Education/training
The art of musicThey take music seriously at Humber College. So seriously the school launched a new music degree last year that accepted 67 students into a program based on jazz performance. This year, says Denny Christianson, director of the music program, Humber took 84 students into the Bachelor of Applied Music stream, with another 34 taking the college’s diploma program. |
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 [ 2006-11-15 ] |
Humber students playing with guest instructor Steve Gadd (on drums).
“Traditionally, we’ve always had 800 to 850 applicants for those 118 spots,” Christianson says. “This year we had 1,400 applicants, so only one in every 12 applicants made it into the program.”
The majority of Humber’s music students come straight from high school, Christianson says, although others transfer in from elsewhere. About 80% of Humber’s music students are male. The majority of the women in the program are vocalists.
Auditions
Like all performing arts programs, applicants to Humber’s music programs need the appropriate academic qualifications and have to audition too. “You have to play your way into Humber,” Christianson says. And if they’re accepted, they never stop playing. After all, as Christianson points out, there are 44 student ensembles at Humber.
For the first two years of the program there’s a common curriculum based on performance and theory, but at the end of the second year each degree student chooses to pursue music production or performance-composition. The performance-composition option is self-explanatory, but Christianson stresses that choosing music production at the end of the second year does not mean students learn to become recording engineers.
At the Harris Institute for the Arts in Toronto that’s something students do learn. John Harris, the Institute’s president, says one of his two diploma programs offers music production and the chance to learn all aspects of audio recording. The other program is recording arts management. Both are a year long and have intakes of 40 students every November, March and July.
Harris says 60% to 65% of his students are male, and most of them have some or all of a college or university education. There’s also a distinctly international flavour at the Institute. Harris says in the 17 years he’s been in business he’s had students from 38 countries attend the school. He also notes the employment rate for his graduates is “extremely high.” Among the better known Harris Institute names are David Quilico, v-p at Sony Music Publishing and Dan Broome, v-p operations at True North Records.
One-year certificate
Another place to make music in the city is Seneca College’s Independent Music Program. Michael Smith, its co-ordinator, says the one-year certificate program has two intakes of 20 students in September and January, with about a third of the applicants being female. Smith says about 33% of his students are working musicians and the rest are interested in production.
They’re also a bit older than high school grads. “We’re looking for a little more maturity in our students and (applicants) who have a good idea of what they’re facing (in the music business).” Seneca’s course teaches students how to record in a home studio, how to run a business as a musician, and such skills as
live sound management and song writing.
Tuition costs for all three programs are steep. The degree program at Humber costs $4,300 a year and the diploma program $3,100. At the Harris Institute the production-audio engineering course costs $13,000 and the recording arts management option $10,500. At Seneca the Independent Music Production program costs $5,000, and Smith cautions the college won’t connect students to the “big contract.” A career in the arts, it seems, remains as tough as it ever was.
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