Dr. Barry and Vocalisters:
Your comments about the effect of a young singer winning a contest, having a lot of career encouragement from those running the contest, and the resultant negative influence on the singer is not uncommon in my experience.
A contest must be able to advertise success for its winners if it is to be viable. It is a rare contest that has a concern beyond this self serving one.
I am afraid the same can be said for most music conservatories and schools of music. They all tend to be "bottom line" oriented. Product before process is their philosophy.
But if one studies the success of almost any great performer it becomes obvious that sooner or later the individual must take stock and become concerned with the "how" of preparing for a career or a performance. The development of technique and the growth of the individual personality is necessary if the native performance "gift" is to be realized. This can be achieved without a formal education, of course, but the supposed purpose of educational institutions is to provide a climate in which that "process" can be achieved. Woe to any institution that sells out to the bottom-line-product at the expense of the process necessary to achieve that product.
We in institutional education need, above all, to guard ourselves from this "devils slide" into creating a product that can be purchased by a consumer student. Students are not consumers.
Students are producers. No one in the business world treats consumers and producers as one and the same. Producers are never considered as those who buy a product but rather as creative individuals in whom process will develop into a product as a natural outcome of the very being of the individual. This is what education is supposed to be about. Anything else is merely training.
Lloyd W. Hanson, DMA Professor of Voice, Pedagogy School of Performing Arts Northern Arizona University Flagstaff, AZ 86011
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