From graduate school to percussion construction to teaching and gigging, Baker University’s graduating music majors have a wide range of plans and options open to them.
Senior Daniel Colwell, whose focus is strings education, has essentially completed his music major but will student teach next semester before applying to graduate school, he said.
“After that I will head straight to grad school for my master’s so that I can teach at the collegiate level,” Colwell said. “I firmly anticipate going into public schools to teach at first, but I want to have that degree in case a collegiate job opens up.”
Senior Ryan Kimm, whose focus is guitar, is unsure about what he’ll do after graduation.
“I’ll probably take the winter to think about what I want to do,” he said. “I would like to go to grad school to teach at the college level. I also want to coach baseball, but either way, I’ll keep in the music, playing and gigging.”
Senior Collin Thomas, who is a percussionist, has plans for both his immediate and distant futures.
“In January I start full time at Vaughcraft, the drum manufacturer in Baldwin,” he said.
Thomas has been working at the local business part time for eight months as a wood worker tuning temple blocks, he said.
“I’ve always been into the instrument construction, but it was sheer fate that I went to Baker and there was a percussion constructionist in Baldwin,” Thomas said. “I walked in the door and I said, ‘I’m a percussionist at Baker. Are you looking for someone?’ and they said, ‘Can you start Tuesday?'”
Like Kimm and Colwell, Thomas is also considering graduate school.
“I would like to go there for composition or experimental sound,” he said. “I’m only interested in teaching at the collegiate level. I’m not interested in high school band.”
Thomas found experimental sound a hard category to define.
“It’s the artistic community’s way of handling music. It incorporates technology, improvisation, field recordings, computer work and many other things,” he said. “As opposed to using notes as a basis, it’s using sound. It’s a very abstract term, and it’s all encompassing. It’s pushing the boundaries of what we think of as music.”
Thomas also stressed the importance of traditional music education, including learning theory.
Kimm agreed theory was essential to musicians no matter what field they go into, and he said the knowledge has helped him in his performances outside of school in his bluegrass group, “The Signal Oak String Band.”
“If I can read music and count, I can gig weddings or give lessons or do anything with music,” Kimm said.
All three seniors gave many reasons for their love of music, but Kimm explained it the most succinctly.
“I don’t know why I love it. Because it’s the funnest thing in the world? The more I got involved in it, the more I began to realize that it’s the only thing I wanted to do with my life,” he said.