As this year's college graduates frame their diplomas, the job market is the strongest it has been in nearly a decade. The economy is improving and salaries are up in many fields. But how these developments impact classically trained musicians is a more complicated picture. In this week's episode, we explore career prospects for the class of 2015.

First, we look at their earnings potential. A new study from Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce used U.S. census data to analyze wages for workers from 137 college majors. It found that the popularity of majors doesn't always match earnings potential: Music ranks 36th in popularity among bachelor's degrees but 113th in terms of earnings (graduate music degrees rank 31st in popularity, and 121st in earnings). The median national income for a musician with a bachelor's is $49,000 (top-paying fields are in science and business).

Anthony P. Carnevale, the lead author of the study, says that while music falls low in the pay scale, it is possible to make a solid middle-class living in the arts. "If you make 40 to 50 grand a year and you're married to someone who makes the same, that's 100, and if you get benefits that adds 30 percent of the value to your job," he said. "You can raise a family on that."

Carnevale added that students should follow their passion but be mindful: "What you take in college is going to have a lot to do with what you do after breakfast for the 45 or 50 years after you graduate and go to work."

Next, a reality check from two newly-minted graduates. Weixiong Wang, a clarinetist who just received a master's degree from the Juilliard School, says that while he has a budding performance career that includes a post in the Albany Symphony Orchestra, he isn't putting his eggs in one basket: he is also starting a recording studio in Brooklyn. "From second year of undergrad," he says, "I started to realize that even though I have so much passion for music, it's very important to make a living while you're in love with music. That's the problem a lot of us are facing after school."

Maria Natale, a soprano and recipient of a professional studies certificate from the Manhattan School of Music, has already performed with the Sarasota Opera and other companies. Now, she’s facing an endless round of auditions. "I never once saw opera from the business side and now that is the most difficult part," she admits. "Everybody has their definition of a dream job....I want it all."

We also ask whether conservatories are adequately preparing students for careers. Listen to the musicians' responses in the segment above and tell us in the comments below: What advice do you have for new college graduates?

When Reynold Levy became president of Lincoln Center in 2002, the organization was “a community in deep distress, riven by conflict,” according to New York magazine. No surprise that the title of Levy’s new memoir is They Told Me Not to Take That Job: Tumult, Betrayal, Heroics, and the Transformation of Lincoln Center.

While much of Levy’s book offers an upbeat look at Lincoln Center's $1.2 billion redevelopment and its years of balanced budgets, he also surprised many with his scathing take on the management blunders at some of Lincoln Center's resident organizations, including the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera and New York City Opera.

On this edition of Conducting Business Levy tells host Naomi Lewin why he chose to write in such forthright terms – and name names: “When governance goes astray, when management is not being held accountable, they get themselves into deep trouble. Because this whole sector is relatively unregulated, it’s important to call attention to the public those that are not so well-governed or well-managed.”

Levy, who stepped down from the Lincoln Center presidency last year, elaborates on the “self-inflicted wound” that led to the collapse of City Opera in 2013; the “shocking” lack of due diligence by the Philharmonic when it tried to merge with Carnegie Hall in 2003; and the still-uncertain outcome of last summer’s labor strife at the Met. He names five things the Met and its unions could do right now to improve the company’s finances, and he considers Alan Gilbert's surprise announcement to leave the Philharmonic.

Levy also tells us what he is most proud of as he looks back at the redevelopment of Lincoln Center’s 16-acre campus. Listen to the full interview above and share your reactions in the comments box below.

It's hard to talk about Tchaikovsky these days without getting into, well, sex.

That probably says less about the Russian composer, who was born 175 years ago Thursday, than it does about us, according to Simon Morrison, a professor of Slavic Studies at Princeton University. 

Tchaikovsky's letters and journal entries leave little doubt that he was gay. But Morrison cautions against reducing his operas, ballets and symphonies to coded expressions of his private life. "Generally these works are very rich," said Morrison, who recently wrote about Tchaikovsky for the Times Literary Supplement. "And to some degree, I wonder whether the average gay person looking at the kind of things that are written about this composer – his suffering and his identity – would actually find them rather offensive."

Homophobia has figured in some of the attacks on Tchaikovsky over the years, including criticisms that his music is overly emotional and sentimental. Things get murkier, too, when we consider Tchaikovsky's music in the context of contemporary Russia, where the church and state wield a lot of influence on cultural matters.

In 2013, for instance, when a prominent Russian screenwriter, Yuri Arabov, set out to make a bio-pic about Tchaikovsky, with state funding, he announced that he wouldn’t be mentioning the composer's sexual orientation. It came on the heels of Vladimir Putin's newly enacted "gay propaganda" laws. And a recent conference at the Glinka Museum in Moscow featured a panel that took a sharply critical line on Western critiques of the composer. 

"There's a broader agenda within cultural circles to look at a composer who's legitimately Russian," said Morrison, "and look at how his local legacy has been tarnished and distorted through an over-emphasis on his personal life and intimate matters. There's a pullback and a reaction against it. But to write articles saying he was not homosexual – that's not true."

How should audiences come to terms with Tchaikovsky's love life? Listen to the full segment at the top of the page and please leave your thoughts below.

According to several recent studies, young musicians are still following traditional gender stereotypes when they choose an instrument. Girls at a young age go for what they perceive as "feminine" instruments, such as the flute, piccolo, violin, and clarinet; boys gravitate towards trumpets, tubas and percussion. Kids’ views of masculinity and femininity can lead to other problems; for instance, boys who take up the flute are more susceptible to social isolation and bullying.

Hal Abeles, the co-director of the Center for Arts Education Research at Columbia University's Teachers College, cites several reasons that these gender perceptions persist: a lack of role models, the physical size of an instrument, and general societal pressures. "Adolescents, males in particular, get intimidated by not being with the majority," he tells host Naomi Lewin. "So if the majority of students in your middle school who are playing flute are girls, young boys feel 'I want to belong.'"

Abeles co-authored a 2014 study in the journal Music Education Research, which found that choosing the "wrong instrument" can provoke young students to drop out of instrumental music completely as they face online "cyber-bullying" and other forms of harassment.

But our guests note that instrument-based stereotypes vary from culture to culture. Sivan Magen, a New York-based harpist, said he experienced few harp stereotypes growing up in Israel, "Especially in the States, it has become a woman's instrument." Magen notes that among his eight harpist classmates at the Paris Conservatory, four were male.

Being strong-willed and successful can lessen a student's risk for harassment. Carol Jantsch, the principal tuba of the Philadelphia Orchestra, says she never got grief from her classmates as a kid in Ohio. "If you're good at your instrument, your peers don't care what you play," she said. But today, she'll occasionally encounter conductors who use the phrase "gentlemen of the brass." "Usually I'll cough very loudly and they'll correct themselves after that," she noted (Jantsch appears in Part Two of this segment).

Ricky O'Bannon, a writer in residence at the Baltimore Symphony, recently interviewed several teachers about this issue. Among his takeaways: It's better for teachers not to address the issue in the classroom. "The moment you start saying 'this instrument is not just for girls or not just for boys'" is the kiss of death, he noted. "Teachers are also playing YouTube videos in classrooms of counter-stereotypes," such as a beatboxing flutist. "It's about having a child find the instrument that they're going to enjoy and not having any extra pressures on that."

Listen to the full segment at the top of this page and please tell us what you think below: have you experienced gender associations with an instrument? What can be done to lessen these?

If you've ever looked out on an orchestra audience and marveled at all of the gray hair and empty seats, the next question that may enter your mind is, how will this picture look in 10, 20 or 30 years? And should I be alarmed?

In this week's episode, Michael Kaiser, known as the arts world's "Mr. Fix-It," gives some less-than-rosy answers – as well as some advice for orchestras and opera companies.

For 14 years, Kaiser was president of Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center, and before that, he helped rescue faltering organizations including the Royal Opera House, American Ballet Theater and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Kaiser currently serves as president of the DeVos Institute of Arts Management at the University of Maryland. His new book is Curtains?: The Future of the Arts in America.

Kaiser tells Naomi Lewin that the financial model of arts organizations has become unsustainable as aging audiences aren't replaced by enough younger patrons. He points to several related maladies: the lack of standard arts education, fatigued donors, and especially, cheaper online entertainment options that will continue to siphon away audiences.

But Kaiser believes playing it safe is the wrong response. "As arts organizations have gotten more and more scared about the changing world, there's been a pressure to do 'what sells' and do 'the popular stuff' because that's what's going to bring in ticket buyers," said Kaiser. "The problem is, if everyone does Beethoven's Ninth or everyone does Swan Lake, a) we get very dull, and b) there are many versions of Beethoven's Ninth that you can get online. We compete less well with online entertainment and we look less interesting and surprising."

Listen to the podcast to hear what Kaiser has to say about HD movie theater broadcasts – and what he would do if he were running the Metropolitan Opera.

Chicago Tribune chief theater critic Chris Jones tells Naomi Lewin that nothing lights up his e-mail inbox like an opera company staging a Broadway musical using full amplification. "It's full of disgruntled patrons," he said. "You get the natural hall acoustics working – and then you get a miked performer."

The controversies go beyond acoustics and amplification – there's also the question of how to blend performers from the worlds of opera and Broadway in a single cast. On the other hand, there’s a huge potential upside for opera houses: the ability to reach new audiences clamoring for the sound of a full orchestra, which has all but vanished from Broadway pits.

The trend has been particularly pronounced at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, which in recent years has staged “Oklahoma,” “Show Boat" “The Sound of Music” and now, Rodgers and Hammerstein's “Carousel." Elsewhere, Stephen Sondheim's “Sweeney Todd” is coming to Houston Grand Opera next week and San Francisco Opera in September. Companies in Los Angeles and Washington, DC as well as the Glimmerglass festival have also been bit by the Broadway bug.

James Jorden, editor of the opera website Parterre Box and a contributor to the New York Observer, notes that the now-defunct New York City Opera made a staple of musicals in the 1980s. And yet, "opera houses are not made for talking in," he said referring to the spoken dialogue. "Even with very excellent sound design, it's going to be difficult to do 'Carousel,' which is very talky."

Jorden and Jones also weigh in on the decline of the Broadway touring circuit and how that has opened up a place for opera companies, and whether more musicals means fewer operas for major houses. Jorden also tells us what musical he believes would be particularly well-suited for the Metropolitan Opera.

Listen to the full segment at the top of this page and tell us what you think of the trend in the comments box below.

The Toronto Symphony Orchestra's decision to drop its piano soloist Valentina Lisitsa this week because of her Twitter comments about Ukrainians and other ethnic groups raises a crucial point: orchestras and arts organizations find themselves walking a fine line with protecting their brand when they engage an artist with controversial views.

In this episode, Washington Post classical music critic Anne Midgette argues that the Toronto Symphony handled the Lisitsa situation poorly by not presenting its case properly to the public. "The orchestra decorously cited distasteful Tweets and Lisitsa, who is a very savvy social media person, went on the warpath and said 'free speech,'" Midgette said.

"Because the Toronto Symphony didn't come out and cite the Tweets they were talking about – and because Lisitsa was able to marshal opinion on her side – this has developed into a kind of cause celebre and people are jumping to conclusions based on inadequate information."

Peter Himler, a P.R. strategist who advises clients on crisis management, agrees that the TSO didn't get out ahead of the story. "There is not one Tweet from them bringing up this issue," he said. "I think they should be up front and continually communicating their point of view. That's one of the rules of thumb in crisis communication." [Listen to WQXR's interview with TSO president Jeff Melanson.]

Himler believes that many of Lisitsa's social media supporters may in fact be paid trolls who operate on behalf of the Russian government. "Vladimir Putin has people that go out and bolster the posts that are in his court," he noted.

Both Himler and Midgette agree that artists should be free to speak their minds, but orchestras should realize that guest soloists become the temporary representative of the symphony. "Your soloist is certainly your face that week in terms of marketing," said Midgette. "You are hiring somebody as an ambassador with the assumption that your organization is aligned with what they represent."

Hear our guests' examples of successful crisis management in the full segment at the top of this page, and tell us what you think in the comments below.

Toronto Symphony president Jeff Melanson tells WQXR's Conducting Business that pianist Valentina Lisitsa's politics had nothing to do with the orchestra's decision to drop her from its program this week.

"The concerns raised were not about a political perspective but were about directly offensive and intolerant comments directed at other human beings," he told host Naomi Lewin.

Melanson disputed Lisitsa's contention that the orchestra had made the decision in December after a donor threatened to withhold funds if she performed as scheduled.

The orchestra produced a seven-page list of the Twitter commentary it found most offensive and sent it to ask if the posts were made by her, or by a proxy. "A week-and-a-half ago she confirmed that these were her words and we had to make a decision," he said.

Melanson continued that "a contract provision allows us to pay an artist her fee and remove them from the program. We tried to do it in a way that was protective of the artist, in terms of not publicly discussing any of this, and of course she's chosen to turn the story into one for the Twitter-verse."

Lisitsa is an ethnic Russian who was born in Ukraine. Through her active Twitter account, she has been highly critical of the Kiev government, comparing its leaders to Nazis and dog feces. In one frequently-cited Tweet, she juxtaposed a photo of contemporary Ukrainian teachers wearing traditional embroidered shirts with a photo of black costumed dancers.

The pianist has not responded to multiple requests by WQXR for comment on the Tweets, but she told the CBC that the Tweets were "satirical" and "there is a great space for exaggeration and hyperbole."

Melanson said the Toronto Symphony does not habitually screen artists' social media before it offers them work, nor does take a side on political matters. "We are not taking a side here between Russia and the Ukraine," he noted.

The orchestra president also implied that the decision to cancel the replacement soloist, Stewart Goodyear, was made out of concern for the musicians' safety. "We could not put an orchestra, an artist and a guest artist up on stage in the context of this week's discussions," he said.

For more on how Melanson said the TSO's decisions were made, and who blew the whistle, listen to the full interview at the top of this page.

If you're a music fan of a certain age you’ll remember your first Walkman: likely a cassette player with a belt clip and possibly a built-in radio. Long before the smartphone and the iPod, Sony’s player defined portable audio. And it actually never completely disappeared: Last month Sony introduced a new model – a digital music player that promises high-res audio and costs a cool $1200. But how groundbreaking was that original Walkman?

In this week's episode, we ask Robert Klara, a senior editor at Adweek, who recently looked back at this miniature marvel. "The iPod was extremely significant when it debuted in 2001," said Klara, "but it was really the Sony Walkman that ushered in the idea, which was radical at the time, that you could walk around and take your music with you.

"It came with very, very good audio quality plus lightweight headphones, and that was a remarkable thing in 1979 when it hit the market."

But Klara contends that the Walkman become "one of branding's cautionary tales," when the MP3 era arrived and Sony "became complacent." Listen to the full interview above to find out why.

Plus, watch a slideshow of classic Walkman models below, and tell us: What do you remember about your first Walkman (or Discman)?

Virtual reality technology has revolutionized the way pilots train for flight, soldiers prepare for battle and surgeons learn delicate procedures. So it might be inevitable that musicians entering the cutthroat classical music world would turn to high-tech virtual reality equipment. A team at the Royal College of Music in London and the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano, Switzerland has developed a performance simulator that's intended to mimic concert hall and audition conditions.

On this week's episode, we consider the potential of the Performance Simulator with two guests: Dr. Aaron Williamon, a professor of performance science at the Royal College of Music, who helped to develop the technology; and Holly Mulcahy, concertmaster of the Chattanooga Symphony and author of the blog Neo-Classical, where she's written about auditioning. 

Segment Highlights

According to Williamon, the simulator is designed to help performers learn to cope with the heightened pressures of a stage environment: a musician appears before a life-sized video projection of an audience, which can be appreciative (clapping, smiling) or downright hostile (coughing, sneezing and even booing). The room is fitted out like a concert hall, with spotlights, curtains, a back-stage area and stage furniture. The virtual audience's response can be manipulated by a stage manager behind the scenes.

"Access to actual concert halls tends to be rare," noted Williamon. With the simulator, he says, "we've come up with one scenario that seems to be quite realistic."

But Mulcahy questions whether a performer can suspend disbelief and buy into the simulated environment. She says that the interaction between musicians – or auditioners  – and audience is highly subtle and "the split-second timing of somebody's facial expression or how they perceive your playing can make or break you." Mulcahy adds that, for audition preparation, gathering friends to watch your performance is most effective.

Williamon believes the Performance Simulator can be one tool among many. "I'm not proposing that this is everybody's solution," he said. "We're doing a lot of basic research into the physiology and psychology of performance. We will continue to chip away at that. What we have at the moment is a training facility which we can experiment with."

Watch a video of the performance simulator below, listen to the full segment above, and tell us what you think in the comments.