Musicianship Meets Entrepreneurship: A Day in the Life of a Working Classical MusicianAsk any working classical musician what the most difficult part of their work life is, and you'll rarely hear about the music.
In some ways, music is the easy part. It's the business of music that's the hard part. We're entrepreneurs juggling multiple priorities. As we like to say, our professional lives are where musicianship meets entrepreneurship. By: Duo Sequenza VALPARAISO, Ind. - June 23, 2021 - PRLog -- Practicing is one part of the day
The old saying "there are no shortcuts to the top" rings true: you have to put in the time to learn to play your instrument and to reach a level of mastery where the physicality of the instrument becomes secondary to your ability to express the music through it. Even once we attain mastery, we have to maintain it, which takes dedicated hours each day (a minimum of three for Debra and five for Paul). When we add rehearsing and teaching into our days, we might have our instruments in hand for seven, eight or even more hours. Entrepreneurship in classical music Classical musicians choose a number of paths to make a living. Some win jobs in orchestras. Many more built careers doing several things, from touring to teaching and recording, all while searching for more opportunities. This is when musicianship meets entrepreneurship, because being entrepreneurial is about seeing an opportunity and putting yourself in the right place at the right time. Sometimes opportunities find us, through referral or a past connection, but more often because we seek them. Because of this, a day in the life of a classical musician starts to look like a day in the life of a sales and marketing professional. We're looking for opportunities and hope to strike up a conversation with the presenter or the performing space or event director. We're also juggling day-to-day chaos. In non-COVID times, this might be because a student needed to move a lesson, or a rehearsal got rescheduled. In addition to managing schedules, we have to make time for marketing and communications, administration, and planning. Nothing compares to live music This is the rhythm of a life in music before the COVID-19 pandemic. For the last 15 months, though, we haven't been able to gather with our listeners. The pandemic has silenced concert halls and opera halls and emptied performing spaces. The catastrophe of COVID has hit the performing arts, especially classical music, in devastating ways, from the loss of livelihood to the lack of human connection on which musicians thrive. We live for the moments of transcendence and magic that we can only share with our audiences live. It's what we hope to share with each of you as we emerge from the last year into brighter days ahead. Find out more here. End
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