My favourite quote about CapU jazz

"If the success of a jazz studies program is measured by the number of jazz musicians it turns out, then they are all failures. If the success is measured by how many students come out understanding more about the music, loving and respecting its traditions and supporting the preservation of jazz music as a living art form, then they are a tremendous success."

That is from Jared Burrows on the vancouverjazz.com forum – that imitable time capsule I hold dear – back in November 2008.

Context

Jared wrote this partially in response to John Doheny, who is old enough to be his father and with whom I have my own history.

Here's what John wrote earlier in the thread, talking about the University of New Orleans' jazz school:

"[M]ost of these programs are dismal failures (and they are. Jesse Mcbride [sic] pointed out that less than half a dozen of the people he studied with under Ellis Marsalis at UNO actually went on to become professional musicians. That's no knock on Ellis, who openly acknowleged his sense of failure at his retirement dinner. If an engineering faculty had a placement rate like that it would be dissolved)."

This can't be the standard for judging arts programs. Those who aspire to work full-time as an instrumentalist are a small fraction of music students, and no program* could afford to exclusively target them without raising tuition a lot – which would price them out.

How the success is measured

Who gets to judge whether or not a jazz school is a failure? Only the students do, because they chose to enrol on their own free will. Looking top-down at the percentage of students turning-pro is presumptuous, because you can't assume that that's what they had in mind.

And those of you reading who are at Cap right now but don't necessarily want to perform full-time "come out" with a lot of benefits, which you wouldn't have accessed if the program had only accepted performer-careerists.

Universities and vocations

I think we've come full-circle on what people think university is for, at least in the humanities.

In the premodern culture around post-secondary, the education was for elite people and stayed untethered to career ambitions: well-rounded individuals were the order of the day.

Then, we had the post-WWII drumbeat of go to college to get a good job. Education as vocational training. Much of my generation understands that this is a mostly hollow promise today, but it was still fashionable in 2008 when John and Jared posted in that thread.

Now, when you go to a post-secondary, you're doing it for the love again – and for the people above all; just as any of us who have previously gone to Cap, or any music and arts program, have done.