Four years ago, the Music Industry Department didn’t even exist. Instead, it was a loose confederation of three different majors – Music Management, Music Production Technology (MPT), and Performing Arts Management. The department head at the time, Irene Conley, had been leading the department for many years after a successful career in entertainment management. At the end of 2016, she abruptly retired due to health issues. Her second in command, Erika Haynes, followed her out the door. This left the department with almost no full time faculty.
Enter: Gabe Herman.
Professor Herman is an extremely successful audio engineer, and has taught classes in the Management and MPT departments for just under ten years, serving as the Assistant Head of MPT. He became the interim head of the Music Management Department following Conley’s departure and turned the entire program around in three short years.
Prior to Herman’s ascendence, Conley’s Management Program was very traditional: lecture style classes, lots of essays, and following books and advice from when she started teaching the curriculum decades ago. Herman’s mission was to bring the entire Music Industry program together and into the 21st century.
One alumni, Max Ship ’18, said of the department when he first entered “[the faculty] had a rather rigid and traditional view of the music industry. With an industry so vast and ephemeral like ours, it’s important that students learn about and are adapted for such change.”
Herman brought on three new faculty members: Mehmet Dede, a successful promoter and owner/operator of DROM in New York City; Emily VanScoy, General Manager of Hartford Stage; and Marcus Thomas, the new Department Head, and an entertainment attorney with a long list of accomplishments in Atlanta and Los Angeles. He also melded the three majors into one coherent department, allowing them to pool together more funding for trips, speakers, and an upgraded recording studio.
This change has already had a massive impact. Ship states that Herman’s appointment to the Interim Head position was “A huge turning point” for the department. “Rather than getting a broad view of the industry, we were [now] getting a direct and inside view of it.”
Herman spent two years as Head before hiring Marcus Thomas to take over. Thomas’ placement has already begun to set in motion big changes for the department. Current Sophomore Management student, Austin Kelley, says “With the addition of Marcus Thomas, the department has added an asset that will inform students of the legal side of the industry.” His background in entertainment law now bleeds into every class, allowing students a much firmer understanding of how things work on a grand scale while explaining something very niche.
This change could not have come at a better time. The upgrade in faculty and technology compliments a rapidly changing music industry. As graduating senior Rachel Penna-Scheer put it, “The industry will look completely different in this generation and will constantly be adapting to the technology available to remain successful.” The department four years ago was very much stuck in the rigidity of the music industry pre-streaming. The department, much like the industry, was in denial of the impact the internet was having.
“The classes are modern-focused and are relevant to the current position of this industry in the 21st century,” says Penna-Scheer. ” The new electives have been really helpful in staying updated with the music industry as a whole.”
Looking to the future: the department is adding a new instrumental studies concentration – commercial music, adding a summer intensive in the music epicenter that is Nashville, Tennessee, and further expanding the networking between the department and important players in the industry.
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