pbs高端访谈:表演艺术家经济低迷时期求生存

 　　JEFFREY BROWN:And now: the tough labor¹ market for younger workers.

　　A new report finds underemployment among recent college graduates—that is, young adults working in a job that does not require a degree—has jumped to 45 percent.

　　The terrain² is especially rough in the arts these days, as NewsHour economics correspondent Paul Solman learned, part of his reporting on “Making Sen$e of Financial News."

　　PAUL SOLMAN:Gustav Mahler's "Fourth Symphony," conducted by James Gaffigan, played by the orchestra of perhaps the world's foremost college of the performing arts, Juilliard, which costs $55,000 dollars a year to attend.

　　Though many are still undergrads, these kids make world-class music. No surprise, since they're immensely talented and most of them have been practicing practically all day, every day, since they were tots and were admitted to one of the world's most selective schools. Some Juilliard departments have less than a one percent acceptance rate.

　　So, what are the job prospects³ of some the world's most gifted and motivated young college grads?

　　DIANE WITTRY,Conductor, Allentown Symphony: For any orchestral opening in the United States, you might have, for one violin opening, 300 people applying that are all completely qualified⁴ to do that job.

　　PAUL SOLMAN:That includes the Allentown, Penn., orchestra, which Diane Wittry conducts.

　　DIANE WITTRY:They play great. They have fabulous⁵ technique, great sound, great intonation⁶.

　　PAUL SOLMAN:So then the obvious question: How do you decide whom to hire?

　　DIANE WITTRY:It's almost like the Olympics. My harp⁷ player, I was just talking to her during rehearsal⁸, and she had recently taken an audition⁹. They give you a piece that's really hard, and if you do really well on that one, you get to play another piece, and then maybe you do really well on that one, you get to play another piece.

　　And she was on the sixth excerpt¹⁰, and then she messed up and missed a note. And then it's like, thank you very much.

　　PAUL SOLMAN:Come on, one note?

　　DIANE WITTRY:Yes, you make a mistake and you're out. And that's how competitive it is in the audition process.

　　PAUL SOLMAN:And if you think it's tough for instrumentalists, what about dancers?

　　Each dance class at Juilliard starts small, 24 students or so, and gets even smaller, through attrition. There are job opportunities for male dancers, less competition for each slot. The women, however, face almost impossible odds¹¹.

　　Gallim Dance Company, a small and upcoming modern dance troupe¹² based in Brooklyn, recently advertised an opening.

　　MEREDITH MAX HODGES, Executive Director, Gallim Dance: And we had 700 dancers audition for the slot.

　　PAUL SOLMAN:Seven hundred.

　　MEREDITH MAX HODGES:Seven Hundred.

　　PAUL SOLMAN:Meredith Max Hodges is Gallim's executive director.

　　MEREDITH MAX HODGES:Many of these dancers were graduates of conservatories¹³, full-time¹⁴ dance programs. These were serious candidates.PAUL SOLMAN:But no matter how serious, how talented, in today's job market for the arts, there is no guarantee, or even much likelihood, of success.

　　Who's to blame? A familiar culprit has had a hand: the great recession. According to one survey, 75 percent of New York's nonprofit performing arts groups, those most likely to employ the classically trained, slashed¹⁵ budgets in 2009 and few, if any, are back to pre-crash levels.

　　A second villain¹⁶ of the piece is technology. When this Mahler work premiered in 1901, there was one way to hear it, in person, meaning dozens of people had to be paid to perform it over and over again. That same year, however, the Victor Talking Machine Company was established, allowing one recorded performance, or a few, to replace many hundreds of live ones.

　　A century later, searching online for video of Mahler's "Fourth Symphony" yields 25 million hits. So why leave home, pay real money to sit uncomfortably, so you can hear and see the same thing?

　　GREG SANDOW,Juilliard: We are in the business of selling buggy whips in the age of the automobile¹⁷.

　　PAUL SOLMAN:Greg Sandow teaches a Juilliard course on the grim future of an art form that he says simply hasn't kept up with the times.

　　GREG SANDOW:The audience has been aging for around 50 years, so this is not sustainable. The people who are listening to classical music are getting older and are not being replaced by an equivalent number of younger people.

　　PAUL SOLMAN:One hope is that an aging population will continue to patronize work like this, and the musicians who perform it, for a while longer, though, for some older people, even works like this Bela Bartok violin concerto¹⁸ can be a challenge, and it was written 75 years ago.

　　But a 2009 National Endowment for the Arts study summed up the larger trend. Between 1982 and 2008, attendance at performing arts such as classical music, opera, ballet, has seen double-digit rates of decline, in short, fewer and fewer jobs for highly skilled classical performing artists, which means, by the cold law of supply and demand, stagnant¹⁹ or falling wages, except for the brand names who can still draw a crowd.

　　GREG SANDOW:It's not like, well, you hoped you were going to be a world-beating entrepreneur, but you end with a solid mid-level job in a corporation. In the arts, it doesn't really work out that way. You have 20-odd orchestras in what the League of American orchestras calls group one, and the minimum salary is quite respectable.

　　But then, beneath that, you have orchestras playing four, five, six concerts a year, and the musicians who play in those orchestras are racking up untold²⁰ miles on their cars, going from gig to gig.

　　DIANE WITTRY:And a player in Allentown might make $6,000 to $7,000 dollars a year.

　　PAUL SOLMAN:Six or seven thousand dollars a year? What else do they do?

　　DIANE WITTRY:What they do is they play in Reading, in Harrisburg, and they play in the Philadelphia Opera, and they play in Delaware Symphony. And then many of them also teach privately²¹ and have teaching studios.

　　PAUL SOLMAN:So we're creating more and more musicians who, in order to earn a living, have to teach, creating more and more really great students, who then have to do the same thing. It's like a Ponzi scheme now.

　　DIANE WITTRY:Because you're thinking of it like an economist²². But we, as musicians, we don't go into music for the money. We go into music because it's part of our soul. It's part of who we are. It's what we have to do.

　　We want to share music with the world, and we would do it whether we got paid or not.

　　PAUL SOLMAN:Now, of course—and Sandow and Wittry agree—it was in a sense ever thus. "La Boheme," act one, scene one, Rodolfo burns the pages of his new play to keep himself and roommate Marcello from freezing.

　　GREG SANDOW:But now the problem is worse, because there are fewer of the jobs that used to exist. And many of the ones that still exist, like those in orchestras, they feel precarious²³ and musicians are taking pay cuts.

　　PAUL SOLMAN:Moreover, though Puccini's 19th century Bohemians were behind on the rent, even they weren't in the hole for tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt, not unusual for today's fine arts grads, like 28-year old dancer Caroline Fermin, who says the market salary of $28,000 dollars that she earns from her highly coveted²⁴ full-time job at Gallim Dance barely allows her to keep up with the payments on the $60,000 dollars she borrowed to attend Juilliard.

　　Indeed, many artists are calling it quits here in the U.S. and heading abroad.

　　CAROLINE FERMIN,Gallim Dance: I have a lot of friends that move somewhere to Europe or likewise to have a job that's supported by the government, that gives more money to the dancers.

　　PAUL SOLMAN:What percentage of the dancers you know or friendly with are now primarily abroad?

　　CAROLINE FERMIN:Maybe 50 percent.

　　EMILY TERNDRUP, Gallim Dance: Fifty sounds right.

　　PAUL SOLMAN:Twenty-four-year-old Emily Terndrup, graduated from the University of Utah, dances in an off-off-Broadway show to help make ends meet.

　　EMILY TERNDRUP:It seems like the work is getting divorced from the pay a lot here in America, where, if you like to do this, you should do this for free, where, in Europe, I still feel like it's, if we're asking you to come and do this, we will pay you for the time we are taking. It's disappearing in America.

　　PAUL SOLMAN:A common lament²⁵, though, of course, not just in the arts. But why do performing artists here still stick it out?

　　WOMAN:If you're doing something you love, you figure out how to keep it alive. If it's you and if it's your truth, you just keep on going.

　　PAUL SOLMAN:But chances are also that you won't necessarily make enough to live on.

　　FITZHUGH GARY,Student, Juilliard: All the more reason to create your job, your own job. Create your own project. Go out there and be your own boss, and figure out something that hasn't been done before, and chances are you will love it.

　　PAUL SOLMAN:But how does a performing artist who practices all day every day learn how to practice entrepreneurship as well? That is a story for another day, a story we intend to tell soon.

　　MARGARET WARNER:Online, conductor Diane Wittry gives Paul a lesson in leading an orchestra. You can watch that on our home page.

1 labor   

n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦

参考例句：

• We are never late in satisfying him for his labor.我们从不延误付给他劳动报酬。
• He was completely spent after two weeks of hard labor.艰苦劳动两周后，他已经疲惫不堪了。

2 terrain   

n.地面，地形，地图

参考例句：

• He had made a detailed study of the terrain.他对地形作了缜密的研究。
• He knows the terrain of this locality like the back of his hand.他对这一带的地形了如指掌。

3 prospects   

n.希望，前途(恒为复数)

参考例句：

• There is a mood of pessimism in the company about future job prospects. 公司中有一种对工作前景悲观的情绪。
• They are less sanguine about the company's long-term prospects. 他们对公司的远景不那么乐观。

4 qualified   

adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的

参考例句：

• He is qualified as a complete man of letters.他有资格当真正的文学家。
• We must note that we still lack qualified specialists.我们必须看到我们还缺乏有资质的专家。

5 fabulous   

adj.极好的；极为巨大的；寓言中的，传说中的

参考例句：

• We had a fabulous time at the party.我们在晚会上玩得很痛快。
• This is a fabulous sum of money.这是一笔巨款。

6 intonation   

n.语调，声调；发声

参考例句：

• The teacher checks for pronunciation and intonation.老师在检查发音和语调。
• Questions are spoken with a rising intonation.疑问句是以升调说出来的。

7 harp   

n.竖琴；天琴座

参考例句：

• She swept her fingers over the strings of the harp.她用手指划过竖琴的琴弦。
• He played an Irish melody on the harp.他用竖琴演奏了一首爱尔兰曲调。

8 rehearsal   

n.排练，排演；练习

参考例句：

• I want to play you a recording of the rehearsal.我想给你放一下彩排的录像。
• You can sharpen your skills with rehearsal.排练可以让技巧更加纯熟。

9 audition   

n.(对志愿艺人等的)面试(指试读、试唱等)

参考例句：

• I'm going to the audition but I don't expect I'll get a part.我去试音，可并不指望会给我个角色演出。
• At first,they said he was too young,but later they called him for an audition.起初，他们说他太小，但后来他们叫他去试听。

10 excerpt   

n.摘录，选录，节录

参考例句：

• This is an excerpt from a novel.这是一部小说的摘录。
• Can you excerpt something from the newspaper? 你能从报纸上选录些东西吗？

11 odds   

n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别

参考例句：

• The odds are 5 to 1 that she will win.她获胜的机会是五比一。
• Do you know the odds of winning the lottery once?你知道赢得一次彩票的几率多大吗？

12 troupe   

n.剧团，戏班；杂技团；马戏团

参考例句：

• The art troupe is always on the move in frontier guards.文工团常年在边防部队流动。
• The troupe produced a new play last night.剧团昨晚上演了一部新剧。

13 conservatories   

n.（培植植物的）温室，暖房( conservatory的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Conservatories have grown in popularity over the past 10 years. 过去10年，温室越来越受到欢迎。 来自互联网
• FEBRI ELEMENT offers Offers to Railing systems, Aluminium elements and Conservatories. 是一家现代化、得信赖的产品供应商，该供应商从事栏杆，护栏系统，梯式支座装置、式支座装置，钢梯的制造和销售。 来自互联网

14 full-time   

adj.满工作日的或工作周的，全时间的

参考例句：

• A full-time job may be too much for her.全天工作她恐怕吃不消。
• I don't know how she copes with looking after her family and doing a full-time job.既要照顾家庭又要全天工作，我不知道她是如何对付的。

15 slashed   

v.挥砍( slash的过去式和过去分词 )；鞭打；割破；削减

参考例句：

• Someone had slashed the tyres on my car. 有人把我的汽车轮胎割破了。
• He slashed the bark off the tree with his knife. 他用刀把树皮从树上砍下。 来自《简明英汉词典》

16 villain   

n.反派演员，反面人物；恶棍；问题的起因

参考例句：

• He was cast as the villain in the play.他在戏里扮演反面角色。
• The man who played the villain acted very well.扮演恶棍的那个男演员演得很好。

17 automobile   

n.汽车，机动车

参考例句：

• He is repairing the brake lever of an automobile.他正在修理汽车的刹车杆。
• The automobile slowed down to go around the curves in the road.汽车在路上转弯时放慢了速度。

18 concerto   

n.协奏曲

参考例句：

• The piano concerto was well rendered.钢琴协奏曲演奏得很好。
• The concert ended with a Mozart violin concerto.音乐会在莫扎特的小提琴协奏曲中结束。

19 stagnant   

adj.不流动的，停滞的，不景气的

参考例句：

• Due to low investment,industrial output has remained stagnant.由于投资少，工业生产一直停滞不前。
• Their national economy is stagnant.他们的国家经济停滞不前。

20 untold   

adj.数不清的，无数的

参考例句：

• She has done untold damage to our chances.她给我们的机遇造成了不可估量的损害。
• They suffered untold terrors in the dark and huddled together for comfort.他们遭受着黑暗中的难以言传的种种恐怖，因而只好挤在一堆互相壮胆。

21 privately   

adv.以私人的身份，悄悄地，私下地

参考例句：

• Some ministers admit privately that unemployment could continue to rise.一些部长私下承认失业率可能继续升高。
• The man privately admits that his motive is profits.那人私下承认他的动机是为了牟利。

22 economist   

n.经济学家，经济专家，节俭的人

参考例句：

• He cast a professional economist's eyes on the problem.他以经济学行家的眼光审视这个问题。
• He's an economist who thinks he knows all the answers.他是个经济学家，自以为什么都懂。

23 precarious   

adj.不安定的，靠不住的；根据不足的

参考例句：

• Our financial situation had become precarious.我们的财务状况已变得不稳定了。
• He earned a precarious living as an artist.作为一个艺术家，他过得是朝不保夕的生活。

24 coveted   

adj.令人垂涎的；垂涎的，梦寐以求的v.贪求，觊觎(covet的过去分词)；垂涎；贪图

参考例句：

• He had long coveted the chance to work with a famous musician. 他一直渴望有机会与著名音乐家一起工作。
• Ther other boys coveted his new bat. 其他的男孩都想得到他的新球棒。 来自《简明英汉词典》

25 lament   

n.悲叹，悔恨，恸哭；v.哀悼，悔恨，悲叹

参考例句：

• Her face showed lament.她的脸上露出悲伤的样子。
• We lament the dead.我们哀悼死者。