Frost School to partner with Universal Classics

By Lawrence Budmen

Elizabeth Sobol, president and CEO of Universal Music Classics and Shelly Berg, dean of the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music today announced a new academic-business partnership initiative to create “Universal Music U@Frost,” which will identify and innovate new models for aspiring professional musicians and help to build and engage broad based audiences for “classic music genres.”

This initiative centers around four areas: the concert experience, training of performers, the role of the record label and building a worldwide network of youthful composers, practitioners and consumers who represent classical music’s future.

Frost students and faculty will work with Universal Music Classics’ executives and artists onsite for hands- on “externships” which will develop and test new models for live performance and recording, create new marketing strategies and innovate new audience and social media. Universal and Frost will co-develop a new type of master’s degree in performance through courses relevant to the present day music profession, including concert programming, new recording paradigms, audience development, entrepreneurship, touring, long term career development and business management. Some of these courses will be available online and there will be an online certificate program.

Universal Music Classics includes the Decca, Deutsche Grammophon and Mercury Classics labels and a relationship with ECM Records. In a released statement, Sobol said “For those of us who care deeply and passionately about classics, it is no longer possible to operate within the old paradigms. We must take responsibility as change agents in the field.”

Berg stated “The future of great music hinges upon the futures of the performing musicians and composers who create it. Our partnership focuses on them and on giving tomorrow’s artists the tools to expand opportunity.”

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Thu Feb 27, 2014
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