If you're like me and Passion Pit's 'Manners' was a hugely important album to you growing up, then you know their bassist Jeff Apruzzese. While Passion Pit basically just consists of leader Michael Angelakos, the rest of the members have delved into their own new career paths, including higher education! Jeff Apruzzese is now a professor at Drexel University and associate program director in the music industry program. Students at Drexel are SO LUCKY to get Jeff as a professor. Wow. He has so much insight to tell and this is such a huge score for Drexel.
Read more below via Philly.com
This is Apruzzese’s first semester lecturing, after previously helping juniors and seniors with practicums and senior projects. “He’s not just someone teaching out of the textbook," freshman Charlyn Sunico said before Apruzzese taught the Business of Concert and Touring Promotion course. “He’s tying the experiences from his life with what’s in the pages. So we see how it actually comes together.”
In a recent class, the lanky, 33-year-old Apruzzese discussed some of the hardcore realities of touring by drilling down through a profit and loss statement from a 2013 Passion Pit tour of the U.S. and Europe. That two-month adventure grossed more than $1.6 million in ticket sales and merchandise but left each member, at the bottom line, with a takeaway of less than $25,000. The bigger winners from that global slog were the band manager, who claimed a $267,000 share, the booking agents, who split $151,000 in commissions, and the tour accountant, who “remotely processed paperwork” for $78,545.
“Even the bus driver made more than we did,” Apruzzese noted with a sly smile.