First Person

Part Musician, Part Academic

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By Michelle Parker

For the past two years I've fished the academic job market, getting plenty of bites but never managing to land "the big one." Now, as I head into my third year of searching, I find myself re-evaluating my career choices and desired paths. For most people, I assume that such mental housecleaning is perfectly normal and presumably helpful, but for me, it is akin to self-mutilation.

Why? Because I am a professional musician who also happens to be the (sometimes) proud recipient of a doctorate of musical arts (also known as a D.M.A.). I seem to live in a bipolar world where people are of two opinions when it comes to my pedigree:

• I must be a lousy performer: "D.M.A.'s are worthless degrees in music. If you were any good as a performer. you'd already have a job by now."

• I must be a lousy teacher: "A D.M.A. who chooses to perform is obviously a poor teacher and an ignorant person. You perform because no school would ever hire you."

Really, I am just a performer who loves teaching anything as long as it relates to music. I am also a passionate teacher who literally "feels funny" if I don't have my daily practice session. But it seems that that duality is not welcomed either by performers or academics in my field, for reasons that I cannot fully understand.

One on-campus interview ended on a sour note when a faculty member who was driving me to the airport said, "Your recital was wonderful, and your teaching demonstration was terrific. Unfortunately, we're not going to offer you the job because this made some committee members feel uncomfortable."

On another occasion, a phone interview was essentially killed when I heard a disembodied voice, wafting through the poor speakerphone connection, say, "She was never a TA, was she? She's just a professional musician right now? Forget it. If she's a performer, she probably can't read and write."

All of that negativity leaves me shaking my head. I'm so wonderful, I cannot be hired? Musicians are so dumb that we cannot read and write? It boggles the mind.

Unfortunately, it also sends me into a downward spiral of self-doubt and panic attacks. Should I leave my position with the symphony? Maybe I shouldn't have played for that opera company? I thought that teaching all of those "guest artist" master classes was important?

While I would love to hold a position in academe as a professor of music somewhere, my job search has not yet led me in that direction. Instead, I've won several professional auditions, developed a strong reputation as a performer and clinician, and enjoy teaching in a large private studio.

But does my lack of a university position really make me a lesser candidate? For better or worse, I hold a hard-earned D.M.A. from a major institution. I have learned a rather enormous repertoire over the years, played across three continents, worked with internationally renowned groups, been recorded for major CD labels, and am awaiting the publication of my doctoral thesis. Yet, somehow, I am still left feeling inadequate in the wake of endless negative responses to my job applications.

So do I quit wasting my time on applications in favor of practicing eight hours a day? Or do I abandon my gigs and performances and focus exclusively on finding a tenure-track position?

Frankly, I don't want options A or B. I'd rather take option C: "all of the above." As a professional musician I not only want to play, I need to play. Maintaining an active performance schedule is what keeps musicians on their toes. It helps to strengthen their abilities, inspire their students, and create collaboration among colleagues.

As an academic, I want my written work to be taken seriously, too. My thesis tackled a painfully obscure set of music treatises written in old French and, as my advisers proudly told me, "kicked major butt." Yet one publisher rejected my publication proposal without even opening the package, telling me, "We don't publish writings by D.M.A.'s because your degree simply carries no credibility."

No credibility?

I don't want to write yet another pitiful article on my instrument's intonation problems, embouchure formation, or standard repertoire that is overplayed and boring. My interests have always gravitated toward the obscure, the misunderstood, the "too difficult for musicians to understand" topics that academe supposedly loves. But apparently my research is not to be taken seriously because I am a professional musician.

Does it really have to be this way?

In my search for answers, I have turned to books, colleagues, former advisers, and even my mom for advice. Sadly, the road to damnation is paved with good intentions. My mom wants me to quit music altogether and "find a real job." My advisers shrug their shoulders and recommend everything from "just keep trying, it took me years to get a break" to "if you can't get a job within three years, you need to find a new career." Colleagues are often sympathetic, and occasionally jealous: "At least you have gigs! I have nothing!"

As for books, well, let's just say that the secret to The Secret is that there is no secret. There are also no books that provide help to budding academically minded musicians like myself. No sample CV's, no discussions on how to market yourself, no conferences at which you could take a series of auditions and end up winning a job by day's end.

So what's a D.M.A. to do? I am really not sure. You can only take so many disappointing refusals before you just want to run screaming away from it all. At the same time, I have had a number of auditions that didn't end with a job offer, and practicing certainly has its own moments of "I sound like a 6-year-old playing the kazoo right now."

I think that the only sensible option is to continue fighting. I know that I will get that academic position, I know that I will get my writings published, and I know that I will continue to grow and rise as a performer. But in the meantime, it is a difficult existence, living neither here nor there as a doctorate-toting musician whose self-confidence and finances are constantly strained to their limits.

A good friend recently commented that I have become some sort of odd hybrid, part academic, part musician. When I asked if that meant I should work in a freak show, she simply shrugged and answered: "It would be a job, wouldn't it?"

Michelle Parker is the pseudonym of a professional musician with a doctorate of musical arts who is currently entering her third year on the academic job market.