St. Louis Conservatory of Music kicks 200 Music Students and Teachers to the curb.
The sad ending to a truly great music school in the American Heartland, St. Louis, MO.
One of the most profound and devastating days in my musical life was in 1990, an otherwise beautiful Friday morning before a welcome “Spring Break” week at the St. Louis Conservatory of Music. This day would anger and motivate me in ways that were previously unimaginable. The newly-appointed President of the Conservatory called for a sudden school assembly meeting in our concert hall to inform the student body and faculty that there would no longer be a Conservatory of Music in St. Louis and that we would be allowed to finish out the rest of the academic year with our private teachers and remain in our regularly scheduled (and paid for) academic classes…. But that would be it. He said that the Conservatory Model was “ECONOMICALLY UNFEASIBLE” and that the school was “LOSING MONEY AT AN ALARMING RATE.” At that moment, I was heartbroken and devastated. I loved my teachers and was planning to stay another year at The Conservatory. I was just starting to gain employment as a substitute musician with the St. Louis Symphony under Maestro Leonard Slatkin’s direction, and I also had launched a small teaching job at a local music store to help make ends meet. This was not too bad for a young musician trying to pay his own way through a very demanding undergraduate degree course! Things had just started to look up when the news hit all of us like a ton of bricks.
What happened next was pure chaos, but before I describe the mass exodus of faculty and students from the city of St. Louis, allow me to provide some background information from my humble perspective. First of all, I believe that the vast majority of the people who serve on board of trustees/directors/governors for non-profit organizations are great and generous individuals. However, this incident and subsequent incidents have proven to me that it only takes a few bad apples to spoil and destroy an entire institution.
Even in the 1990s Arts Academia, one could easily witness the ideology of Corporate America vs. “the working class.” The President, Vice President and Administrative Deans were vastly overpaid. Meanwhile, Full-time Professors with Doctorate Degrees were barely making a livable wage, and the Adjunct Professors were paid at a an hourly rate that was truly insulting for their professional status and high credentials. I have nothing against automobile mechanics, construction workers, plumbers… but let it be known that Adjunct Professors in Music Education at the Collegiate level are STILL paid at a substantially lower rate than any trade professional with minimal credentials. This was true in 1990 and it remains the truth in 2016. And the students?! We all paid $18,000 in tuition and fees for the privilege of getting kicked out of the St. Louis Conservatory in 1990. Today’s American music students at the top Music Schools pay upwards of $50,000 – $70,000 each year in tuition and fees and the going rate for an entry level violin, viola or cello begins at $75,000 – $100,000.
If one were to factor in the enormous costs of a musical education and then spend a lifetime fighting an ideological sentiment that regards performing artists strictly in terms of numbers and employee institutional costs, it’s easy to figure out how misunderstanding and combative feelings can become prevalent between arts administrators and the actual artists. On a personal level, I have endured many years of a professional life accompanied by a sadly inept and unprofessional Arts Administration parade led by incompetent management individuals and more than a few nefarious characters serving as “Trustees” and/or board of directors/governors. This ongoing struggle has chiseled me into a hardened and extremely cautious artist.
Back to the School Closure: This was a surgical termination and not something that just “suddenly happened.” First, the timing of the announcement was ominous, which was late in the afternoon on the Friday before Spring Break. Silence seems to be the best ally for people who wish to commit unsightly acts under the radar of scrutiny, and if the president could time an announcement with the fewest number of people to be present and do anything about it, then his timing was impeccable. More than half of the school had already vacated for the academic respite and our concert hall was half full for the (very bad news). A press announcement was organized for the following day on Saturday morning and I was there to witness the President relay a tale that I would continue to hear for the remainder of my professional life… “The Students and Faculty of the Conservatory of Music are simply not providing enough resources for a model of FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY.”
Let it be known that the St. Louis Conservatory and every other arts organization I’ve had the privilege of representing has been a Non-Profit Organization.
How to ruin a Non-Profit Conservatory of Music…
Let’s go back to the year before the closure, which was 1989. The Conservatory was a very good school with incredible faculty including many international stars that the students truly respected and admired. We had a good and decent president that was replaced by the board of governors with our new president. The new president was hired to talk about bold artistic visions and shut down the school. He was specifically hired to shut us down and get rid of us. For those of you who are paying attention, that is how you ruin a Non-Profit Conservatory of Music. It’s really that simple.
The Conservatory had everything going for it, except for one thing. It could not compete with the other half of the school which was called “The School of the Arts.” This School of the Arts was a large Early Music Education Program (Suzuki and other methodologies) for young violinists and pianists, ages 3-12 with wealthy parents that could afford the tuition fees for their young children. The School of the Arts wasn’t a higher education Non-Profit Organization. IT MADE MONEY! That was the difference. The Conservatory (college age kids with student loans trying to make ends meet and pursue a career in culture) wasn’t making money and the School of the Arts (for young children and their rich parents) was making A LOT of money. I think certain people on our board of governors at the time saw this as a “business model” and decided to get rid of our old president and hire a new president that would understand their one-sided financial aesthetic.
This new president was truly bad news and ushered in an immediate and tangible dark cloud that raised many eyebrows in the faculty, but who was largely ignored by the students. I can’t blame the students for our ignorance at the time because we were there for one reason and one reason only, to practice and hone our skills for a fleeting chance at future employment as professional musicians. There were banners on the streets featuring The Conservatory the year before and suddenly they were absent for the many months leading up to the closure. There was an annual wine auction that directly supported The Conservatory that was oddly absent during the closure year. The already meager marketing department was reduced to shambles and our audiences began to dwindle. Our relevance in the community was being systematically and surgically reduced. Yes, our new president was doing an OUTSTANDING job at making sure our school would close swiftly and without any reluctance from an unknowing and uncaring general public. After all, if the president of the Conservatory makes a press conference statement that The Conservatory is no longer financially feasible, who would care to argue with that? It was determined by our Trustees (board of governors) that if the closure could fly under the radar, that they would not be villainous, but actually heroic for providing financially feasible “education” for the St. Louis community!
Fast forward to the week of Spring break… I was upset and angry. The students were fleeing, trying to gain access to auditions at other schools. Keep in mind that auditions for schools happen in January and February, so the entire student body was desperate. In hindsight, this too was part of the plan because if a school closure announcement can be delayed as long as possible, then there is really no way to save it. I’m confident that the students would have wanted to try to save their school, but when you’re given a last minute “heave ho,” you just have to scramble and look out for yourselves. I was able to secure a very charitable audition at The Juilliard School, which probably changed the course of my career. However, at the time I was upset and I wanted to do something, and since I had the entire Spring break to organize the few students that were still in St. Louis, we actually did something quite remarkable, which was to take on the marketing and administrative responsibilities on our own shoulders. We made flyers and delivered news throughout The City announcing THE FINAL ORCHESTRA CONCERT OF THE ST. LOUIS CONSERVATORY. We made phone calls, wrote letters, and we made it known that we were hurting, dejected and that we needed the community support to give us and our beloved faculty a suitable and well-deserved send off from The City. Basically, we did the job of managing and marketing our final concert by ourselves and we were motivated to pack our concert hall to the maximum.
The concert was indeed packed to capacity with a record breaking institutional attendance. The students made a huge success for themselves and their faithful teachers.. and the people of St. Louis stood up and took notice. The end result was a life-changing lesson for the students that not only would they need to practice their instruments and fully commit to their art, but that they would also have to do their own marketing and substantiate their value in the community by themselves. The idea that artists could rely on artistic management/employers to provide the support and links to the community and good-hearted and well-intended trustees/board members was gone forever. Incidentally, this is precisely why artists and musicians continue to give directly and generously to their communities, often without remuneration. Please read about a recent event featuring the Musicians of the Chicago Symphony and the Greater Chicago Food Depository at the end (Epilogue of this story) as an example of what is needed for artists to make positive and lasting connections with their communities.
What happens next? What happens when the young artists and teachers leave?
I feel that the following is the most interesting part of this story…
The board of governors and the new president lost a substantial endowment to the St. Louis Symphony because the students discovered specific language in the rules of the endowment. The language stated that if the St. Louis Conservatory ever lost their academic accreditation, that The St. Louis Symphony would instead receive the endowment. This made our president and board of governors very upset. Their plan was to keep this endowment and have a “collegiate faculty” of a husband and wife team (in cahoots with the president) to stay behind and teach violin and voice lessons to a student body of less than eight students, thereby satisfying the endowment requirements AND adding more resources to the “financially sound” School of the Arts (remember the young children with the wealthy parents?).
What happened next is something that you won’t believe if I told you a million times, but it’s absolutely true. The new president called me into his office and stated that he was “impressed with my abilities to rally the public and student body.” He said, “You have a promising career in arts management.” He encouraged me to give up my hopes and dreams of becoming a timpanist, and said to me, “You should be in arts management because that’s where the money is and even if you do succeed as a musician, there will be nothing left in the arts except for museums, such as THE CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA.”
Yes, he actually said that to me. Yes, it made me angry. Yes, it motivated me. And Yes, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is a vibrant, thriving cultural institution and a beacon of light and inspiration for the city of Chicago and indeed a worldwide highly respected resource for great culture. It is far far far from “a museum” and I hope to God that it will NEVER become a museum.
In conclusion, nothing has ever motivated me more than being told that I can’t do something, especially when it’s something that I hold in my heart with great importance and unending value. I have worked my entire life to perform music at the highest possible level. The music I have learned and the education that comes with the journey is something that nobody can ever take away from me. I continue to learn much about humility and the importance of being grateful, humble and generous. My failures and successes have allowed me to become a better person. Lastly, as a teacher, I am fortunate to be able to communicate inspiration and passion for truly great music to future generations of musicians, letting them know that their dreams ARE possible, no matter what anybody says. Yes, I am the Principal Timpanist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, but more importantly, I am a Chicago Symphony Musician.
The benefit concert for the Greater Chicago Food Depository given June 13 was an enormous success. The performance in the Studebaker Theater had over five hundred tickets sold, with an additional one hundred music students and employees of the Food Depository attending as guests. After expenses, the net proceeds to the GCFD were $37,482. They were presented with the check on July 27 at their facility. Staff at the GCFD were extremely grateful. They stated that this gift is the equivalent to 100,000 meals, or funding for an entire year for one school in their innovative School Market program, which brings parents in need into CPS schools to receive food for their families. Kate Maehr, Executive Director of the GCFD, stated that our concert had a great effect on their spirit, they truly felt uplifted.
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