It’s important to put your best face forward professionally. We’re all hustling for gigs, and it doesn’t make sense to do anything but make yourself look as appealing as possible. But perhaps there is another layer to it.
Knowing the specifics about each media outlet in your area can help you to target your communications more effectively. And there’s no real reason one has to choose between traditional and social media; a comprehensive communications plan should include both.
One of the themes Robert Honstein frequently comes back to in his pieces is technology and how it impacts on our lives, yet ironically his music thus far has been anything but high-tech. Aside from the occasional electric guitar or electric bass, Honstein’s timbral palette consists predominantly of acoustic instruments. If that somehow seems contradictory, it’s more a by-product of his being attuned to the world we currently live in but not feeling straitjacketed by it.
A brief list of questions has been posted to collect your thoughts on the application experience, your use of the site, areas for further development, and anything else you’d like to share.
Composer-trombonist-conductor JC Sanford’s recent release Views From The Inside on Whirlwind Recordings delivers loads of aural surprises wrapped up in layers of jazz orchestra.
Sound and Music, a national agency for new music in Britain, has conducted a survey of 466 composers designed to explore the economic challenges facing the creation of new work. Average fee per commission in 2013: £1,392.
We are subsuming a mindset that places little value in our work and then wondering why no one cares about what we do. If a touch of entrepreneurship is how we survive our present situation, so be it. But I do not believe entrepreneurship holds great promise for our future.
Is there a mess on the desk? Evidence of vice or obsession? A disruptive cat or two? Billie Jean Howard’s blog By Measure offers the voyeuristic pleasure of vicariously poking around another artist’s home.
Young people who want to compose or perform new music often don’t have a clear way to gain educational experience, but several organizations in Missouri are working to change that for local students.
Evan Ware suggests that his piece is an invitation for an interpretative dialog between his listeners’ experiences and his music’s ingrained symbols. Yet, even if we accept this premise, how do we evaluate the way pieces of music, and their composers, foster the formation of listeners’ interpretations?
Jeffrey Mumford’s recent 2-CD album through a stillness brightening features a selection of imaginative, skillfully executed solo and chamber works to fire up the ears.
I don’t think that teaching some basic entrepreneurial skills is by itself a bad thing, but it’s not a cure-all for the difficulties musicians face financially. Perhaps even more troubling, though, is that in promoting certain business practices there doesn’t seem to be a discussion about how they may conflict with artistic pursuits.
Three teams of new opera composers and librettists will premiere new 20-minute operas, each based on a contemporary American story, in a semi-staged concert performance on November 21, 2014 in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater.
American Music Project, a nonprofit organization focused on supporting performances of American classical music and the commissioning of new work, to launch with premiere of Amy Wurtz’s Piano Quintet.
I wonder if, rather than anticipating an end to genre designations, perhaps new music needs to cultivate a whole lot more of them, since much of the terminology currently in use is overly general at best, and vague or misleading at worst.
Lerew’s flagging entrainment of ultradian rhythms and the consequences thereof was commissioned by ACF, along with the works of two other competition finalists–Michael Laurello and Kristina Warren–which were workshopped by So Percussion at Princeton University.
Too embarrassed to ask your colleagues for guidance on handling performance anxiety? Facing a problem so professionally complex your mom doesn’t know how to help you? You need a fierce friend and NewMusicBox is here to help.
No authentic, talented artist is ever going to forget the importance of the quality of the art that they create just because they wish to earn a living from it. Only once an artist has wrangled those ingredients can they attempt to monetize them.
A wide-ranging Boston summer playlist featuring tracks from Pulitzer Prize Fighter, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol, Neil Cicierega, and the Boston Symphony Chamber Players.
As in his music, Richard Toensing (1940–2014) embraced the challenges of teaching with his simplicity inside complexity. He had an indelible ability to be engaging, stringent, rigorous, and nurturing all at once. He was well known for his integrity, his delightful wit, and his zero-tolerance policy for what he called “that bull-hooey ego nonsense that gets in the way of hard work and real life.”
To teach, perform, compose, commission, start ensembles, or start a concert series is nothing new. We are not creating new industries or products, nor are we objectively improving on the past.
Tons of people have devoted their whole life to new music, but few people have done so to the same extent as composer/trombonist Jim Staley, who for more than a quarter of a century devoted his home to it as well. But 35 years on, Roulette has moved boroughs and has gone from being new music in someone’s home to a home for new music.
Students who improvise, in a rigorous context, become better musicians sooner; and the sooner, the better. Why are we waiting until students self-select to go to music school to introduce these ideas?
Day-dreaming drifting time is the luxury that I have out on the trail. Instead of my usual pattern of working on four or five things at once, I work on just one piece, mulling things over sometimes for days before actually writing them down. I’m not distracted by emails or petty bickering on social media.
