The Sometimes Tenuous Link Between the Arts and Arts Education

A well known figure in arts philanthropy once said to me that there are many artists who shouldn’t go into schools.

Fair enough.

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That being said, still, I was quite struck by the fact that the negotiations between Detroit Symphony management and the musicians had as a sticking point the issue of making work in the community, including schools, a more formal part of what defines an official service.

Here’s an excerpt from the Detroit Symphony musicians website:

There are many misconceptions out there about
education and community outreach as it relates to the Detroit Symphony
Orchestra. We, the musicians, have always done community outreach and
education in many forms, both individually and with the DSO. Since the
current management team has been here, we have done less and less. That
is not our choice. We are not in any way opposed to community outreach.

If you have been following our own self-produced
concerts, you have seen that we have been out in the community since
September. Our thirteen concerts have been performed to large audiences
in churches and schools throughout the Detroit metro area. As
performers, we have been within a few feet of our audience and it has
been as thrilling for us as it has been for them. Also we have talked
with many, many supporters of classical music. We have been actively
engaged with teachers, students and the community members about what
they want from the DSO. And we believe that instead of imposing our own
ideas or executives’ ideas about what should take place, our neighbors
and supporters across the region know best about their needs. We respect
their desires and urge the executives at the DSO to join us in
providing real community outreach by making the full orchestra available
as a vehicle for reaching and teaching a wider audience as well as the
next generation of students becoming world-class musicians.

We’d like to extend an invitation to DSO
management, concerned board members, and any other donors to our concert
at Groves High School on February 16th at 7 pm. This concert is the
culmination of just one of our education and community outreach efforts
made by the musicians of the DSO. This event promises to be a most
inspiring experience for performers and audience alike. Please join us
as we present one vision of a highly effective, future DSO Education and
Community Outreach program.

So, here’s an orchestra on the brink, in a city on the brink. And the question of whether or not a service could be a performance in the community/schools, and who determines the validity of the service, is something being argued about.

And at the very same time we have NEA Chair Rocco Landesman encouraging the arts field to do more education as a matter of survival, while Kennedy Center President, Michael Kaiser, tells the field that our problems are due to a lack of artistic vision, courage, and quality.

Okay, as in most things, there a bit that’s right and a bit that’s wrong in all of this.

But, you’ve gotta admit, it’s quite the whiplash.

The issues with the Detroit Symphony led me to recall a my work as an arts education consultant in the mid-90s. We had among our client list a sizable number of symphony orchestras from the Big Five to many smaller orchestras.

My story focuses on one in particular, for the sake of a productive blog entry, let’s call this orchestra, Orchestra Baby Boomer (OBB) (I would have chosen Orchestra X, but there is such an entity, I believe, based in Texas).

I had worked with OBB to develop a new comprehensive arts education program, including in-depth partnerships with a group of local public schools, a sequential and substantial curriculum intended to dovetail with existing curricula in other subjects, a wide range of resources provided to all classrooms, visits from the music director and other artistic leaders, concerts at OBB’s concert venue, concerts by the full OBB at the school, professional development for teachers, a sizable assessment program, and classroom residencies by OBB artists, all of whom were receiving training by us to help them integrate with the program goals/structure, while helping to advance their overall skills as teaching artists.

In many ways, the program was a sort of Rolls Royce, and it was particularly noteworthy for the fact that all of the artistic leadership was participating directly. None of the let’s reserve the education work for the assistant conductor sort of stuff.

Now, as a bit of context setting, I would like to point out that I knew a fair number of the New York Philharmonic musicians who performed for the venerated Young People’s Concerts with Leonard Bernstein.

While many people view those programs as a sort of golden age for arts education and orchestras–televised orchestra education programs on commercial television, led by a dynamic music director with a gift for commitment and gift for communicating to children and youth–t would be fair to say that the musicians I knew from the New York Phil viewed children’s concerts as something second rate. There was a sort of natural disdain unmistakable when they said: “We have to play a kiddie concert this afternoon.”

Okay, back to Orchestra Baby Boomer.

Among the musicians I helped to prepare for the series of classroom visits by OBB artists, were two French horn players. I thought that our work together went very well, and I had the chance a month or two later to observe them in action in a classroom.

I thought these two players did a terrific job. They were well prepared, communicated extremely well with the students and each other, engaged the teachers, were clearly connected to what was happening before their visit and cognizant of what was to follow. Most important, the kids were clearly engaged, and well, I thought to myself that this was about as positive a classroom environment for teaching artists as I had ever encountered.

The kids were fully prepared, already knowing much of the basics about music and orchestra literacy, including the instruments, the composers being performed, who the players were, who the music director was, and much more. The kids had prepared some of their own materials including the instruments they created and music they had brought in for their own sound museum.

It made me think back to some of my early days as a teaching artists where I often encountered the exact opposite, which created a series of formidable challenges requiring you to explain so very much in order to establish some sort of basic shared context.

So, to make a long story short, I thought these two players were very lucky indeed. And you know what, I was feeling pretty darn good about it all.

And then came the time to talk with the players afterward, for us to share our feedback with each other.

And then, bang, it happened: the principal horn of Orchestra Baby Boomer said to me, “why do the big guns have to do this work?”

Utterly confused (think Beavis), I replied: “excuse me?”

He repeated what he had just said, and added, essentially, that he didn’t see why he, as principal horn, had to perform in a classroom, and that while he didn’t mind the children’s concerts at the concert hall, this was basically beneath him.

I was stunned. Not the least of which because of all the seemingly positive work I had just witnessed.

Ultimately, what was being said was that the value system of this artist only recognized work from the main stage, and that anything off the main stage didn’t have value–the main stage meaning a formal concert from a stage with a traditional setup for the audience.

The thing that I found most difficult to swallow about all of this was that the kids in that classroom were deeply engaged, all of them, as well as the teacher. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was the setting.

To be honest, I didn’t see much point in arguing. What the artist wanted most from me was to argue his case with managment, the case that the big guns should not have to do such work; that ultimately, it was beneath them.

Am I criticizing the Detroit Symphony musicians for what on the surface appears to be a resistance to service conversion? Service conversion basically means that a service required by the orchestra as part of its contract with the musicians would be extended to include education/community concerts/residencies, etc., and that such activities could substitute for formal concerts and rehearsal. In other words traditional services. I realize that’s a rather simplified statement, that leaves out the nuances of how many services can be converted, etc., but still, that is what’s at the heart of it.

So, am I criticizing it? Not necessarily. I understand it, both as a negotiating issue and in a cultural/historical context. There are those who see each change like this as part of a death by a thousand cuts. In this case it’s the death of what has come to define a top tier orchestra in America.

While I will reserve any criticism for what is a very difficult situation in Detroit, I will offer instead my sadness for the continuing divide between education and the arts, and of course, for the cancellation of the remainder of the Detroit Symphony’s season.

Most of the time I write about the divide it in terms of arts education failing to find its footing in the larger world of public K-12 education. This time it’s different, it’s arts education failing to find its footing within the field of the arts, and for that I am saddened.