Last week, I had the privilege of teaching at the Juilliard Lower Strings Seminar, taught by Astrid Schween, the fabulous cellist of the Juilliard Quartet. The class provides strategies on how to succeed in the world of music. My topic was how to cultivate the happiness habit and experience more flow in your creative career. Happiness Breeds Success I am …
Today’s Audience For Classical Music: How to Make Classical Music Relevant and Accessible
Every fall, I have the privilege of teaching a project-based seminar to a group of budding music entrepreneurs at the Yale School of Music. The class, Creating Value Through Innovative Collaborative Projects (Music 621a), addresses the problem of how to keep classical music alive and vital in our culture. My goal is to equip my students with leadership and innovation …
How’d You Get That Music Job Podcast: Career Success for Today’s Music Entrepreneurs
I am thrilled to be on the most recent music job podcast episode of “Hey, How’d You Get That Music Job?”, one of the top career podcasts of 2018. The host is L. Ariel, singer/songwriter/producer of dance synth pop, who hosts a series of podcasts with music industry experts with advice on how to succeed in the music business today. …
Networking and the Growth Mindset: How Music Entrepreneurs Can Learn to Love Networking
Summer is a great time to network! Chances are that you are touring, at a festival or engaged in a new teaching or performance venues where you are likely to be meeting a lot of new people. Yet for so many people, networking brings up a lot of negativity. I have heard the following: Networking feels sleazy activity but musicians have to …
Know Your People: How Music Entrepreneurs Can Expand the Audience for Classical Music
Audience engagement is all the rage these days as the classical music field grapples with how to stay relevant in today’s culture. Many of us are asking the question of what do today’s audiences REALLY want. In my class at Yale last semester, we took up this question as part of our collaborative projects. The charge to my students was …
Know Your Purpose and Share Your Vision: How Music Entrepreneurs Find Their Collaborators
Classical music faces a lot of challenges today and my goal in teaching and working with musicians is to help them find their place in the world of music and contribute something valuable and innovative. This fall, I began teaching a new class at Yale, entitled “Collaboration, Entrepreneurship and Innovation”. The premise of the course is that today’s artists need …
So Percussion’s Vision and Mission Statements: How Successful Music Entrepreneurs Communicate Their Purpose and Value
Arts entrepreneurship is about creating value to society through innovative ideas, fueled by a vision for how to make the world a better place, as well as a mission of how to make that vision a reality. That’s why successful arts entrepreneurs know their vision and their mission. People are often confused about what constitute a vision and a mission. …
Turning Arts Entrepreneurs into Inspired Leaders: Know Your WHY
My project in working with musicians and arts leaders is not only to teach arts entrepreneurship—the mindset, skillset and process of actualizing an innovative idea—but also to take entrepreneurship to the next level of cultural leadership To do so, I have my students articulate the greater purpose underlying WHY they make music, teach, perform and then communicate that purpose to the …
The Life-Long Journey of Music Entrepreneurship: Where are you now and how can you improve?
We hear a lot today about “arts entrepreneurship” but what exactly does that mean? Let’s start with “entrepreneurship”: the process of transforming an idea into an enterprise that creates value—economic, social, cultural, or intellectual– through innovation risk-taking and actualizing an idea. To me, “arts entrepreneurship” is: applying the entrepreneurial mindset (including taking risks, creating and recognizing opportunity, grit and growth) …
Entrepreneurial Projects: How Today’s Musicians Are Expanding the Horizons of Classical Music
Each semester, the students in my class at Yale learn how to apply their new entrepreneurial skills in a semester project that is subject to two rules: 1. Do something you never done before; and 2. Go outside your comfort zone. The goal is for students to feel free to experiment, focusing on the learning experience and not on achieving …