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

Yvonne: I love your story about how you got into career services at NEC. Are there other schools that you think are doing a good job in this area as well? (besides Eastman….which hosts Polyphonic!!)

Thanks for pointing out that the old stereotypical musician is SO old school. The generation that is entering the music scene today is very different than one or two generations ago.

Angela: There are more and more schools these days offering career development and entrepreneurship resources through courses, workshops, and dedicated music career centers. I co-chair a networking group and annual conference of the Network of Music Career Development Officers (NETMCDO) and we trade ideas, resources, approaches via an active listserv. You can check out what many music schools are offering for career development on the links on our website and join the listserv: www.musiccareernetwork.org.

To answer Cheryl’s question from Day 1, the advice I give to students pursuing orchestral careers is to get as much audition experience and orchestral performance experience as possible!

I find that too many young musicians take their first “real” audition for a big job and are blindsided and learn too late that they need to prepare differently for the repertoire and handling their nerves/concentration/energy.

The only real way to deal effectively with this is to take smaller-scale local and regional and festival auditions, to build up your track record and experience in handling all this, to work systematically on your excerpts and on your ramp-up in the weeks before the audition. There are smart musicians who use charts, journals, and scheduling systems to help them work through and improve their audition rep. Record yourself regularly! Work with an audition coach! Set up lots of Mock audutions. And there are some good books out there on handling audition and performance anxiety and on orchestral careers! Don Greene’s Audition Success is very popular and there’s Roger Frisch’s The Audition Book, to name just two.