Use the form on the right to send me an email and I will get back to you as soon as possible.
123 Street Avenue, City Town, 99999
(123) 555-6789
email@address.com
You can set your address, phone number, email and site description in the settings tab.
Link to read me page with more information.
A blog about performing music, teaching music and the business of music.
Filtering by Tag: career advice
"The one thing that we all must do is work and prepare....and to enjoy the preparation process because we spend much more time in rehearsal than we do on stage."
-Jessye Norman on advice to young musicians
All of the greats always talk about hard work. Every single one of them.
In life, when you surround yourself with smart and talented people, their knowledge will slowly seep into you like water into a sponge. Successful people always seem to seek out others who have previously succeeded in their field as they begin a new journey. Successful people also seek out people have attempted and failed at what they are trying to do, so long as those people are smart enough to have learned from their mistakes and have the ability to articulate what went wrong and what they learned from the experience.
The best thing a young person entering the music profession (or any established musician who is attempting a new phase of their career) can do is surround themselves with people who have both succeeded and failed as entrepreneurs. More specifically, people who have succeeded and failed both in music and other fields.
Aspiring band directors should hang out with successful band directors. Aspiring chamber musicians should hang out with successful chamber musicians. Aspiring composers should hang out with successful composers. And everyone should hang out with smart people, regardless of their profession.
As musicians, we are used to learning from those who came before us when it comes to how to play high notes or how to play faster. But we are not as used to learning from the successes and failures of the business men and women who have come before us. A true sign of intelligence is the ability to learn from other people's mistakes.
Surround yourself with smart people and learn from them. That's exactly what the successful people we all look up to did.
