jwilzewske: Working in Music: Classical Musicians As Entrepreneurs

S imilar to Nadel’s 1998 observation that an architect is not a designer of buildings but instead a business person whose work product is architecture, I found that the musician is a business person whose product results in music performance and consumption. . . . My findings concurred with Rogers’s 2002 study, which found that 62% of musicians considered communication skills to be the most important to [sustainability of] their professional practice.”
— Dawn Bennett, MS Thesis, 2005, Univ Western Australia.

T he future of live classical music? Disappearing! The odds of winning an orchestral job? Not good! The security of an orchestral job? Not great!The job market for clarinetists? Poor! The chances of making a living strictly playing the clarinet? Not going to happen! The stability and likelihood of your symphony orchestra financially surviving the next 25 years? Tenuous, at best. Sure: follow your dreams, follow your heart, set your goals high. But each year, conservatories and universities graduate hundreds whose playing ability borders on the unbelievable. We’ve all heard many of them play. The sad fact is that most will never earn their living by just playing. There are just not enough places for them to play. All too quickly, it will become apparent that playing the ‘audition roulette’ circuit takes its toll, both financially and mentally. When you are young, the notion of being a professional musician sounds noble, intriguing—the ideal vocation. However, after a few years, when your friends have moved on and bought their own homes, have their retirement plans in place, have disposable income, have medical benefits, and treat themselves to the better things in life, the professional musician monicker loses its luster very quickly. The dream dies hard and fast. A struggling musician is not a pretty sight.”
— bulletin board post by ‘GBK’
http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html

DSM: Having your dreams is wonderful, but there are far too few performance opportunities, and too many musicians competing for the small number of opportunities available. Why is this so hard to understand? If there were a glut of plumbers, everybody would understand that and not train to be a plumber. Somehow there’s the sense that since it’s Art, then Reality should be held at bay. Well, you can still play. You just have get a day job, or two day jobs, or three. And that’s what musicians generally do. In the U.S. and other countries that lack government support for the Arts, that’s what they’ve always done. It’s a shame that the conservatories’ curricula tend not to acknowledge this reality and prepare their students for it.

CMT: Would we want our football and basketball coaches to lead the dreamers among their players to believe that they can play in the pros if they just want it badly enough and follow their hearts? No. In just the same manner, young musicians need to make sure that they have a way to make a life for themselves. And, I agree with you, the music curricula and career counseling services should be designed to insure that they do that—produce graduates who are able to do several things well, and who are entrepreneurial and able to achieve some degree of financial stability as well as artistic success. Equip them with dreams plus abilities plus a safety net!

DSM: And counsel them, too, on unions—not just on entrepreneurship. Not everyone is suited to start and run their own business. Making more than ‘scale’? Busking can be interesting in your twenties; but it can’t be interesting in your seventies. I have to tell you—the U.S. Department of Labor 2006-07 statistics for classical musician earnings are pretty discouraging. The trend is not good, comparing that report with previous years’ versions of the same report.

CMT: Besides teaching and a cultivating your practice of private lessons and clinics, what is there? Do demo work for a large music store. Found an indie recording studio. Compose for film if you can. Become a music festival organizer. Write jingles for broadcast advertising and industrial tradeshow displays. Try to work part-time as a studio musician. Be a traveling rep for an instrument manufacturer. Do ensemble playing for society events or—Horrors!—weddings and funerals. Try to get a decent-paying gig in a church or synagogue? All of those are low-odds opportunities—in general, few and far between.

DSM: I think a major cause of musicians’ unstable employment has had to do with the difficulty in discovering what opportunities are ‘open’. The MusicalChairs webservice does quite a lot to correct this situation. MusicalChairs has timely postings of classical music performance openings, by country and geographic location. ChamberMusicAmerica’s publications are a help, too. But periodic print publications are no match for the Web.

CMT: And don’t forget social networking sites like Josh Gindele’s ClassicalLounge.com—those are another valuable resource for networking and discovering opportunities!

I t is an institution’s unwavering will to present interesting programs – not simply popular ones – that builds audiences over time, and narrows the spread between high-selling and low-selling concerts.”
— Christopher Stager.

jwilzewske

Monday, July 2, 2007

Working in Music: Classical Musicians As Entrepreneurs

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