What Music Education Still Isn’t Designed to Do

I earned two degrees in instrumental performance through higher education, and when I reflect on that experience, my feelings are mixed.

I am deeply grateful for my private teachers. They shaped my musicianship, challenged me to grow, and helped make my career possible. For that, I owe them a great deal.

But beyond the studio, much of the structure surrounding music education no longer serves the realities young musicians are stepping into - and in many cases, it actively limits them.

Our most prestigious conservatories, colleges, and universities are filled with students who arrive driven by curiosity, imagination, and deeply personal dreams about what music could mean in their lives. Too often, those same institutions narrow those dreams into a handful of acceptable outcomes. Not because students lack potential, but because the system struggles to make room for complexity.

The Cost of Narrow Pathways

Most classical music training still revolves around a small set of clearly defined trajectories. Students are encouraged - sometimes subtly, sometimes explicitly - to orient their identities around singular goals. Over time, exploration becomes risky. Curiosity becomes distraction. Breadth becomes something to justify.

Yet when students graduate, they’re often asked to possess exactly the skills they were discouraged from developing: teaching, communicating, organizing, collaborating across disciplines, engaging communities, imagining new forms of work.

The disconnect is not accidental. It’s structural.

Classical musicians have never done only one thing. Historically, composers and performers were also teachers, leaders, advocates, and organizers within their communities. Today’s industry reflects that same reality - only with far fewer institutional supports to explore it intentionally.

Education Without Context

Music programs do an extraordinary job teaching repertoire, technique, history, theory, and musicianship. What they often fail to teach is how those tools function in the real world.

How does music bring people together and create impact?
How does an artist build trust with an audience?
How does one make music relevant across different communities and lived experiences?

Without these questions, musical knowledge becomes abstract. Students leave with extraordinary training and very little sense of how to apply it beyond traditional spaces. Sustainability becomes an afterthought rather than a core competency.

If classical music is to remain vital, musicians must understand not just what they are playing, but why it matters - and to whom.

Growth Beyond the Practice Room

Some of the most formative learning I experienced in college happened outside the music department. A global issues debate course, populated by students from agriculture, engineering, nursing, economics, and design, reshaped how I understood the world.

Listening to perspectives far outside my own gave me context. It sharpened my empathy. It changed how I thought about communication, responsibility, and relevance. That perspective continues to inform my music-making to this day.

Musicians do not lose focus by engaging with the world. They gain meaning.

Yet interdisciplinary exploration is often treated as peripheral rather than essential. In reality, it is one of the most powerful ways artists develop depth, clarity, and purpose.

Teaching as a Core Skill

Another missing piece is teaching.

When musicians teach, they don’t just pass on information - they refine their understanding, learn to communicate clearly, and develop leadership. Pairing advanced students with younger musicians strengthens entire ecosystems. It builds community, reinforces learning, and affirms that music is something shared, not guarded.

Teaching should not be a fallback. It should be a foundational part of musical education.

Rethinking Mentorship and Success

Private teachers are central to musical development, but no single mentor can represent every possible future. When institutions fail to provide broader mentorship, students are often steered toward paths that mirror their teachers’ careers - not because they’re best aligned, but because they’re familiar.

This can lead to a troubling pattern: musicians pursuing roles they don’t truly want because those roles are framed as gateways to legitimacy. “Winning” becomes the goal, rather than alignment, fulfillment, or contribution.

Over time, this narrows values, fuels burnout, and reinforces elitism - excluding many capable musicians whose paths don’t fit a single mold.

Toward a More Human Education

When education becomes about survival rather than growth, musicians begin to question not only their careers, but their worth. Mental health suffers. Purpose erodes. And the field loses voices that could have shaped it in meaningful ways.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

A more complete music education would still demand excellence - but it would also cultivate thinkers, dreamers, and discoverers. It would make space for exploration, mentorship beyond a single path, community engagement, and personal alignment. It would honor the dreams that brought students into music in the first place.

At VIA Academy, we believe that access, mentorship, and belonging are not add-ons to excellence - they are prerequisites for it. When young musicians are supported as whole people, their artistry deepens, their agency grows, and their futures expand.

If classical music is to thrive, our educational structures must evolve - not by lowering standards, but by widening the lens through which success is defined.

That work begins by listening to students, trusting their curiosity, and building systems that allow them not just to perform - but to imagine, to lead, and to belong.

What VIA Academy Is Trying to Practice

VIA Academy was not created as a rejection of traditional training, but as a response to its gaps.

Our work begins with the belief that young musicians do not need to be narrowed in order to become excellent. They need access, mentorship, and environments that allow them to explore who they are becoming alongside how they play.

At VIA, students engage deeply with their craft while also being encouraged to think broadly - to ask questions about purpose, community, and sustainability. They work with mentors who represent many paths through music. They teach, collaborate, lead, and reflect. Just as importantly, they do this within a community that values belonging over comparison.

We’ve seen that when musicians are trusted with complexity, they rise to it. When they are given space to imagine futures that align with their values, their commitment deepens rather than fractures. Technical growth and personal growth stop competing with one another.

VIA is not meant to replace conservatories or colleges. It is meant to sit alongside them - demonstrating what becomes possible when education is designed around the whole musician, not just the most visible outcomes.

If classical music is to continue evolving, it will be shaped by artists who were given permission to think, to dream, and to discover. Our role is to help make that permission tangible.

That is the work we are committed to.