Posted by Tom Mason on November 20, 2000 at 14:08:18:
In Reply to: Good income? posted by scott on November 19, 2000 at 18:37:42:
There is nothing wrong in both performance and education. Think about having that steady income while you impart your valuable skills and insights to students while you practice what you preach in the gig.
I see a lot of posts on this thread that seem to say "if you can't play, teach". I figure if you can't play, maybe you don't need to teach. There are many fine performers in the teaching field because they:
1. See the need to teach performance so that 10 years from now, there will be enough performers to field an orchestra/band.
2. Find satisfaction in the accomplishments of their students.
3. Realize that there are only so many performance jobs that pay a full-time salary.
I had a band director in high school that was good enough to be in performance. He didn't cloud his life with the sighs and moans about not being able to find a good paying job in performance. Instead, he taught his students the valuable lessons concerning music. He didn't teach at monster schools with 200 piece bands, but he is responsible for 6 current band directors and 3 professional performers that I am currently aware.
No, he doesn't know as much about tuba as he does sax, but he doesn't need to.
Be encouraged to teach if you are going to be a performance person. None of us are too good to pass along our knowledge to the next generation. If you feel that you are too good, then your experience will die along with you.
By the way, I make between 40k and 50k doing both.