Getting a college education in music is invaluable simply because your growth doesn’t stop once you graduate high school. I still take lessons even though I finished my DMA four years ago, almost. Once in a while, I still see a Teacher just for kind of a tune-up. You have the upkeep.
In high school, and anything before college, you sort of stay in that piano bubble. When you get to college, that’s when you start intermingling with musicians who play different instruments, and that’s how you start working with them.
The other thing is, it’s always good to gauge yourself against better competition. I never advocate for anyone trying to beat anyone else, but having a solid idea of where you are by comparison, and what your room for improvement is is very valuable.
Collaborative Pianists need to train like soloists. You have to have the technical ability and the musical wherewithal of a top-quality soloist.
For someone coming out of high school, they’re not going to know everything they need to. I don’t think I really, truly, learned how to practice, for instance, until I was twenty-seven years old. I had this sort of crisis situation because I had a really bad performance, and I realized that I didn’t think I was working the proper way.
So I went to my Teacher’s studio, and I said, “I know you’re in the middle of a lesson, but I need five minutes of your time,” and I started just rambling off a bunch of questions about preparation, and I think that was eye-opening. You’re never too old to learn, especially if you consider hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years of musical history. You can always learn something from someone, somewhere.