Years ago, I let a student go from my studio. It had been a difficult situation from the beginning. At first, I was the teacher for viola as a secondary instrument, and they continued violin as the main instrument with a famous teacher--I'm not sure that the teacher even knew about me, although the mother promised full disclosure to that teacher. He auditioned for New York Youth Symphony and got in, and became more serious about viola, gradually dropping lessons on violin, and asking for all the extra lessons I could fit into my schedule.
I initially found the student a bit challenging to teach, because he was so repertoire focused, and didn't really do the technical exercises I assigned that much. I chalked that up to youthful excitement, and kept trying to push him to focus on more technique, and on digging into the details of his pieces. But he wasn't taking the time to really learn how viola was different--vibrato too fast, slightly out of tune (didn't know geography and new spacing of viola), and needed work on more flexible and heavy bow arm.
All of a sudden, a crazy whirlwind of making videos for summer programs started. Questions and tons of emails and extra meetings with the mom alone--all to discuss the best strategy to make a recording that would get him into the most competitive summer programs in the country. They sought black and white answers to grey situations, quoting other teachers as saying things that were more definite (they liked that a lot!). Probably 30 different recordings were made, in at least 6-7 venues, and on three different recording devices. Mom coached him to smile the entire time he was playing during the videos. The end result were recordings that were slightly out of tune and not very musical--the result of making so many, not being happy with them, and finally going to a professional studio and doing them all in one three hour block, falling over from exhaustion and stress.
After the recordings were done, I managed to get about 3-4 weeks set up of only technical studies and solo Bach (his favorite and strength). He made more improvement in that time than in the whole fall semester. Vibrato started to improve, bow arm started to really pull a sound, and intonation greatly changed from slow Schradieck work, and his understanding and self-awareness started developing finally. His practice habits were changing, too. I asked the mom if she heard all of this wonderful improvement. She said "No, I can't really tell. I'm not musical."
At this point, talk of Juilliard Pre-college and needing to get in that spring (just months away) started. It finally became apparent that there was an ultimatum from the dad. The student needed to show that he was competitive with other kids his age (14 years old) in order to keep playing. "If he couldn't get into pre-college right now, how would he ever be able to get into conservatory later?!" (This is a kid who practices 3-4 hours a day, and got into NYYS as a 14 year old.) A barrage of questions about how to navigate the politics of it all was repeatedly thrown at me. They asked if I would be okay with them meeting some of the Juilliard pre-college faculty and taking lessons. I said that was fine, and next time I saw them they'd already taken lessons with three people. I'd made recommendations on who I thought he'd work well with, and instead they asked for lessons from anyone they could reach. I was forced to answer questions in front of the student like "We should take any extra lessons from anyone that could be helpful to us, right, Suzanne? More lessons are better, right, Suzanne?" (Of course, the faculty would not like this "shopping around" style of doing things. They want students who are dedicated to working with them, and them alone.)
It became more and more glaringly apparent that they were seeing me as a stepping stone to get to Juilliard pre-college. They of course didn't see it that way--the desperation was thick in the air! They were always very polite and outwardly respectful, but so concerned with this goal that they would do anything to make it work. I'm guessing that once they'd achieved something that was a big enough achievement for the father, everyone settled down.
I decided to stop teaching them. I didn't want to go along for any more of that stressful ride. And the extra time it took to soothe the mom--and all for a student that wouldn't actually be my student!! I gave them some ideas/names on how to proceed to get ready for the auditions. In only 9 months of working with someone, I would only have scratched the surface of helping the student improve. I told them repeatedly that it made more sense to work with me for two years so that we'd have time to get to know each other, I could have fixed problems, and have helped them prepare rep really well, with a sense of self awareness on the student's part. But they wouldn't even consider it. They said they respected me, but words are words. They respected me to a certain point. I felt badly, because I knew that the mother didn't understand. She didn't think she did anything wrong, and she said she didn't see this coming--despite my frustration and repeated explanations of why this wasn't good for the student.
I know that this idea of losing good students to pre-college programs is par for the course, living in NYC. Losing a student I've had for several years--or even that I've taught since the beginning--is one thing. But I really don't want to get the reputation of being that person to whom people go to get coached for less than a year in order to prepare for the pre-college audition.
I found out later that this student got into the Curtis Summerfest that year, using one of the recordings for which I'd helped him prepare. Bittersweet.
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