The Great New World of Opportunity: Classical Music in the 21st Century

Last week, I had the privilege of speaking at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival/Yale School of Music about the state of classical music in the 21st century with a focus on the opportunities for today’s musicians to create successful careers.  Yes, my friends, we are living in a world full of possibilities and great opportunities for classical musicians! So let’s look at what the nay-sayers are saying and then view our world through the lens of opportunity.

Managing Multiple Passions: Achieving Creative Fulfillment and Pushing Through Fear

What do you do when you love so many things that you cannot decide what career direction to pursue?

As someone who transitioned from French literature to law to non-profit management to consulting to career coaching to teaching career entrepreneurship at the Yale School of Music and writing, speaking and coaching on career fulfillment, I was plagued by this very issue.  Indeed, over the course of my various career iterations, I went from utter frustration at thinking that I was never going to figure it out to embarking on a process of reflection and experimentation to learning the beauty of aligning one’s career with one’s passions, values and strengths and of honoring the twists and turns of the journey to creative fulfillment and career success. 

Yes, the process takes time and often leaves you wondering where you are going but once you connect the dots, there is nothing quite like it.  If you are someone with multiple passions and feel stuck in your tracks, here are some reflections on what might be holding you back and what you can do about it.

Making Musical Dreams a Reality: A Tale of 3 Concerts and a Poet

This is a tale of one week in New York city involving 3 concerts, a 19th Century visionary poet and the importance of making dreams a reality. In today’s world where the paradigms of classical music are changing and we are experimenting with different models of success, these concerts make me feel a lot better about the state of our art.

Let’s start with the concerts.

My Brilliant Career: Messages to Inspire Today’s Musicians

The June 3, 2012 New York Times Sunday Review section featured a series of essays from 5 prominent people in different fields entitled “My Brilliant Career” reflecting on the “crooked paths to success”.

I was delighted to see that music figured prominently in this round-up since the writers included the brilliant composer and my colleague at the Yale School of Music, David Lang and pop record label president Jonathan Poneman, as well as politician Olympia Snow, the novelist Hilary Mantel, physicist and polymath Leonard Mlodinow.

The article, aimed at college graduates, shows us that the path to success is often a series of odd jobs and bizarre circumstances.  Moreover,  there are a number of themes that resonate powerfully for the creative people with whom I work.

Let’s take a cl0ser look.

Confidence vs. Arrogance: Know Your Gift to Boost Your Personal Power

We have all been there:  you meet someone at a competition or a reception or a class who dominates the conversation, talks only about himself, projects an aura of knowing it all and could care less about you or other people around him. What’s your reaction? “Boy, am I intimidated! Why can’t I be that confident?” Or perhaps “What a …

Entrepreneurial Projects: Translating Vision and Mission into Action

One of the most thrilling aspects of my class this semester was how my students incorporated a huge volume of information and applied it to their semester projects.  The objective was to experience first-hand the entrepreneurial skills that we learned in class and to experiment with something that they had never done before.  The students were encouraged to take risks and use their ingenuity and creativity to produce something new, looking for opportunities and adopting the positive can-do mindset of an entrepreneur.

The results were magnificent! 

I was deeply impressed with how hard my students worked.  They tapped into their passions and sense of mission to generate these projects.  The projects also aligned with their long-term goals and vision.  In fact, I am delighted that so many of these projects are the springboard for future activities. No wonder they were so motivated to work these projects!

Here’s a run-down of what these music entrepreneurs accomplished.

The TED Commandments: 10 Rules for a Great Speech

What makes for a great speech?

These days, one need only log onto Ted.com to see examples of the leading lights in our culture speaking with passion on everything from art to business to science to you name it!   In fact, in my class, I assigned my students to watch Ben Zander’s TED Talk on Music and Passion to show them the excitement that music can generate to tap into new possibilities, new experiences and new connections.

TED talks are wildly popular.  According to TED’s own records, TEDTalks have been viewed more than 500 million times by people around the world (as of July 2011).

Is it merely an accident that these speeches are so good?  Or is there some method to guide these talented people?

It turns out that TED’s organizer’s indeed issue guidelines, called the TED Commandments, which are apparently engraved on a stone tablet and sent to their invited speakers!  I am indebted to Tim Longhurst for transcribing the engraved  commandments from a photograph and typing then up.  Here they are:

Public Speaking for Music Entrepreneurs: 4 Ways to Engage Your Audience

All semester, my students have been working on projects that have given them the opportunity to practice their newly honed entrepreneurial skills.  In our last class, they had a chance to share their projects and showcase their public speaking abilities that we learned about in our public speaking class. The goal was to deliver an interesting, engaging speech that conveyed …

Your Marketing Message: How to Telegraph the Emotional Benefits of Your Music

This week, I spent a lot of time in my car and therefore had a wonderful opportunity to listen to music. My selections ranged from a lecture series on late Beethoven Quartets to Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 8, to Steve Reich to Chopin Nocturnes and then to the Beethoven late quartets, particularly the Grosse Fugue.  These choices depended on what mood I was in:

  • Did I want to be stimulated or provoked or soothed? 
  • Did I want to relax and feel restored? 
  • Did I need something to contemplate or to help me ponder the meaning of life? 
  • And what about staying alert on a long drive?

Music is a powerful way of tapping into one’s emotions and that is why people love to listen to music.

Interestingly, my thoughts dovetailed perfectly with my most recent class at Yale on marketing for musicians.  Admittedly a huge topic, marketing is essential in this day and age since most musicians just starting their careers are not likely to have the money to hire professional publicists or managers for marketing help.

Speaking About Music: How to Be Confident and Powerful

If you happened to wander by my classroom at Yale recently, you would have seen and heard my students and their professor (that would be me!) moving their arms, doing knee bends, rolling their lip, singing scales to the tune of “mi mi mi” and reciting tongue twisters under the tutelage of Professor Brian Lewis who came to my class to help us learn more about public speaking and overcome “glossophobia”(the fear of public speaking).

In fact, in some surveys, fear of public speaking is the number one common phobia, ranking even higher than the fear of death!  So Professor Lewis was there to give us some valuable tips on how to get comfortable with public speaking since he adn I both believe that this is an essential skill for today’s musicians.  Here is a summary of his remarks, together with my own observations on how to speak in public with power and confidence.