Here’s Adam:

Before you make the first call to a presenter, you need to have done your research. Know who you are calling, what their tastes are, and have a sense of what about you might interest them. Be aware of any common acquaintances, shared interests, even alma maters. Just like a good pop song, you need a hook.

Once you get on the line, you need to get that hook in within 7 seconds. If you can’t state who you are, and get traction on the hook in that time frame, your sale is likely done for. The people you call are always going to be busy, so drop whatever names you need to drop toot sweet.

Now that you’ve got their attention, draw them out. Cite aspects of their series you appreciate and ask them to tell you more. Learn about their audience, demographic, and taste. When appropriate, tie in what you learn to facts within your own organization or presentation. If they talk about a runaway success they had with a particular style of performance, share the successes you have found recently—reviews, audience numbers, grants, etc.

If things are going well, send them more information electronically or by post so that they have time to live with your materials, mission, and body of work. Don’t make this first call too long. Rarely will you find a situation where you book a concert on this initial call. Don’t try to make this happen. Send more information, and let them know that you’ll follow up a week later to make sure they received it, and answer any questions they might have. This encourages them to review your materials in a timely manner, consider questions, and potentially be ready to discuss a project with you later on.

Booking a concert is a partnership between performer and presenter. The initial call is really just a cheap pickup line in a crowded bar. Get in there, get the digits, and get out. Better to follow up later if you want it to be a lasting relationship.

Adam is the pianist and Director of Artistic Programming for Fifth House Ensemble. For more information, please visit www.fifth-house.com. Like what you read here? For more music entrepreneurship tidbits, visit www.playingclosetothebridge.wordpress.com, brought to you by members of 5HE.

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Growth is good, right?

We all understand that even in the best case scenarios, entrepreneurship in the arts requires some level of sacrifice and risk. But, we generally tend to associate these downsides with the hard times first, when work dries up, or opportunities don’t seem to be coming your way.

Consider instead what happens when everything goes right. You’ve put your heart and soul into a project, contributing cash, time, sleepless nights, sanity, personal relationships, fossil fuel, and and endless stack of printer cartridges, and it is all paying off. You’re finally able to start paying yourself something, however small, for your efforts, collaborators are starting to approach YOU to produce new work, and you have a cohesive plan with a team ready to move it forward.

GREAT!!

Here’s the problem. As one of our best friends, an HR and project management expert, told us: “You can always get more money, but you can’t get more time.”

What you begin to find as you transition from the day job or the steady flow of freelancing and teaching is that as your entrepreneurial baby grows from toddlerhood to adolescence, it requires exponentially more time to nurture, and more guidance to be sure it stays “on mission.”

What then of your full teaching load, or that part-time orchestra job that you enjoy, and have relied on for years for security?

Members of our ensemble have found that this balance is one that changes much more quickly than expected as we take on new projects, and build more long-term relationships with presenters and organizations. In particular, members of our staff have needed to make hard decisions about turning down paying work in order to dedicate the time necessary to plan and execute new programs, in addition to the time they spend rehearsing and performing.

From my perspective, when my position as Executive Director became paid over a year ago I was at once overjoyed and terrified at the prospect of having to carve out space in my schedule to handle the new responsibilities before me. In the middle of a season, I found myself needing to take a leave from an orchestra position that I enjoyed, and having to leave two teaching posts that, while stable and fun, required more driving time than I could justify.

The kicker was that the time I had to make in my schedule to do the new job wasn’t counterbalanced fully by the compensation 5HE as an organization was able to offer at that point in its growth. Net result: I took a 40-50% pay cut in order to put my energy fully behind the ensemble, a decision that was not made with ease, and was exacerbated by mass layoffs at my husband’s company a few months later.

Fast forward a year, and the results become even more clear. In a tough economic time, 5HE more than doubled its annual budget, as a result of the added time provided by our staff in producing new projects, writing grants, fundraising, and planning educational work. Each of our artists has seen a large increase in their yearly income from the group, allowing them to feel more comfortable making room for it in their lives.

And my husband? After 85% of his company was let go last March, he was able to focus on his photography business full-time, generating more income in the first 3 months than 6 months’ salary at his old job. Granted, that was offset by the equipment and start-up costs he had to incur as things ramped up, but he’s developed a diverse client base and a body of work that he can really be proud of, and business has been growing exponentially since.

Sometimes we have to believe in ourselves enough to know that if we build it, they will come. When there’s too much to do and too little time, and the only thing in your way is the teddy bear that is the steady paycheck, close your eyes, pinch your nose, and leap.

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Melissa is the flutist and Executive Director for Fifth House Ensemble. For more information, please visit www.fifth-house.com. Like what you read here? For more music entrepreneurship tidbits, visit www.playingclosetothebridge.wordpress.com, brought to you by members of 5HE.

Here’s Adam:

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One of the most important aspects of creation in the arts is collaboration. Though people do work in isolation, the most powerful performances in my memory are all products of intriguing partnerships. And yet, some of the biggest train wrecks that have ever graced a stage were also the products of collaboration, so what makes the difference?

1. Start with great music played masterfully.

Audiences are very, very sensitive to imbalanced art. If the music is less than stellar, it detracts from the performance immediately. Performers must love what they’re playing, and be invested in the repertoire selection process. Similarly, you can never treat another art form as stage make-up for bad work. It’s easy to underestimate preparation time, but start early, and rehearse often. By the time you begin to incorporate the other aspects of the final performance, the music should be concert ready.

2. Find partners with musicality.

Collaborators don’t need to be musicians, and don’t even necessarily need to be well-versed in the repertoire you’d like to present, but they have to be musical. A good collaborator knows how to listen, and wants to talk about the tone, shifting moods, and story of a good piece. A great way to start a dialogue with a potential partner is by listening together and discussing personal reactions to a specific piece of music.

3. Be a good audience member.

If you want your collaborator (and audience) to appreciate your final product, you need to familiarize yourself with different types of art as well. School yourself on the media of your collaborator, so that you can have an educated dialogue about their work.

4. Trust.

It’s hard to do… really hard. We’ve all spent years developing a hearty self-confidence, but nobody can control everything. If you’ve selected the right partners, you need to let them control their aspect of the work. Keep an eye on the final product, but give a bit of yourself over to the bigger cause. If you absolutely need to, get an impartial eye to check it out. Make sure that this person is independent of either discipline, so as to avoid bias. See what the reaction is, and talk about possible revisions as an entire team.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t share at least one stellar example, and to illustrate these points, we can look at one of my favorite interdisciplinary works, “Falling Down Stairs,” Mark Morris’ modern dance set to Yo-Yo Ma’s performance of Bach’s C major Cello Suite.

In this piece, you can enjoy it with your eyes closed. The music is graceful, gritty, powerful, and earnest. Yo-Yo presents it with a finesse rare even among the highest echelon of performers. But when you open your eyes, you can see incredible work by Mark Morris. Though Mark is not a musician, he clearly understands structure, line, and counterpoint. When you watch the film version of this piece, you can see Yo-Yo delight in the dancing that surrounds him. When it comes to the actual process of creating this masterpiece, I have no idea what the dynamic between Yo-Yo and Mark was. I do know, however, they they both did some of the best work of their own careers.

So the next time you’re considering a partnership or interdisciplinary work, think about if you are ready to commit to this lengthy process. It’s always more work than a solo show, but when done right, it can expand your abilities, your audience, and your experience as a performer.

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Adam is the pianist and Director of Artistic Programming for Fifth House Ensemble. For more information, please visit www.fifth-house.com. Like what you read here? For more music entrepreneurship tidbits, visit www.playingclosetothebridge.wordpress.com, brought to you by members of 5HE.

And it’s working for these companies, and arguably for the aspirations of underground and compensation-hungry artists around the world.

Once truly unheard of and unheralded skaters, punks, and taggers cavorting with heroin addicts, yesterday’s delinquents have become today’s leading creative directors and ad-agency execs.  They’ve created films like Kids, given street-cred to Urban Outfitters, Hewlett-Packard, and Intel, and emblazoned history with the ubiquitous Obama “Hope” poster. And now you can take in the transformation/evolution/destruction-of-purity/ascent-to-legitimacy yourself with Aaron Rose’s Beautiful Losers. One part art exhibit, one part documentary, all parts fascinating….

Beautiful Losers film trailer from beautifullosersfilm on Vimeo.

I’ve had the pleasure of producing work at the Gorilla Tango Theatre and asked Dan to talk a little bit about what drives his perspective on the relationship between business and the arts.  It’s bound to be a controversial opinion, but one that I believe has a lot of merit as one tries to break into an increasingly saturated marketplace.  To check out the Gorilla Tango Theatre and its full schedule of shows, or to find out how to produce your own (if you’re following my Produce Yourself series, this could be the perfect oulet!), check out www.GorillaTango.com.  Here’s Dan:

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Congratulations to me! I believe this is my very first blog entry of any kind. Despite my years of programming and development experience on the internet I never sat down and wrote an article(?) entry(?) post(?) whatever you want to call it. My previous writings have always been in the form of documents of higher-level philosophy courses in an academic environment. I have never entered the fast paced realm of bits and bytes article writing that is so prevalent and inviting to praise and criticism at seemingly the speed of light. Well, it’s probably best that I begin to work now in this new world of experience for me. Here it goes.

When I was asked to write this entry, I was asked to speak on the subject of the artistic as an entrepreneurial business enterprise (I’m paraphrasing, but that was the basis of it). This subject I have quite a bit of experience in and am excited to share my thoughts and the philosophies that guide Gorilla Tango Theatre, my other business ventures and dare I say it, my life in general.

The common perception of art academically, politically and culturally is that it is somehow good or valuable in itself. People living in developed nations (third world and underdeveloped nations perspectives’ on art and business could be an interesting treatise that I will leave for another day – for the purpose of this document I am limiting the scope of application to developed nations only) seem to have a built in preconceived notion of things deemed to be “art”; or the action of making “art”, etc. The word “art” carries weight above beyond the power of all things good. Something to be respected, nurtured and admired no matter what the form, circumstance or sacrifice.

From this rather lofty understanding of art we can derive a view of the “artist”. Someone who believes that what they are doing is good, great and meaningful. Without them to create “the art” a void in culture and society would develop so large that our entire system would break down and all creativity will cease to exist. That life as we know it will turn into a 1984-esque world of black and white realism. The artist is holding us back from the very brink of disaster of the human sprit, mind and experience.

These definitions of art and artist give a creative person who ultimately finds him or herself in the world of art a very difficult task. The activities that they choose to participate in have been elevated to a level beyond mere mortal behaviors and the troubles of daily lives. Thus, the expectations on the individual from the culture around them and from their internal perspectives of themselves makes them inflexible in their ability to adjust to outside stimulation and situation that is affecting their course of action. After all, what they are doing is great no matter what its form or function because they are an artist creating art as defined above. Per this classification there is no need adjust to anything outside of themselves and their art.

At this point you might be asking how does this relate to business and artistic entrepreneurial endeavors? Well, in any type of business the key is creating a product that people want. If no one wants what you are selling then, well, you better find something else to sell. The process of finding a marketable product is a process of trail and error, laser sharp focus and lucky guesses somehow all wrapped into one. Even then over time your marketable product may lose relevancy and certain aspects need to be tweaked, completely overhauled or the product may need to be abandoned all together. That is life and business, a series of births and deaths, we never know how long until the next one.

Now the problem for the artist is they don’t approach their art from this Darwinian understanding of business. They lock into a system of development/artistic expression that is about creating a product that they [the artist] desire to bring into existence not on its ability to stand on its own in the marketplace. Consequently they do not respond to the market forces that should be affecting their product. Non-art businesses, like the artist, can easily fall into these traps as well but for different reasons (that we will leave for another discussion). The reasons of course for the artist to fall into this world of iron fisted inflexibility is because they have been taught (many times formally in academia) and cultured to believe that art is not a business product but something that in itself demands respect, admiration and elevation above other activities. The falseness of the proceeding is why so many artistic ventures are complete and utter failures. Art is a product, a product is produced by business and businesses must adapt to consumer demands to succeed. The artist as a stubborn mule cannot and will not succeed in any business venture.

So where does that leave the artist that has a burning desire to create what they want to create, how they want to create it, void of outside influences? Simple, the same place it leaves the bowler who wants to bowl the perfect game or the kid playing video games 20 times through to see those special closing credits – the world of hobby. Art that does not respond to market forces must be understood by the artist as a hobby. It may have great personal significance but to the rest of society is of utter uselessness and is certainly of no value from a business perspective.

Now, take note that I am by no means putting down the hobby artist. Many times from the hobby bowler comes the professional, the same is true of the artist (and businessman for that matter). It’s just that the artist does him or herself a huge disservice and much time is wasted waiting for an “angel investor” to appear and help them, if they do not realize that the process, costs and burden of becoming the professional falls squarely on them and is not the responsibility of society, institutions or culture as a whole to offer support or encouragement in any form along the path.

Long story short, get ready to adapt constantly and get your teeth kicked in over and over again. It’s not fun all the time, but that is art, business and life.

So there you go. My first blog article. I know this first article took on a more general response to the topic of art and business and perhaps leaves many questions bubbling to the surface. I’m sure, if I’m asked to write again, there will be plenty of opportunity to go into great detail on a variety of artistic/business topics in more detail. Feel free to email dan@gorillatango.com with questions, ideas, etc. for future discussion.

December 9, 1964 marks the day one small group of coworkers came together to produce a lasting testament to the power of workplace passion. They gathered at Rudy Van Gelder’s recording studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. I mention this studio because it is the “workplace” that produced some of the most influential and innovative recordings in the history of modern jazz. The “team leader” for this project was legendary saxophonist John Coltrane.

The small-scale “working group” that Coltrane, the most influential figure in the world of jazz at that time, led into the Van Gelder studio consisted of McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums. They were focused on a big objective: finding the next innovative breakthrough that would indicate the direction that most protean of art forms- jazz- would take. They wanted to achieve a truly collaborative ensemble piece that would turn the complex structural ideas of previous Coltrane showcases, (notably the tremendously influential recording called “Giant Steps”) on their head.

This Van Gelder session would not be about one person supported by great sidemen. It would be a recording that captured the actual “substance” that integrates all the individuals in the jazz ensemble; what animates a group to perform as one integrated consciousness.

This would be an ensemble performance that used as its coordinating purpose not the astonishing technical prowess that Coltrane had become so famous for but rather the connective power of passion that is at the core of the music- passion in perhaps the oldest and most enduring sense of the word. It would be an album about the spiritual passion that exists in every human being.

The album, recorded in a single day, was called “A Love Supreme.”

It was a major departure from the hundreds of recordings that emanated from Van Gelder’s studio. “A Love Supreme” is not an easy recording to listen to because it demands a surrender of expectation and assumptions. It was and still is, in effect, a spiritual journey. The interaction is so intense that it erases the boundaries between individual players … and, in doing so, taps into a massive, infinite field of intelligence.  The limits of individuality, the uses of passion, and the purity of combined human intention, are the great themes in play on this extraordinary, incomparable suite. Coltrane’s ensemble recorded it in a single day, and only played it publicly once; it is essentially unrepeatable.

The recording generated many questions for both listeners and musicians about the fundamental role and importance of such a deep level of the passion of emotional commitment.

The great jazz historian and cultural sociologist Nat Hentoff aptly noted: “By the time “A Love Supreme” hit, (Coltrane) struck such a spiritual chord in so many listeners that people started to think of him as being beyond human. I think that’s unfair. He was just a human being like you and me- but he was willing to practice more, to do all the things that somebody has to do to excel. The real value in what John Coltrane did was that what he accomplished, he did as a human.”

“A Love Supreme” demonstrates a focused, personalized flow of energy and attention – an authenticity of presence in the moment. And yet it is an achievement of collaborative potential through the passion of shared purpose. It demonstrates a collaborative dynamic that makes self-discovery and group achievement possible at the same time, in same setting.

HUMILITY AND FOLLOWING THE FLOW

Coltrane was at the top of his game when he made this record. In a most unlikely field he’d become a wealthy man whose individual style and sound were the centerpiece of his success. To step back, surrender this formula and put the spotlight on the ensemble in the way he did, and change his life the way he did, was a little like Bill Gates deciding to go to Calcutta for his final years on earth and start begging for a living.

“A Love Supreme” was, above all, a statement of humility. It was a demonstration of transcendent leadership- a surrendering of one’s own individual interests to the higher powers. Coltrane had reached a level where he could hear and sense “the bigger picture” and, as his actions demonstrated, that bigger picture was all about the power of connection and engagement through a shared passion- the power of the ensemble.

With “A Love Supreme” the complex, intense “cerebral” solos of previous works like “Giant Steps” were transformed, and what emerged was a sound that conveyed a deep yearning for connection to “other” – an enormous sense of gratitude for the beauty and potential of the human condition.

THE CREATIVE FORCE

“A Love Supreme” confirmed that the most profound achievement of passion lies not in reaching inward to our egos, but in reaching outward towards one another — and, ultimately, to a compassionate higher power that dwarfs human comprehension. I can’t tell you what that higher power is supposed to be called in the workplace, but I can tell you that the action of using engaged, focused emotion to reach out to it is going to be different for each member of your ensemble, just as it was for Coltrane’s ensemble. If you’re interested in listening to four very different people making that singular, emotional journey of shared passion together, you can hear it on this album … and marvel, as I do each time I hear the album, at how passion can transform the whole into far, far more than the sum of its parts.

Michael Gold is the founder and principal of Jazz Impact, touring the country and teaching with a fusion of live jazz performance and business lessons.  For more information on Michael and Jazz Impact, please visit www.jazz-impact.com.