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The Art of Collaboration: Top 10 Skills for Creative Success

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This semester, I am teaching a new course at the Yale School of Music using the collaborative project as the vehicle through which to teach arts entrepreneurship and innovation. Arts entrepreneurship involves coming up with innovative ideas that create value to society and actualizing those ideas. Collaboration is more than teamwork, where there is a leader to set the agenda and …

Mock Auditions at the Yale School of Music: A Rich Growth Experience for Music Entrepreneurs

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Last week, students at the Yale School of Music were treated to an extraordinary experience: mock orchestral auditions with a panel of 3 world-class musicians: Maestro Peter Oundjian, Music Director of Toronto Symphony and former first violin of the Tokyo String Quartet, and two professors from the Yale School of Music, William Purvis (French Horn) and Robert Van Sice (Percussion). Nine brave student …

Using Music to Solve Problems: How Music Entrepreneurs Discover Solutions in 3 Steps

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How can the process of learning how to perform music help music entrepreneurs and arts leaders solve difficult leadership problems when the answers are not obvious? This was among the questions under discussion at last week’s Opera America’s Leadership Intensive Next Steps (LINS) program, which brought together 15 talented mid-career opera managers to provide advanced leadership training in order to retain high-quality leaders …

Managing the Downturns: 4 Happiness Strategies for Coping with Challenge

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” Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” – John Lennon This summer, I planned to take it a bit easier. I scheduled a few teaching engagements, intended to concentrate on the piano, and planned a trip to California to meet my new baby grandson. The rest of the time was going to be devoted to …

Finding Your Life Purpose: 3 Steps to Help Your Career Transition

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Throughout our lives, our identities change so when it comes to careers, it should come as no surprise that we have multiple career possibilities and not just one given path. The situation becomes even more interesting when you are committed to finding a career that align with your life purpose so that your work reflects something meaningful to you. This …

How to Stay in Balance over the Summer: 5 Steps for Music Entrepreneurs

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Summer is officially here! For many of us, it means a change in routine and the opportunity to do things that we do not have time to do during the rest of the year. School is out, summer festivals are about to begin, you may be on tour and/or you may have more down time around home. How do you …

How Music Entrepreneurs Make Decisions: Play the Pain/Gain Game

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What happens when you are faced with two appealing alternatives and you do not know which one to chose? Now that festival offerings, graduate school acceptances and other training opportunities are rolling in, our students are often faced with making choices that affect their future. How does one decide, say, between going to New York to embark on a freelance …

Managing Transitions for Music Entrepreneurs: Articulate Your Fears To Generate Solutions

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With the end of the school year fast approaching, our students are leaving Yale to pursue new ventures, including doctoral programs, joining a military band, studying abroad, and starting their new careers in the freelance world. These external changes signal the process of transition: an internal process that people go through and the emotions that they experience when faced with …