How prog is viewed by the academy

Important music academies in the UK (i.e. the Royal College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music) are not particularly interested in rock music and still have some prejudices against jazz (contrary to what they want to appear to be, which is colleges that embrace every style of music and aren't 100 years behind the real world). They would only accept a student to play music such as rock if it went alongside lots and lots of classical music. Ironically, this classical music includes the 20th century avant-garde stuff that a lot of prog bands are closely linked to. But you can't really blame them; they are there to produce the next wave of world class instrumentalists, and the there will always be a demand for people to perform Bach, Mozart and the rest.

In terms of composers, then, they get the short straw, because they are discouraged from writing music that is actually innovative or new. More commonly though, young composers just don't get accepted into the academies in the first place, unless their ethos is effectively one built around pastiches of Beethoven, Liszt, and Stravinsky (the latter being the college's idea of 'modern music'). I'm exaggerating a little, but that's where things stand at the moment with the big guns in the UK.

There are plenty of smaller conservatoires around the place that really do embrace jazz, rock, electronic music, and even pop. Some are as old, established and well funded as the famous pair, e.g. http://www.trinitylaban.ac.uk/

^ Well, I know of plenty, but only because I'm moving in to the field and have been researching professors and composers in London. But you are correct in saying that their work is largely heard through concerts, which are a) rarely held anywhere other than where the working composer is based, and b) are organised and performed by people in the industry for people in the industry, with minimal contact being made with the mass classical market, let alone the mass music market.

There are innovations being made in the classical field all the time, I'm sure, and some of the figureheads may have a background in one of these very "conservative conservatoires". However, the biggest and most publicised thing about any such academy is always the performers, and they are always in demand to play the classics more than the new stuff. This being the main dilemma for budding composers in London, where I'm moving to this year, and I'm sure in other music scenes as well, it is no real surprise that prog doesn't get a look in.