Every summer, dozens of professional musicians descend on Durango for the three-week Music in the Mountains festival, which ends Sunday. But how do they make a living the rest of the year in a profession where orchestras are closing doors or tightening their payrolls, even as hundreds and even thousands of talented classical musicians are graduating with higher levels of training than ever before?
On the face of it, the situation sounds dire for up-and-coming musicians, entering a fast-changing industry that may be unrecognizable in 20 years. It’s highly competitive, but it’s not impossible to make it as a classical musician, those in the know say.
“First, it’s a myth that there are fewer classical orchestras,” said Guillermo Figueroa, music director of Music in the Mountains, who’s seen a sea change since graduating from the esteemed Juilliard School for dance, drama and music in New York City. “There are more than there were 50 years ago. But it’s so different now for young musicians than when I was attending Juilliard in the early 1970s, when all we worried about was learning to play as well as possible. Now they have to be so versatile and know how to market themselves.”
Wondering about the future
Young musicians wonder about the future of their profession.
“That’s something we talk about all the time,” said violinist Phillip Kramp, 26, who plays in the Festival Orchestra. “We’re trying to be very proactive, getting out to schools, building audiences.”
Kramp is half of a musical couple after love bloomed with flutist Sarah Frisof at Music in the Mountains three years ago. They faced the challenge of not only finding work, but trying to find it in the same geographical area. This fall will be the first time the couple, who both studied at some of the most prestigious schools in the country, will be working as close as neighboring states, with only 45 minutes driving time between their respective jobs.
Frisof is starting a tenure-track teaching career at the University of Kansas at Lawrence this fall after teaching at the University of Texas at Arlington. Kramp is starting a full-time position with the Kansas City (Mo.) Symphony after spending the first two years of his professional career substituting for The Philadelphia Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic.
“It was hard, living paycheck to paycheck, always waiting for a call to audition for an orchestra,” he said. “But I was really lucky to get on the substitute lists for great orchestras.”
Both told stories of competing either for positions in orchestras or teaching at the college level, where several hundred applications were received for every opening.
“They may invite a hundred or so to audition,” Frisof said.
Cobble together a career
Greg Hustis wears many hats, including those of artistic director at Music in the Mountains and professor at Southern Methodist University.
“To succeed, they still have to be talented with a work ethic that doesn’t stop,” he said he tells his students. “They also have to be able to cobble together a career by doing a little of this and a little of that, and be able to do it all well.”
Leader of the band
If the competition for regular spots in an orchestra is fierce, being named music director of an orchestra is a battle royal, particularly for introductory positions.
Philip Mann, 35, who grew up in Durango and was named a Rhodes Scholar to study conducting at Oxford, now is music director of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra in Little Rock and guest conducts around the world about 20 weeks each year.
Many of the friends he studied with have not found comparable niches, and he estimates that the number of young people graduating with degrees in conducting each year is in the hundreds.
“The math doesn’t add up,” said Mann, who is home visiting family. “For my first job, a fellowship (as associate conductor) with the San Diego Symphony, there were 1,000 applicants, all with postgraduate degrees, and all had a reasonable shot at landing that job.”
Figueroa experienced the turmoil in the classical music profession when the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, where he was music director for a decade, closed its doors in 2010 amid the economic downturn. In his case, a reputation as a conductor and a renowned violinist helped him land a new position as music director of the Lynn Philharmonia and professor of violin at the Lynn Conservatory in Boca Raton, Fla.
“They only saw me,” Figueroa said. “They liked me, and they hired me.”
But in the three years between “day jobs,” as Hustis calls them, Figueroa kept the mortgage paid by performing, guest conducting and founding the Figueroa Music and Arts Project in Albuquerque. Because of his experience and connections, he could get those jobs, but Figueroa worries about regular symphony musicians and what they do if their jobs go away.
Keep studying
There are reasons to study music beyond a professional career.
“Studying great music enriches your life more than anything,” Kramp said. “It enhances critical-thinking skills, patience, attention to detail, social skills and working with diverse groups of people.”
Mann said he often finds himself torn between encouraging talented young people to study for the sheer love of music and advising them to go for a double major “just in case.”
Technology, globalization and the sheer size of the audience for the diversity of music available today present new opportunities, said Arkady Fomin, artistic director of Conservatory Music in the Mountains and New Conservatory of Dallas.
“People have not stopped wanting to hear great music,” Figueroa said in agreement.
As proof, the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra has had three consecutive years of record-breaking attendance under Mann’s direction.
“I think this is an exciting time in classical music, with more music being written than ever before,” Mann said. “Beethoven didn’t have the talent available you’ll find in a small regional orchestra today. And with all these talented musicians, it means even a small orchestra like Arkansas can do extraordinary things.”
abutler@durangoherald.com
Music in the Mountains bios (PDF)
