If music is a universal
language, it's being spoken in new ways at Purdue
University Fort Wayne. Enrollment is growing
with programs in popular music, music industry, and music
technology. Groundbreaking for a new music industry
building is also planned, and we'll discuss
what Purdue University Fort Wayne is doing to help
Fort Wayne move closer to being a top ten music
city. On this week's PrimeTime and good evening
on Bruce Haynes. And with us
today is John O'Connell. He is dean of the College
of Visual Performing Arts
at Purdue, Fort Wayne. And with John is John. John Butane, who is clinical
assistant professor of music and director of popular
music, music industry and music technology
programs at Purdue, Fort Wayne. and welcome John's. Thank you. Thank you. Let me ask you both
start with you, John. What■s it been
like to blaze these trails? it's been exciting. I like a good challenge. I like to build things. And so the idea of these
new programs that needed energy and already
had some significant growth and wanted to take it to the next level,
I've I've loved it. And so I'm headed into my fifth
year and really excited about the next. The nice thing is
that our administration is really behind it. They understand that
we're coming upon a time when enrollment is going to be
difficult for Midwest colleges. And so you have to have
signature programs, right? Programs
that make you stand out. And that's what we decided
in 2018 would be for Purdue, Fort Wayne. So since John arrived,
we've added two other full time, almost three other
full time people that he's hired because our program has gone
from 30 to almost 150. Yeah. Wow. So what's the driver
behind this one from the student standpoint? Is it something that's
sitting the millennium now, which you say as far
as interests and opportunities? Yeah, I think it is. It's it's in the way
we have the degrees structured where, you know,
if you're a music industry major, you can still do
some music technology classes. If you had the music technology
minor or if you're commercial music,
popular music student, you still get some industry
courses. We're preparing students
in these degrees to be very well rounded and prepared to tackle
just about any job that might present to them
at some point in their future. Right. In the music industry. So one of the so I sort of covered was part of
that was this was a result of COVID
as well. But our students were
coming to us and at that time having recorded
in their basement. Right. They've got gadgets
in their basement, they've got computers, they've got computer programs
where they were already doing this kind of work
before they got here. So they kind of told us, like,
I don't want to sing opera. Nothing against opera,
the beautiful opera program with a beautiful choral program. But they were telling us,
I want to do popular music because I want to
I want to work in a rock band. I want to be in a country band, but I also want to have
a college degree. Well, and so we're seeing shots of student life,
if you will, out there on U.S. 30 in the Sweetwater
Tech Center space. But that's
because the space on campus is in the act of becoming everything that on paper
it expects to be. Right. Yeah. How? And before we get to the building, though,
I do want to ask a about background to this BSM and music industry degree
and a basement in popular music. Music technologies,
Bachelor of Science in Music. And then with the subject
with specialization. Yes. And so the music technology is the only one
that's slightly different. That is a Bachelor of music,
really. That boils down to are
our School of Music accrediting and the type of degrees
that we can offer with a B.S. and degree. We have the ability to offer
more variety within the degree. And so that's how we've been
able to do some of the things that we've done by by making it less of a
traditional music degree and giving them a little bit
more freedom to take this or to do that concentration
or take a minor in this. So there's there's a few
more electives I saw A dual degree is also offered,
I believe the opportunity to
and I have it in in notes that will come to me no it's
probably as an outside field. So it's yes, outside field. So that's a degree
that's been around for a while. So we might have a psychology
major who wants to also have
a degree in music. So it's called music
with an outside field. So they're getting
a music degree and a psychology degree
or perhaps an education degree. So it's called music
with an outside field. Yeah. So there is a building coming. When did you first get the sense
that the existing walls, even with Sweet Waters assistance,
were starting to bulge a little? My first
day on the job, I think, Sounds like a made for TV movie. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And I have a bigger studio.
Dino. Yeah. Nice to meet you, too. Butane. We've got a bigger studio. Well, and so the building that was renovated for us on the campus
of Sweetwater is a lease. We didn't buy the building.
It's their building. So all along, we have known that
it wasn't for eternity. Chuck Sirak, who was kind enough to renovate
that building for us, told us what a
how long our contract was. So we've known that we had a, you know, had to get out
by a certain time, but we didn't realize that the need for
it would grow so quickly. It really has. We just outgrown the
space completely. So yeah, So I had a meeting with with Mr. Sirak and said he said,
you know, the times, you know, the clock's ticking. And I said, Yes, it is, Chuck. And he said, What's your plan? I said, Well, I don't have
a penny in my pocket. And he said, Well, let's if we put a penny in
your pocket, can we get started? So he gave us a lead gift that got us rolling for
some significant fundraising. Significant fundraising,
My goodness. And there had also
then been the planning, the conversations with the design teams,
architects of variety of outside that has been going on
every two weeks since last summer, I believe. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And really kudos to John. I just got to tell you, I hired the right guy,
you know, because the amount of advanced equipment that's
necessary for this new building. So just so everyone knows,
we're building a $25 million
new building on our campus, it's a music industry building
that has multiple studio spaces, has a smart classroom, a conference room, a 3000
square foot rehearsal hall, and a live rehearsal hall
for the pop music students. It's pretty amazing. but we've been meeting
every two weeks since. Since last summer. Wow. And we have a tour
we can take of sorts through various images
that have been shared. Going in this,
while hard to read for us, might be easier
for you to read at home, but the different colors kind
of segmenting out, in fact. Yes. And John can tell you what,
that's a floor plan for the first floor. Okay. So yep, yep. And all the yellow that you see
there is all studio spaces. And the design has actually changed a little bit
since this rendition. But we're mostly
there are the blue spaces are what we would call at
and production suites. And so those can be booked out
by students with laptops and whatnot. And so we've got an on
the second floor, you know, conference room,
more production suites, offices. So it's it's really
going to be a stellar facility. And this is it from the outside. There it is. Isn't it beautiful adjacent to. So it's down adjacent. It is next to next. It has a walking bridge
on the second floor. It turns out that
all the utilities for the north side of campus are buried
right behind the music building. You see there. There's a bridge
on the second floor. Okay. We couldn't connect it
because all of the utilities are underground and the cost of moving
all of that was astronomical. So why don't we just move it
50 feet off of there and put a bridge?
There's the lobby, and that's the classroom
on the first floor. And that's the conference
room on the second floor. There's our 3000 square foot new rehearsal hall,
state of the art, you know, And there are several perspectives,
and you can it's great to see where the sound carries
that. The sound all has to go
somewhere. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, you know that. So that would be our primary
studio or Studio A and the largest one. We would use that for teaching a lot of the recording and music
technology classes. That's just kind of a different
angle of that. And then that would be our commercial music
ensemble rehearsal space, kind of designed
to look like a club where you might, you know, show up to see one
of these bands play, perform, you know, and have fake wine. Yeah, right. That's right.
Had this been an actual just another shot of the studio we're trying to like include
nice university colors, but also just vibrant colors
in these spaces. Make it feel like you're walking
into a creative and energizing space where you want to create
something beautiful. You have to have a
you have to have an Oriole or it's somewhere. I think every studio has a job
description to try to do that timeline. We are opening on fall of 26. So what this is the two
two falls from that we'll have that class will be moving
in their two years. But you know,
we have to keep recruiting. So I don't really know
where as we get more students in, we feel that space up. It's going to be challenging
for John to still be Sweetwater. But yeah, we're very excited
and we were I think there's September ceremonial ground
breaking and September 10th. Yeah,
come on out as a groundbreaking John students we playing
some live music for us Yeah the the
opportunity for all of this too. We said that the open was a way
for the university along with others. Also trying
to answer this question of how to get Fort
Wayne out there as a either a top
ten music city or something that's truly accentuating all of the musical assets
of the region when that kind of thing
comes up in conversation. Let me ask you both start
with you, John. What your your responses to. So, yeah, my response to
that is this program will be a feeder program for top
ten in music industry City. I mean, we we have a program,
we have a building like no other in the country. Literally
nobody has this on their campus. And John can talk about it, but we have our own record
label, Goldtop Records, that he created when he got here
after some walking orders. And it's been hugely successful. And we're the only one
in the country with a student run record label that's as successful as that is. So we're already feeding
by having a student run record label
and having all of these students graduating in Northeast Indiana
to feed the music industry. So that's my response. Yeah. Yeah. It's I'm glad you brought
up the the gold Top record label because that actually
I think, ties in the how we're reaching out
into the Fort Wayne and beyond. I think Gold Top is one of my
program's best recruiting tools. This summer alone,
we partnered with downtown Fort Wayne
to do a series of four concerts, part of the Downtown
Live series. So that was a really exciting, just kind of boost
to both goldtop, but to be able to feed into Fort
Wayne's music scene and bring musicians
from our programs and from our label
that are signed artists out. So I think this the future that this building
and these programs have for making Fort Wayne one of the top cities,
I think it's it's critical. It's going to be
crucial in that. What are some of the
the the position titles or the you know, the capacities of
the crew needed to pull off this kind of level of production
recording and such for which a student could
look at that rundown and say, I could do this,
I might try to study to do that with the band is doing a remote. I now know
which end of the cable goes where or you know,
and a whole lot more with post-production, you know,
and they all say, we'll fix it, we'll edit it will sweeten it,
you know, whatever it may be. That takes time,
that experience. Yeah, it takes time
and it takes practice, you know, I mean, we get them our studio music tech students,
they jump in their very first semester into the studio and they don't leave the studio
until they graduate. And at first, you know,
they might be a little timid of all the gear and the gadgets
and the knobs, right? They they see
all this big fancy equipment, but by the time they leave,
they know how every single thing in there operates. And it's hard to get them
to leave at that point. Like you got to graduate. Yeah. One of the pieces of equipment
that we're ordering for the new building, John, has been in conversation
because it's going to be designed
for our program. It's being built and it's,
you know, yeah, too many hundreds,
thousands of dollars just for
that piece of equipment. not too many appropriate, but. But they're building it based on
what he says we need it to do. So it's going to be
that's pretty unique. So the capabilities
that you're looking forward to seeing students experience,
he had those moments that they bump into along the way. Talk about a couple of those. maybe you've seen them already. Certainly in the work
that's been done. Yeah, I think I see that a lot
in the studio because those are, that's kind of my area
of, of teaching is when you're, you're producing, you're walking
through how you capture a sound a certain way
and how maybe just slight adjusts
and then a microphone is going to make or break
that how you capture that sound and just these real life
examples. Goldtop is another one. So like what
we do in the studio, what we do with Goldtop,
where students are like, wait a minute, like that's,
that's how that works. Like,
that's how we're going to market or that's how we're going
to brand this artist. And that is super critical
in this artist becoming successful, right? And so, I mean, those are
just some of the things we do. Goldtop We do a lot of play
listing and publishing. We have our own publishing
branch, so students and goal top specifically they can take and this is the beautiful thing about it is
they can take what they're learning in the classroom
and then they can bring it in into this real business,
this real label where there's money at stake,
there's people's art and, you know, albums,
their careers are at stake. And so real
things are tied to it. And so they're able
to make these decisions. And from what they've
learned in class and seeing them make the right decision and even
sometimes the wrong decision. Right, Because we all do that,
that those are the moments. Absolutely. See, I think I think some of the other moments though
that I've seen is that the popular music students
have a concert twice a semester
that's quite large. They had it out at the Sweetwater Theater
a couple mostly to our theater. But I've been to it
and it is a rocking rock and roll concert of students that have put themselves
together because they're in school
together right? They're like, well, you're a bass player
and I'm a singer and I'm going to play the guitar and I'm going to play the piano
and drums. And so we have I don't know
how many groups of them, but I've gone and sometimes
you've had 8 to 10 bands. Yeah, on an evening
and sometimes you've had had two evenings because there are so many bands
that want to play. And those bands were
mostly created out of students, you know, finding each other's
strengths in our program. That's an moment for them to go,
Wow, we can create a band because we all have something in common
that's I think that's fantastic. Well,
the skills are resumé ready too, because you're using equipment
that's also out there in actual studios of note literally across the country
and around the world. And people can say,
I can drive that car. Yeah, if you if you give me
a chance, I can make this work. Right. And I'm imagining, too,
the synergies of that also play well across the college
with those that continue to come to campus
to pursue theater. Right. And therapy and so forth,
that this is helping to be a business model for students,
but it's also a business model for getting a couple extra work
met service. Yeah, Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we look, we're
a busy, busy, busy college. We produce over 144
events a year. We have a full theater season
every year, five shows. This year we have an incredible
number of guest artists. I don't know. I don't know how
we're paying for all of them, but I just saw the list
of guest artists that are coming for a fall
semester in the School of Music. I really encourage people
to come out of that and and look up our event schedule
because we have to and we have two different
piano players. We have we're doing something
with the Hispanic Month with some people
come from South America. So yeah, we're
we're really busy. The thing about being on campus
with this new building also is that just what you just said? We have music therapy, we have music performance,
we have music education. All those people also want to be
recording as well. You know what? Most of them are performers
themselves. They want to be recording. They don't have access to that.
Right now. It's Sweetwater because it's six miles away and
they're not in the program now. It's going to be across
the bridge, right? They will be able to use those edit booths
if they've been taught how to use them, they'll be able
to take those classes. So we're opening up this facility now to the other 250
students in the music program. Yeah, talent, attraction, Talent
retention, Yeah. And things beyond which
within the recording industry, because musicians have it's more
than just the garage set up, right. Or the basement. So yeah, but there is a level
of sophistication that we're all starting
to tune our ears for when we listen to music
and being able to respond to that, realize I'm getting an education
and a career simultaneously is a real, real option. And our job as a as as scholars
is to stay ahead of the industry. Right? We have to send our students out with the with the best
and most current knowledge. So we have to have
instrumentation, we have to have hardware,
we have to have software that is cutting edge
so that when they go out into the industry, they're not behind the eight
ball. You have to be ahead
of the game. They have to be the ones people
look to to know what's current, what is, or
are a couple of those top of mind things
that would be current for the season to come on campus
with, say, theater music? Well, we have a play starting in September
called The Catastrophes. That's directed by Jeff Casals. It's a science play
which I find very interesting. That's the science play. It was a one person play that
he is divided into five actors, and it's about the origins
of the pandemic. Actually, it's based on a true story
of a scientist who has some philosophies
of the origins of the pandemic. So that's kind of interesting.
Yeah. And then our second
show of the season is probably one of the most popular musicals
ever. Cabaret. I'm really looking forward
to that. That hasn't been cast yet. At the end of the season,
we have a 24 hour play where actors and directors
and designers all get together and in 24 hours
they create four plays. yeah, I know, I know this is looked at versus
thinking, what is it, 1985. So like finals week we need this by Well, yeah, so that's happening and
our gallery has an incredible show up right now
Photography show by Brian Arch. he traveled with Prince,
he traveled with U2. He lives in Fort Wayne now. He lived in New York for many,
many years. And he we have his show us up in our gallery
right now of photography. His his story
is very interesting, too. So we have a lot going on. And then again, the list of visitors is for the
for fall for the School of Music is great. And of course,
the annual collaboration between the Station
to the School of Music with the Home for the Holidays
concert in December, which will be here
in about 10 minutes. The first Monday in December.
That's right, Yes. Our largest
and most popular concert. Find out more as they say
you can do that online. Pfw edu slash VPA is the shortest shortcut
to get to not only the website but also to find out
more about our special guests. And there's information
too, on Goldtop Records Gatcombe Jump you Time. Clinical Assistant
Professor of Music and Director of Popular Music
Music Industry Music technology programs at Purdue Fort Wayne. John O'Connell, the dean
of the College of Visual Performing Arts at Purdue, Fort
Wayne. Gentlemen, thank you so much. Thank you, Brooke. And likewise,
Thank you for allowing us to be a part of your day. I'm Bruce Haynes. Take care.
We'll see you soon. Goodbye.