(This letter from Sara Lambert Bloom reached a number of double reed artists; the list that follows is the membership of the panel who will enter into discussion with her at this summer's convention ... ).
Dear Friends,
Please excuse the Xerox format-I have so much information to communicate ... it seems to be the only choice!
Perhaps first I should flesh out my concept of this "panel" on career development which we have assembled for the International Double Reed Society conference in Baton Rouge on Friday, August 10, 1990. Panels don't usually consist of 20 or more experts! Let's view it more like a "summit." It is certainly a time of change in the profession; career opportunities are very different, funding for the arts in America in the midst of a big upheaval. We want both to influence the decisions of the next decade and to keep ourselves informed of them so that we can gear our own activities and that of our pupils in a more productive way. I have tried to select panelists from our oboe/bassoon colleagues representing the entry level, midcareer, and grandfather categories (I'll let you decide just where you fall!) and to include careers which cover the gamut, so to speak.
The morning of the 10th will be spent in a general session which we will call "Career Development: Generating the Art." It will run from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. with no other conference activities scheduled against it, so expect from 300-600 eager pairs of ears in attendance. I plan to have all 20 of us seated at a rostrum, sharing microphones. I will, however, keep a rather strict schedule and ask each of you to speak approximately 5 minutes with little or no audience participation. I would like a nice mixture of approaches from you: certain ones should pack a lot of specific information on one topic into your presentation (e.g., how to produce a recording, state arti st- in -education program, etc.) and others should make a "state-of- the-art" type of summary statement. Feel free to write out your remarks and read them (it may be a good idea to reproduce these written statements for distribution at a later date) or speak off the cuff. Please prepare written material with specific information (names and addresses of people and program, etc.) if you can. Send these "hand-outs" to Mark and Bill at LSU by June 15th and they will have them duplicated.
We have also invited a program specialist from Chamber Music American in New York and from the National Endowment for the Arts to take part. I will give each of these experts time in the morning to outline programs and funding available through their auspices; in the afternoon each will be available for private 10-15 minute appointments with anyone who wishes to sign up. Through Bert Lucarelli we have made contact with Sondra Myers, Cultural Advisor to the Governor of Pennsylvania. Sondra is involved at a national level with the move towards establishing a cabinet-level office in the arts and humanities in the federal government. She describes herself as "a tenacious advocate and activist committed to a rather ambitious goal: the integration of cultural policy into the agenda of state and national government in the United States."
After a break for lunch we will hold three successive one-hour question and answer sessions, breaking down the topics into:
1) Solo and chamber music performance: forming an ensemble, winning competitions, designing residencies, building a series, touring, using the media, recording, etc. We will include ensemble residencies and artist-in-education programs in this category even though they involve teaching because they are obtained generally through performance-oriented activities.
2) Teaching: auditioning for and maintaining the university studio, doing private teaching in the elementary and high schools, and developing a private studio at home. Ironically, pedagogy is not the focus here, but rather the performance profile one must develop and maintain to be engaged as a teacher and the process of being renewed (RPT).
3) Orchestral positions (both contract and freelance): auditioning for and maintaining the orchestral career and (LA) studio work (tenure, contracts, concerto appearances, release time, etc.)
I realize that most of you have careers that cross all three categories. Could you try to choose the one in which you would be most effective as a panelist. (You may attend all three sessions but participate in only one.)
I have such a good feeling from our phone conversation about the eagerness to share information and help bring some focus to the concerns we all grapple with each day. Thank you for your willingness to participate and I look forward to some serious, honest evaluations of the current state of affairs and most important, some wisdom as to how we can shape the future. It goes against the nature of all of us to devote time and energy to things extra-musical. Indeed, I want all of us to enter this discussion with care. To quote the Yale Alumni Magazine (Summer, 1988): "There is one offering Piece (Dean of the Yale School of Art) has no intention of providing for his students. It's the course in resume writing and career strategy that now appears in the catalogues of an increasing number of American art schools. 'It's not that we don't share the student's concerns about today's competitive art world,' he explains. 'If students ask us about those things, we certainly don't turn them away. But courses in self promotion have no place in our curriculum-we're pushing art, not hype.'" Let's start with rejecting hype and work our way cautiously to defining the things we feel we need in order to generate our art given the opportunities and restrictions we will have to work with in the coming decades.
I look forward very much to meeting you all in person and presenting a helpful and inspiring session.
Sincerely,
(s) Sara Lambert Bloom Professor of Oboe
(513) 231-3367 - Home (513) 556-9551 - Studio
OBOISTS ...
Judith Dansker-DePaolo
Susan Eischeide Sharon Faust
Delight Immonen
Stephen Hammer Bert Lucarelli Bo Newsome Harry Sargous Matt Sullivan
Lisa Kosenko
Clara Marchese
Andrea Ridilla
Dan Stolper
BASSOONISTS ...
Hugh Cooper
Yoshi Ishikawa
Michael O'Donovan
George Sakakeeny
Felix Warnock
William Winstead
Norman Herzberg
Frank Morelli
Stephanie Przybylska
John Steinmetz
Arthur Weisberg