BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
A music degree can be an intense – and intensely rewarding – life experience.
It doesn’t matter how old we are, or what discipline we choose to study. When we make the decision to learn about our art at an academic level, we are stepping toward a future dedicated to our passion. And that’s why it’s important to make the most of it while we can, before we venture into the professional world.
In this new series, we learn about what happens to musicians after they graduate from university. Through these interviews, we’ll explore how some of our generation’s leading talent have taken the knowledge they obtained at uni, and applied it into their careers.
You’ll read about the biggest challenges they faced during their studies, their confidence, and their big breaks.
Each one of these artists has graduated from the Queensland Conservatorium, and now reflects on how far they’ve come since their first day of study. In this interview, we get up close and personal with Tim Munro.
Tim is an award-winning flautist based in Chicago. He curates the St Louis Symphony Orchestra’s series at the Pulitzer Foundation, writes program notes, and co-hosts on the St Louis Public Radio.
Tim was co-artistic director of Eighth Blackbird and performed with the group from 2006-15; he now performs with the Grossman Ensemble and Cabrillo Festival Orchestra.
Thanks for taking part in our chat! Tell us all about your musical life and career.
I never quite know exactly how to describe myself. I suppose I’m a flute player, although flute playing is less than half of my professional life these days. I suppose I’m a writer, although that world is much newer to me. I suppose I’m a broadcaster, although, until last year, all of my broadcasting work could have been described as voluntary.
I suppose my bio sums it up pretty well: “Tim Munro is a Chicago-based, triple-Grammy-winning musician. As a flutist, writer, broadcaster, and teacher, he treats audiences as equals, welcoming them into musical worlds with passion, intelligence, and humor.”
And an impressive bio indeed! Before we move forward, let’s talk about how you’ve arrived there. What did you study at university and why did you want to enrol in this area?
I studied flute performance at the University of Queensland, Oberlin College (in the United States) and the Queensland Conservatorium.
When I was in high school, I was obsessed by all things musical, and during summer holidays would spend full days and weeks at the Queensland Conservatorium library, poring over scores, trapped inside gigantic headphones. I was truly a musical enthusiast, and I was pretty good at the flute. I suppose I thought that the flute would become the way that I would live a professional life as a musician.
How did you find your academic experience?
I went to the Queensland Conservatorium for my Masters. I was in a sort of in-between phase of my life. The con provided exactly what I needed: a fantastic faculty — with Patrick Nolan helping me steer my flute-ship, and Stephen Emmerson giving structure to my academic thoughts — and lots of time and brilliant facilities to play around.
What do you remember being your most challenging year, and why did you decide to push through?
Oh, gosh! That one is surprisingly easy.
In 2002, I was heading back to Australia after two years of study in America. I stopped off in Holland, and auditioned at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. After I played, I stood as a panel of three of my flute heroes told me: ‘We’re sorry. There is so much wrong with your flute playing, we don’t think we can help you.’
I cried for three days straight, and then took the next four years to slowly — and painfully, in fits and starts — rebuild.
What were some of the most important lessons you picked up while you were a student that were not academic?
The best thing about being a student was the community of young musicians that surrounded me at the con, at UQ, in Queensland Youth Orchestra, in choirs that I sang in. A community to hang with, to share ideas with; a community that was with me every step of the way.
I didn’t realise how important that community was to me at the time. When [I left] uni, I left some of that community behind, and I miss it almost every single day.
How have you used the networks obtained through your degree, and how do you work to maintain these relationships?
I struggle to maintain some of those networks, but I do think about those communities and those people very often. But there are a small group of friends, faculty, and students who I remain close to. And I really feel like those people have been by my side, in one way or another, throughout my career.
How did studying music at uni help increase your confidence as an emerging young artist?
Interesting question. I actually think that studying music at uni was enormously important for me, that it taught me so very much. But I actually left uni with less confidence as a young artist. When I was a high-schooler, as a flute player, I was fearless; as a musician, I was fearless. Learning more things made me doubt what I even knew.
That was a difficult period to go through — difficult, but ultimately important, because it taught me about the scary wide world, and helped me understand my place in it.
Only now, 15 years after I finished my Masters, am I feeling like I am slowly returning to that pre-uni time of openness; of fearless abandon.
Tell us about how you navigated the world of music after your graduation. Did you have a ‘big break’, or was it a very slow burn?
I had opportunities, thanks to the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, thanks to Paul Dean and Southern Cross Soloists, thanks to the Queensland Symphony Orchestra. But, honestly, I felt adrift.
I took an amazing desk job with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra as its very first publications coordinator. I loved that job, and the financial security it gave me. That security enabled me to — when I got the email that a group in Chicago was looking for a flute player — fly across the world and audition for Eighth Blackbird. It changed my life.
In what ways do you continue to use the knowledge or skills you achieved during your studies, now that you’re well into your career?
My time at the Queensland Conservatorium gave my first exposures to so many things, and I think of those ‘firsts’ from my training almost every week: the first time I played alongside a professional musician. The first time I played music by a living composer. The first time I performed a large-scale piece of chamber music. The first time I spoke onstage in front of an audience. The first masterclass I ever taught.
What words of advice would you offer to young musicians along their academic journey?
I will give the advice that I wish I had heard — and could have listened to at the time:
Your life is not a series of steps to a goal, it is a winding journey. Don’t wait until you’ve ‘reached’ your fictional goal. That moment will never come.
If you wait, then you will miss the journey, with is actually the stuff. The stuff of life.
We’re excited to collaborate with Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University to shed light on life after university for those studying music. Stay tuned for our next interview!
READ NEXT: Life after uni with Kareb Jacobsen (who you know as Siri).
Images supplied. Credit Joe Mazza @bravelux Chicago.
