It's not every day that a grant funder announces a new program for musicians, so I'm excited to help spread the news. Chamber Music America actually has TWO new grant programs for musicians — maybe you? One is for jazz and the other for classical musicians....
There's a particular musician e-newsletter that I'm glad to get and read. It's one that's aimed at concert presenters — to keep in touch with them, to keep the ensemble on the presenters' radar screens. Below is what to learn from the Rodney Marsalis Philadelphia Big...
Here's what I've been mulling over lately: the fact that too many musicians feel isolated in our creative work. It's often an unstated need and question: How to Find or Start Your Own Creative Community. Are you getting the input you need to do your best creative...
Warning: this starts with a rant. I'm sick of getting concert invitations—even from musicians I know and love—that leave me cold, and a little pissed off. The problem is I don't like being treated like a number, but that's what most concert invitations do. They come...
MONDAY BYTE — January 16, 2017 On this Martin Luther King Monday, days before the inauguration, I'm thinking about the fear of the uncertain future and how we choose to deal with it. How would Dr. King deal with our uncertain times? He said, "If you can't fly then...
There's a common musician affliction — opportunity blindness. It's a form of situational short sightedness rendering us unable to see opportunities within our reach. Most of us view our careers by measuring what's missing, what we haven't accomplished—the glass half...
MONDAY BYTES — January 18, 2016 Curious about what musician interviews on change revealed? These are from a series of conversations with talented musicians on how they handled and managed through major changes in their lives and careers: what helped them to not just...
MONDAY BYTES — June 22, 2015 In one of his recent Think Clearly posts, Mathias Jakobsen asks the question, "What's Your Kryptonite?" He's referring to the one thing that can weaken the comic hero Superman: the element Kryptonite.Mathias' question is a good one: we all...
MONDAY BYTES — June 1, 2015 How can we help audiences make more meaningful connections with the music we perform for them?What helps people find relevance in a new encounter with work? In a recent Sunday NewYork Times magazineI found this terrific item: a short...
MONDAY BYTES - June 11, 2012 Check out this terrific book, “Draw it With Your Eyes Closed” (here’s the NYT review). It's a compiled set of 89 MFA-level art assignments from an impressive array of artists and art instructors who submitted their most challenging,...
