Entrepreneurs in Music — and Don’t Forget about Mozart!

I’m approaching music entrepreneurship from the vantage point of a music career advisor. My day job is working with music students and alumni on advancing their careers, and this often involves entrepreneurial projects, so I’m happy to be part of this discussion!

My background is as a cellist — I studied at Boston University, New England Conservatory, and got my Master’s and DMA at SUNY Stony Brook, where I studied with Tim Eddy. I also studied for two years in Paris with Roland Pidoux. My goal then was to get a tenure track teaching job and play lots of chamber music. I taught cello first at California State Fresno and then at SUNY Potsdam. I found out that my goal wasn’t exactly how I’d imagined it. So I moved back to Boston and took the job here at NEC as the director of the Career Services Center, thinking I’d do this for a while until I figured out what to do next. That was 1993 and what I figured out was I love this work — helping other musicians sort through their career goals, plans, life transitions, and entrepreneurial projects.

As a grad student at SUNY Stony Brook I complained to the administration that there wasn’t any specialized career services for musicians. The department chair had me write up a proposal and then after I handed it in, they said, “Fine, we’ll make this your teaching assistantship — you get to start the music career center. ” I did the work, learned a lot, finished my doctorate, and went on with my goals and getting teaching jobs. I never thought this career work would later end up being my own career path. I teach career courses, write on music career topics, run a workshop series, and oversee a comprehensive music career opportunities database called Bridge: Worldwide Music Connection. I’m fascinated by the myriad ways that musicians find to advance their careers.

Here are some observations about music entrepreneurship that I hope our group will explore this week:

1. Musicians often get hung up on the word “entrepreneurship” because it may seem (to some folks) antithetical to the arts. It doesn’t matter what you call it as long as musicians can take charge of their own careers, and so that they can create projects: take initiative, dream, envision, plan, and implement.

2. Musicians are multi-talented and so they typically have multi-layered careers, combining a range of skills and projects.

3. The stereotypical musician — the one who can’t balance a checkbook, get to rehearsals on time, organize a project or a meeting, speak from the stage, or talk with non-musicians at a reception or board meetings — that stereotype is SO old school. It’s a brave new world and emerging musicians are creating new and exciting career paths.

4. Orchestral musicians often catch the entrepreneurial bug because they want or need to:

a. exercise their individual creativity
b. have a sense of ownership and leadership
c. make additional income
d. have an additional musical outlet (explore other repertoire and musical roles)
e. have a non-musical outlet
f. experience a satisfying sense of completion (concrete outcomes or physical products versus the reality that practice is never done and performances are fleeting)
g. satisfy a need in the marketplace or in their community

I look forward to reading responses and more postings from you all!