Why keep the gates closed?

Recently, I posted on social media a few short thoughts on gatekeeping and asked people to chime in. This was after a few discussions with colleagues, friends, and former students where we all were sharing varied thoughts about why it seems so prevalent in classical music, theatre, and opera.

Here are a few nuggets shared with me:

"I was told in school to keep working and 'follow the path' of YAPs... 'oh you're not polished enough for that yet, wait and make a good first impression.' In the end, I wasted time. Now I have gaps of years with very little performing on my resume because I focused on getting validation from the 'career starting YAPs'. I wish I'd let myself be a solo artist from the start."

"For too many years, I allowed various voice 'gurus' with big reputations to tell me what was wrong with my voice. That their technique was sound, but my voice wasn't 'able' to take it on because it 'wasn't ready'. One told me that it would take three to five years to undo all that was wrong. Then when I found an actual voice teacher who could teach technique, everything changed. Like in two lessons. I'd found someone who knew what they were doing. But the six years I wasted feeling bad about my efforts and my voice, put my career goals on hold and I aged out of the YAPs."

"My teacher told me they wouldn't sign the form allowing me to even try to audition for the [blank] vocal competition at our school because it would be 'a waste of my time, and their colleagues' time (those on the preliminary judging panel.) So I was unable to even try. The next year, I demanded to be allowed to try, got the same reaction, and now this teacher is no longer who I study with."

From a photographer who takes headshots for professional theatre performers: "I had a woman in her 40s come to me for headshots because she was now 'ready'. Her voice teacher that she had had since college said she was finally ready to start auditioning for all of the classic musical theatre ingenue roles. It broke my heart knowing that she had years ago aged out of all the roles she had been training for."

"My teacher wouldn't let me audition for roles in school. I was told I would have to find another teacher because 'my studio, when it is presented in public, represents me, my technique, my pedigree.' So I totally lost out – even being in an opera chorus. Four years of nothing on my resume, which was devastating to send off to graduate school applications."

"I do think some of the infantilizing results from the conflict of interest created when someone is being paid to teach a singer and if that singer is deemed 'ready', they might leave and go pursue their career (like in Germany), which often means the teacher loses income and has to find another student to replace that income line.

"I love it when a teacher says that they are here to help me, not make me. I started my undergraduate degree with a teacher who told me they could make me 'a star'. What was I thinking? I quickly changed studios and found a teacher who was honest about the work I needed to do, but that it was up to me."

"Too many coaches keep students for too long and take their money telling them they are 'not ready'."

"My teacher told me that Handel, or anything baroque, would cause me vocal harm. Now it is all I really sing professionally. Wasted time working on Puccini and Verdi arias because I'd been told my voice was 'the next great Tebaldi' of my generation, LOL. As if any 19 year old should be told that kind of crap."

And as the late Renata Scotto once said on a Met intermission panel when asked by a singer what advice she had for a "young aspiring artist", she retorted: "Not to become an old aspiring artist."

In the above quotes, there's a lot at play: ageism, conflict of interest based on the transactional economy of paying for lessons, control of allowing students to even try to audition or have an auditioning experience in a safe, non-professional environment, misguided attempts to teach a young singer repertoire way beyond them, etc.

It's a mess out there...

I'd like to give some advice. To myself and to others who might not be too defensive after reading the above quotes on gatekeeping.

1) Be a mentor not a gatekeeper, meaning share your knowledge and admit what you do not know so that your students can more readily assess your ability to advise them.

2) Don't try to control access to opportunities through emotional manipulation.

3) Allow students to fail. It'll be okay.

4) Allow your student to try out repertoire beyond your comfort zone as a teacher. Your expertise will tell soon enough if something is going wrong technically.

5) Be courageous. Allow your students to leave you, go to other programs, and study with other teachers. Holding them close and advising them to not study with others is a huge, massive warning sign that you as a pedagogue have control issues.

6) Stay a curious pedagogue. The best teachers I know talk to other colleagues about teaching. They observe and often team teach with others. Keep learning yourself about teaching. Once you think you have all the answers, you should stop teaching.

7) Help your faculty and curriculum/policy committees create more open and flexible recital, jury, and audition requirements. It's 2024 and the music world changed significantly more than twenty years ago. Young singers need to have more than 4-5 arias ready to go before the age of 22 when they're out auditioning for grad programs or YAPs. All singers need to be singing repertoire by women and BIPOC composers. Let them explore, in the safety of the academy, baroque, bel canto, contemporary, and musical theatre repertoire before they're out there in some summer program doing an outreach for VIPs singing "The Old Red Hills of Home" by JRB attended by the company's music director who's judging their abilities in a genre they had no training in because that rep was deemed either not suitable - or as an esteemed colleague once put it - "unworthy of a serious artist."

8) If you find yourself qualifying your letters of recommendation, or qualifying your advice to a young singer, with verbiage like "The [fill in the blank] repertoire you'll really be suited to sing in ten years is [fill in the blank]" or "I think in a few years time, studying with the right teacher, you'll be ready to [fill in the blank]" or "You should focus on your technique this year so you should take time off from performing", take a very hard look in the mirror. You are gatekeeping.

9) Walk away from consciously using your power over someone younger and much more inexperienced to make them feel that you hold the answers. No one should hold the keys to academic gates where students can walk into new spaces to learn needed skillsets, explore repertoire, or have experiential learning opportunities like singing roles or even simply auditioning. No one can be a young singer's sole teacher, they need to learn so much and need a large community of people and experiences.

10) Try the powerful option: put your mentoring arms metaphorically around the shoulders of someone trying to pursue this crazy, joyous, demanding career performing in public. Those first steps are important. Babies fall a lot, they get up. We all fell. We all managed to succeed on some level. Stop thinking that someone's failure might be yours, but especially: Stop thinking that your student's achievements are yours.

Final thoughts: Breathe, take a moment, and then speak these words: "Sure, let's do this and see how it goes. I'm here to help."

Open the gate, let them in. The more the merrier.

Smile. Nurture. Advise. Teach. Be honest.

Repeat.