interpreting the American songbook (again, no small feat!). The career avenues available to orchestral and band musicians are shrinking, but these specialties are still viable, even if they are increasingly competitive. A deep and narrow area of expertise is certainly a gamble, but one can assume that there will always be room at the very top, if one is willing to make considerable sacrifice, and to vie for one of the few spaces in the upper echelon of the field.
If we look at undergraduate curricula of the last century, change certainly has happened over time. A few generations ago, the saxophone was not offered in most conservatories at all. Jazz is also a relatively new possibility for formal study. Most comprehensive music schools today present a wide array of jazz offerings, including doctoral degrees, and the saxophone is widely accepted in traditional and jazz studies. What brought about these changes? The students demanded them. Students will actively seek out opportunities to build the skills that they value, and they will spend their tuition dollars wisely, based on how well a school will potentially meet their needs. In the 1940s, it took incredible vision for the University of North Texas to offer the world’s first jazz degree. When Eastman first offered a graduate jazz curriculum, it was met with tremendous resistance from some of the faculty. In time, those voices became obsolete and it was obvious that Eastman had become a destination for studying jazz. In the 1950s, a number of schools began offering jazz studies and before long, other schools followed suit to remain competitive. Even when change meets heavy resistance from bias that is deeply entrenched in a well-established system, there will come a critical point when things tip in the direction of progress. The teachers of the future are our students, right now. They will bring their 21st century perspective into the academy, and as with saxophone and jazz studies, change will build momentum as these young musicians mature and develop into the collective faculty of tomorrow.
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