The Careers and Professional Communities of Young Musicians: Academic and Informal Professional Trajectories

The majority of students of musical conservatories enter there with many years of experience of musical creativity at school, at home and within various informal contexts. These students are already used to rehearsing and performing; thinking in musical images and speaking a specific language within the professional field; and, importantly, by applying to a conservatory, they show their will to seek for their professional path in music. However, the professional status of a musician is not always connected with the student’s academic experience or his formal employment. In addition, ideas about the skills one needs for professional activity, about organizing training and practicing, are significantly polarized within the group of those whom the public is accustomed to determine to the representatives of this profession - the status of a “musician” is linking to a student who has achieved a certain academic status; to a professional commercial artist; to an amateur, engaged in a stable creative process with other enthusiasts. Along with the growing demand for additional education in Russia, more and more people of different ages and experiences are starting to learn music, and more and more private schools offer them similar educational services, simultaneously creating jobs for musicians, including ones without academic experience. The research question in this work can be formulated as follows: does the expansion of the boundaries of the cultural market lead to a diversification of interpretations of the status of a professional musician, and how do the aspects of professionalization of academic musicians and musicians who have been on a path of non-formal education differ? To answer, the papers on professional self-determination were analyzed; specific attention was paid to research on the development of young musicians. For the empirical part of the study, data was analyzed based on 20 interviews; all the respondents in the study can be divided into two groups. One of them is the staff (teachers and session musicians) of a private music school, which offers to people of any age and level of training an opportunity to take a special three-month training course to master the skill of playing the classic drum set. This is an interesting object for research because none of the musicians who works as a staff in this school has a musical education of a music college level or higher. The second group is represented by students of colleges and conservatories who are currently learning to play different musical instruments. Among the questions asked to these musicians, there were questions about whether they consider themselves to be professional musicians; what, in their opinion, determined the features of their own career path; what motivates them to follow this path and what opportunities for themselves as a musician they see in St. Petersburg; how, within the framework of their own interpretations, they determine which musician is a “professional” one and which one is not; how they interact with musicians from an academic environment and whether they form professional communities. The subject of this study is a comparison of professional and career self-determination of employees of a private school and students with experience within the academic musical environment, and the object of study is young musicians of various professional experiences.