Posted by Nick Marini on June 09, 2000 at 13:47:28:
In Reply to: Euphonium Graduate Schools posted by Dustin Moburg on June 07, 2000 at 21:31:37:
I think you need to ask yourself "What do I want to do for the rest of my life?" Do you want to be a player in a service band? Do you want to teach at the college level? Do you want to be a soloist? Do you want to be a high school band director?
The reason I bring this up is because I feel grad school is not the place to develope, but a place to polish your skills in a specific field. You mentioned how you essentially had no euphonium program at your school. You had no competition, no way to measure your progress and no way to see how you stack up against other players. Well, getting into a masters program in performance will be difficult if you've never experienced competition. Schools like Indiana, Michigan, and North Texas have huge studios and the level is very high. Now, maybe you've done a lot of listening and maybe you've seen some of these players in performance, or you've taken a lesson with a premier band euphonium player and you know what it takes to get in and succeed in a competative environment. If you haven't though, I encourage you to do so.
If you want to teach euphonium at the college level, your level of performance needs to be just as high as if you wanted to win a premier band audition or higher. You need to look for a school with a teacher that will help you polish your skills as a musician. You aslo want to look for a teacher that is more than a coach. You want an educator, some one that understands conceptual education and can apply it in the studio. You also need to consider whether or not the grad school you're looking at will help you get into a DMA or PHD program. Once again, schools like IU, UM, and NTSU are great schools for this career choice, but difficult to get into.
If you want to be a soloist, you need to be a bad-ass. No grad school can do much more for you.
If being a band director is what you want to do, find a school with a good euphonium teacher, a solid music ed. program, lots of playing opportunities, and lots of opportunities for you to conduct. I think Northwestern, Florida State, the University of Maryland, Peabody Conservatory, and Eastman are great for this. I also think they're good choices if you don't want the extreme competative level that you might see at the larger state schools with huge euphonium programs.
Well, I hope this has been helpful and I'm sure you already thought of most of what I had to say. Good luck.