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

We’re living and making music in a very, very exciting time right now, a time in which the marriage of entrepreneurship with a career in the arts is becoming not a strategy but a way of life for my generation of young musicians. I feel fortunate to be a part of this movement, to be surrounded by a vibrant and growing community of artist/producers and musician/entrepreneurs who are forging their own paths, creating new organizational models, new career paths, new modalities of performance and presentation, and new ways of thinking about what we do.

I started ICE in 2001 because I wanted to create this country’s first full-time flexible chamber ensemble that was dedicated entirely to contemporary music, an ensemble that artistically and organizationally would be on par with the greatest new music ensembles in Europe (Ensemble Intercontemporain, Ensemble Modern, musikFabrik, etc.), but socially and educationally would be community-based, progressive and boundary-pushing in its programming, outreach and presentation. I wanted the group to provide truly national exposure for the music of today, so I dreamt up the idea of having a non-profit organization that would oversee the activities of the ensemble in three major American cities (Chicago, New York, Los Angeles).

I was blessed at the time – and I continue to be blessed – with a group of phenomenal young colleagues who were ready and willing to play anything, and they were excited about the idea of being on the ground floor of a new group. We were on fire with ideas, and we were willing to try anything. We envisioned having an ensemble that would be comfortable playing at Lincoln Center one night, and then playing at a downtown club two hours later that same night; we imagined a festival of new music that would pack ten concerts into ten days in ten different venues, and offer all of its programming free of charge to the public. We dreamt of weekly offerings of an entire season of contemporary music concerts, so that we’d become an indispensable part of the cultural life of a city, as indispensable as a city’s symphony orchestra, opera company or theater company.

When I formed ICE in Chicago the summer after I graduated from Oberlin, I had no money, no business experience, very few contacts in the area, and I was told by most everyone I sought advice from that this was a crazy idea, well-meaning but naïve, ambitious but impractical. But I believed in it, and I believed that it was not just possible but necessary. I produced our very first concert on a budget of $605, which was exactly the amount of my first check working for Wolfgang Puck Catering Company (which, incidentally, funded many an ICE concert for the first three years).

Seven years later, we have given more than 250 concerts, including the world premieres of over 400 new works, and we have two solvent companies in Chicago and New York (with California coming soon), four albums on the way this season, and upcoming tours in three continents.

Our generation of young musicians, despite the economic challenges that we face (that’s a subject for a later post), is experiencing an unprecedented freedom. We can do anything we want to do. We can produce our own concerts, release our own albums, create our own communities and our own movements, and we don’t need a lot of money to do this. We just need great ideas, we need a spirit of adventure, and we need each other (thick skin is good to have, too).

ICE is an outgrowth of this early 21st century trend of the musician as entrepreneur, the artist as the producer. Although it might be too early to make this prediction, it is my hope that this spirit of entrepreneurship in the arts will be one of the defining characteristics and contributions of my generation of artists.