Curtis hits cello crisis
NewsThe message below has gone out to incoming students, a couple of weeks before their arrival in Philadelphia:
There is no corroboration on the long-dormant Curtis website and the institute’s Facebook page has been taken down.
The implication is that Gary Hoffman and Peter Wiley are too tired to carry on a full teaching schedule and the institute is desperately trying to rustle up former granduates to take on their duties.
Do let us know if you have further information.
Pffffft. Personally, I’d want a refund.
Or a substantial discount on tuition fees for not getting the product I intended to buy.
There is no tuition at Curtis. You’d be welcome to go pay somewhere else.
My understanding is that there is or was no tuition at Curtis. All accepted on full scholarship. Among the top the top schools this benefit, or something like it for the top talents, is no longer unique. There are other schools with great faculty and lots of money, and that may be one of Curtis’ challenges.
Curtis is free…if you get in.
Don’t know how old Gary and Pete are but I’ll bet they could take a few lessons from 80 year old Dave Hyslop!!!
May have not been their choice. Curtis pushed out Richard Woodhams as oboe teacher recently for being too old.
It is sad to say that Curtis, this once illustrious school, is today only a shadow of its former self. This has been the result of a long process and a slow decline in its core mission of teaching the very best by the very best and a shifting of its priorities. It is a school living more on its past laurels than on its present accomplishments. There have been far too many scandals there in recent years, far too many high-level staff departures to not indicate that something there is seriously amiss. Many alumni tell me how saddened they are to see how the school is now run and how many students there are not feeling satisfied nor confident with the current senior management.
The words that I hear most often from alumni and current students to describe Curtis and its senior management today are: arrogant, complacent, condescending, autocratic and dismissive.
There are far too many negative grumblings from far too many disparate individuals to not be taken seriously. One donor already openly expressed serious doubts at a recent dinner in front of a dozen major arts and education philanthropists, saying that they were deeply concerned by the situation and not impressed by its legal or management team.
Care to be more specific? Who are these alumni, students and senior management you speak of? Who is this “donor” who expressed serious doubts?
For all we know, “A.C.” here may be someone from another conservatory looking to trash a competitor.
All I can say is, check out the number of recent major orchestra posts that have gone to recent Curtis grads – in NY, Chicago, Boston, Toronto, etc. And look at the new faculty. Hardly a sign of decline.
I don’t think that you are being realistic an fair asking the contributor for specifics like the names of the alumni who complained, the name of the disenchanted donor and implying that the person who wrote that entry was a jealous competitor from another conservatory. Do you work for Curtis?
I do know that there was enough bad press out there about Curtis that I could believe that something is wrong at the top.
I saw many articles in 2019 showing how Curtis tried to cover-up a serious sexual abuse case by a member of their faculty, had to hire law firms and counsellors to correct the very poor way that they dealt with the matter and were rightfully accused by the victim of the abuse, who they tried to brush off, ignore and showed absolutely no sympathy or understanding towards, until she escalated the claim.
That alone told me that there was a serious problem at that school and revealed a VERY POOR school management.
Yes, not a good moment for the school, but that was four years ago and they made a lot of changes and cleaned house since.
I’m just saying that if A.C. can’t provide some evidence for his or her attacks, then it’s best not to say anything at all.
Which new faculty are ‘hardly a sign of decline’? I am surprised to hear this argument as, to me, the new faculty, particularly in violin and now in cello, are the most dangerous signal of decline. Who amongst the new violin faculty are you arguing is worthy of Rosand’s legacy? Midori? Beilman? Carter Brey left and they replaced him with an excellent teacher who still lives in Europe, so essentially a figurehead only. Mary Louise’s desire to hire ‘only the very best’ seems to have transformed into … ‘the best available alumni’ The number of Curtis string players winning auditions is still relatively high for their size, as to be expected for such a historically selective institution, but without question lower today than in the past. Lots of great students coming in means great students will be exiting. It doesn’t necessarily mean you taught them well, and when you keep making moves like this, eventually it catches up with you. No institution can rest on their laurels forever and Curtis is no longer the only institution where top students can study for free…
The exact same (but add PT faculty strike) could be said of Mannes. I wonder in how many places such decline is playing out.
It speaks volumes that Curtis makes sure you know that your replacement teachers are all “Curtis Grads” as opposed to making sure/clear that they’re the best teachers, regardless of whether they also graduated from Curtis
Hoffmann is a great teacher and a phenomenal cellist sure, but also a tired, dreary and problematic personality. Curtis should have seen this coming.
What can you expect.
He doesn’t care about his students. He never has. And he never will. And ridiculously obsessed with the piano’s articulation.
I wish I could disagree with you.
Long-dormant website? http://www.curtis.edu is updated constantly. And the Facebook page is not down… http://www.facebook.com/CurtisInstitute
“bring in three fantastic cellists—all Curtis grads” …that’s precisely who should not be teaching there. Curtis has not been a cello powerhouse for quite some time anyway.
Try to get a good European cellist pedagogue.
Shocking to see some of the recent younger violin hires at Curtis. A 2nd tier orchestra concertmaster and a budding soloist with hardly any teaching experience?
And then there’s the violin faculty who tosses legs up in the air and giggles with oohs and ahhs, and not much else to say to prodigies. Long gone are the days of past…welcome giggly wiggly.
Desperation to tie into ‘Curtis grads’ is disheartening for a once great institution.
Is this what happens when a violist runs Curtis?
Yet another negative post by GF.
Is this what happens when opinions are given by a dilettante?
Thrilled to get your feedback, Larry. You overlooked everything about this article and made your comment about me, the dilettante!
It’s rather cute.
Nothing negative in my comment. i’m stating facts. Perhaps you forgot that Ivan Galamian once taught at Curtis; well, he was stationed in NYC. My meetings with him were most memorable. Yes, I’m an amateur now, but that just means I can peer into the music bubble every so often and comment on how much it’s changed.
I’d send my violin students to the new students faster than anyone else on faculty… Those two hires are the best move the school has made in a long time.
Curtis strings have such a chip on their shoulder.
Curtis knew this situation was coming since the late Spring, if not earlier, and they began to make these arrangements then. They made the choice to withhold this information from their incoming and returning students (many of whom could have had a free ride at numerous other conservatories around the country) Now it seems they will see Hoffman once per semester, Wiley perhaps once a month- if they are lucky- and in between have lessons with the 2nd and 3rd chairs of the Philadelphia orchestra and would-be comedian and cellist Nick Cannelakis, who are all, to varying degrees, accomplished cellists but none of whom to my knowledge has any history of teaching at an advanced level. But they are an a mix of ethnicities and genders and most importantly they are Curtis grads, which in the very narrow and self-referential world view of the Curtis administration, is apparently what really matters. The choice of how to handle the semi-retirement was the administrations to make. The choice not to tell the students for months, once they knew it was happening, was unethical, unfair and unworthy of the institution’s storied history.
This seems to be a reasonable conclusion based on the information available.
“…the institute is desperately trying to rustle up former granduates [sic]…”
The email says they have successfully employed (OK, “rustled up”, if you prefer) three former grads, so they’re no longer desperately trying. And the three new hires are taking over just part of the duties of the two full-time faculty. Is this, in itself, a crisis?
I know very little about other problems at Curtis (other than the past sexual abuse scandal — at least, I assume, and very much hope, that it’s in the past), so there may be troubles there, but this email in and of itself does not read like a sign of crisis.
But the part time cello instructors will be teaching the students more often than the “full time” faculty?
have you ever tried to study with five teachers at once, Peter? Or even three? The relationship between teacher and student is the most fundamental and critical part of learning an instrument and learning to be a musician at the highest levels. It is a very personal relationship that has to work on both sides, and one that takes years of regular contact to fully transfer understanding. You wouldn’t want your personal doctor to be one of five rotating in and out, and that’s a much more objective and evidence based relationship than an instrumental teacher. So yes, I would say that this odd solution, and Curtis’ obfuscation until the last minute of the facts, is in fact a crisis for the students, even if it seems fine to the slipped disc commentariat. These situations do arise, unfortunately. Teachers die, become ill, retire. Curtis in the old days tried to put the best interests of the students at the fore when trying to solve them. Hard to argue that is what happened here..
The Curtis piano faculty has also seen better days. That school once had skilled pedagogues who could build solid pianists from the bottom up, such as Isabelle Vengerova and Eleanor Sokoloff, and such keyboard titans as Hoffman, Serkin, Bolet, and Horszowski. The current piano faculty members pale in comparison.
Take a good look at those past revered teachers and where they came from. We all, in many schools in the USA, we’re the beneficiaries of the flight from European fascism of the 30’s and 40’s. That pool of excellence no longer exists.
As a first year undergrad at one of Curtis’s competitors (WITH a hefty tuition), my assigned instructor- an experienced teacher and touring soloist- was gone on tour for 8 of the 14 weeks of my first term. In my case, I WAS paying full freight for an inadequate and inexperienced grad student to sub for my teacher. I was told that the privilege of any amount of time with my teacher was worth my while and to accept graciously the efforts of the grad ‘assistant’. Bait and switch. So, I switched. To another institution and teacher.
I think both Mr. Wiley and Mr. Hoffman are fantastic performer and no doubt that students can learn much from both teacher. But honestly, after had studied cello in the USA before moving to Germany. I found many teachers don’t care so much about their student’s career and future. Maybe it is the Amerian culture that is more self focuse rather than a teacher at that level should be a mentor and guild you to a successful career. Few are very lucky to gain that type of relationship with their teacher, but yet again, I felt many teachers in the USA select their student to profit on the later on success of the student, so it add on to their reputation as a ” Fantastic teacher ” or ” look! All the ex-students from who and who’s studio win jobs.” I think very few teacher really invest their best interests on the student’s future and mental well-being. I also think that being able to teach at such high level institution is a great honor for the graduate students. But I think it is unfair for the new students to start school and you are unable to study with the teacher that you fought so hard to get in. This feels like a very toxic and furstrating environment to learn from.
How do you become a great teacher? Have great students. Curtis always has.
Curtis is a small school, it is prestigious and free. Therefore hundreds of applicants compete for very few openings, and of course only the most proficient, advanced students have any chance of being accepted. So, safe to say that most students are highly developed before they walk in the door.