Auspicious Alums:
-Peter Erskine, jazz drummer
-Tom Hulce, actor
-Linda Hunt, actress
-Judith Shulevitz, New York Times columnist.

The downside to being the parent of an artistically gifted child is the fear that he or she will end up waiting tables for a living, but Interlochen, where students focus on music, dance, theater, visual arts or creative writing along with traditional academic subjects, offers a track record of notable successes. A recent survey found that about 50 percent of its graduates have established careers as working artists. The school estimates that Interlochen alumni occupy more than 10 percent of the seats in the nation’s major symphony orchestras, while upwards of 20 percent of the student body at the Julliard School comes from Interlochen in any given year.

YOUNG VIRTUOSOS at Interlochen

School president Jeffrey Kimpton says for many students, coming to Interlochen is the first time they are in a place surrounded by like-minded peers. His favorite memory is watching a student, alone on a stage, practicing a monologue in which he kept switching from a Shakespearean soliloquy to improvisation. The school makes an effort to infuse its traditional college prep curriculum with the kind of artistic flavoring that will appeal to its unique students. Physics students, for example, recently completed a course in which they constructed musical instruments entirely of their own design.

Still, artful discouragement can steer a not-quite-virtuoso student away from a life of heartbreak. John Yaskin, Interlochen class of 1978 and currently senior vice president of sales and marketing at Caesars Palace, was a highly talented violinist who, by his own admission, saw that he lacked the level of genius to make it professionally. “I realized I needed to branch out,” he says. He did so by, among other things, becoming student class president and creating and managing a weekly coffee house featuring student talent.