TAG: carnegie hall

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Collaborative Artistic Leadership: 3 Tips on Leveraging Strengths to Enhance the Power of Your Team

Recently, I conducted a leadership training at Ensemble Connect, the wonderful fellowship program at Carnegie Hall that prepares young professional classical musicians for careers that combine excellence in performing with teaching, community advocacy, entrepreneurship and leadership. Our session focused on helping the Fellows develop an authentic leadership style in team settings, using strengths and communication styles.  The Fellows particularly enjoyed discovering their strengths …

Conflict Management for Musicians Part II: Getting Past Difficult Personalities

As a musician, how often have you found yourself thinking along the following lines when you have encountered a conflict in dealing with your colleagues?   “She is so unreasonable.  She always wants us to conduct rehearsals according to her plan.”   “He is so disrespectful of my ideas and will not accept my input on this project.  It is …

Conflict Management for Musicians Part I: Take Charge by Using the Right Conflict Management Strategy

This week, I had the privilege and the pleasure of leading Professional Development training on conflict management with alumni of The Academy—one of the country’s leading teaching artist program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School and the Weill Music Institute, in partnership with the New York City Department of Education.

The 9 nine outstanding musicians who participated in the training are serving as Advisors to the current 20 Fellows of the Academy and the training was designed to provide them with skills and processes to help the Fellows manage conflict in the course of their work.

It is not surprising that conflict arises between musicians. Indeed, musician-leaders—the music entrepreneurs of the 21st Century– are passionate about their work and their ideas, have high standards of excellence, and are deeply committed to your cause.  And when they meet up with others who have the same depth and level of commitment to their ideas, it is going to cause friction. 

In essence, that is what conflict is:  a discomforting difference with someone where the two of you have incompatible issues, principles, behaviors or goals.

Conflict management is an essential leadership skill for the music entrepreneur of the 21st Century since it can help you to face challenges and look for opportunities in your conflict situations and our training provided these talented musician leaders with some great skills for handling the inevitable conflicts that arise in the music world.

Case Study of 4 Music Entrepreneurs: How do they do it and what keeps them going?

Many young musicians wonder how to go about creating a career in music.  They may have a general idea of what they want to do but they are not sure of the steps to take.  To help them see that it is indeed possible to create a successful career path in music,  I invited four recent alumni of the Yale School of Music (who graduated from YSM between 2004 and 2010) to talk to my students about their career paths and what they have learned about creating successful careers as musicians in today’s world. 

The panelists were:

Timo Andres: pianist/composer with a hit CD and an active freelance career as a pianist and composer;

Tina Hadari: violinist, member of the Haven String Quartet and founder of Music Haven, a non-profit in New Haven that provides tuition-free string instruction to underprivileged youth;

Paul Murphy: free-lance trumpeter and teaching artist with the NYPhilharmonic; and

Sam Quintal: violist and member of the Jasper String Quartet.

This wonderful group of artists showed my students that it is indeed possible to make one’s way in the world as a musician and that there are many different paths to creating career success.  Here are some of the top lessons that I gleaned from their remarks.  Next time, I will share my students’ observations.

Hope Springs Eternal: How to Change Your Perspective of Your Difficult Situation

Last week, I had the privilege of conducting a class on life balance for the medical residents at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.  The class is part of a wonderful program that the medical school runs called “Advancing Idealism in Medicine”.  The goal of the class is to prevent residents from “burning out” on the job.  I was asked to …