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The budding trees are certainly confused here in Philadelphia. After a long and bitterly cold winter (my favorite forecast involved the phrase “destructive ice”), our spirits were briefly lifted by a week of 50-65 degree February weather (that’s 10-18 Celsius for our international friends). Weather like that towards the end of Winter (of course, it snowed a few days later) fills me with the sort of hope that produces long and generally completed to-do lists, mad spurts of paper filing, and a general sense that the complexities of life and my professional career could be tamed if I just had the right system…
This month we bring you articles and posts related to how singers (students, pre-professionals, and professionals alike) can get organized, stay organized, and set the kinds of priorities that create successful careers. We feature an artist-relevant introduction to the productivity system Getting Things Done, a primer on managing freelance income, and a personal account of the perils of putting off until tomorrow what could be done today!
Also this month: A zesty (I do enjoy Oliver’s food metaphors) multimedia review of Franco Fagioli’s Sophomore CD, and an impressive display of breath energy management by Spanish countertenor Carlos Mena.
You may also notice that we have begun selling advertising space; I hope that these ads will help support this project without being too visually distracting!
Thanks for joining us. Leave a comment and repost our articles on Facebook and Twitter if you like them.
~Ian
The life of a freelancer, and a freelance singer especially, is hard to explain to someone with a regular job. You are all at once a product, a business manager, a negotiator, a public relations firm, a steering committee, a fundraiser, an accountant, a marketing director, a webmaster, an audio and video editor… the list goes on. The characteristics of a great performing artist, however – a tendency towards abstract and nonlinear thought, the ability to live in the present moment to the exclusion of future concerns, the desire to find connections between disparate ideas, and a recognition that an unaccountable passage of time must take place for your best work to emerge – tend to run counter to what you would want in an organized, reductionist-minded business manager. But, there you are, expected to direct your career regardless of your qualification to do so, ultimately accountable to no one but yourself.
Greetings once again from a somewhat frazzled Philadelphia countertenor! I am in the midst of preparing for both my Master of Music Degree recital and an upcoming research and performance trip to England, all the while keeping up with coursework, working a part-time office job, and teaching private students as part of my graduate assistantship. I am not fishing for pity, nor do I wish to complain; there are certainly less desirable things by which one might be kept so busy! I just submitted an audition CD for the London Handel Society’s 2011 Singing Competition, so the topic of Recording is still quite fresh for me.
Unless you are extremely successful – or have married a hedge fund manager – chances are that you think about money. The nature of the classical music industry (although this is true for freelancers in general) makes it difficult to budget very far into the future: Income is not only sporadic, but the larger these sporadic fees become, the easier it is to incorrectly view them as windfalls. There have been seasons that I made upwards of 30% of my income in the month of December alone! If you sing operas, you might make $15,000 in March and nothing for the next five months.
