Twenty-five years ago, American orchestras began a conversation about what would happen to excellence in performance if orchestras broadened their missions to focus on education and community engagement. The fear, unfounded, was that excellence would be compromised. The opposite was true. One sees an identical conversation today in our professional schools — a fear that if we ask students to stretch beyond the traditional focus of mastering performance skills, then excellence will be jeopardized.

Today, administrators of top performing arts organizations are begging for those of us who train artists to start training like it’s the 21st century and not the 19th. More than new skills — which is certainly part of it — this requires something more difficult: a change in the mindset of musicians. We must understand we’re all in the audience development business.

The problem is that the professional schools have approached this by tinkering around the edges. Offer an entrepreneurship program, do a little community engagement, do some technology. In most music schools, 20 percent of the students are engaging in this. Which means the other 80 percent are not. This is not an acceptable approach to tackling a fundamental issue.

Read the full article about trying to change the attitude in the conservatory culture at ARTS Blog.