Heading Forward at Longy

Lets start with a little dose of brown nosing to get this blog post off to a roll.  I will say that Longy is the first school that I have been at that I am happy with.  That being said, there are somethings I think that could be improved upon.   I will be speaking more on the vocal performance program because that is the program with which I have the most experience.  The biggest change I would like to see is with the seminar class, which I believe is important to the program but I feel that we could use it more for rotating masterclasses and make participation mandatory at every class.  We wouldn't have to even find different rotating artist but could draw from the different voice faculty.  That way we could be exposed to all the different teaching styles of the voice faculty as well as have a greater sense of community of the vocal faculty.  I feel that there are teachers in the vocal performance degree that I do not really know as well as I should. 

I really enjoy the fact that we have a Teaching Artistry Program at Longy and enjoy the experience of putting together an interactive performance.  I do think the program could be shifted and while it might not work it would be interesting in trying it out.  As we progress into the future of classical music and how to keep it alive we need to learn to experiment out in the world with different form of performance.  Instead of it being a performance at the end of the year at a school or nursing home I would take it a step further and make it a just a performance outside of Longy.  One that you as the student sets up by yourself or with a group and tell them to be as creative with the format as possible.  So creative perhaps that it is more about the process of putting together a performance and trying out a new performance format and less about the success of the actual performance.  I hope this is making sense but I feel that one thing we don't get enough chances to bomb as classical musician.  In the other art forms performers, especially comedians, have more opportunities to completely bomb during a performance.  They have the most freedom in their art form because they have the ability to try anything in their performances and its okay if it falls apart.  I feel that if we had this experience with Tap it could help it could help create more freedom in our own art form and take us further into the future. 

When it comes to the languages I feel they should be more intensive throughout our years at Longy.  Foreign languages are so important for vocal performance and I feel the more we can get the better for us in the long run.  The good news is there is nothing that I would want to see removed from the program at Longy, just adjusted.  I am happy to talk further with Dean Chin or anybody about ideas that I would like to see at Longy.  I am always better at further explaining my ideas in person then on paper.