It's Your Career!

I see that the folks at The Practicing Musician linked to my post on talking to the audience. Thanks, that's much appreciated. So let me do another one on those practical issues that come up with regard to career development.

I pursued a career as a classical soloist for nearly thirty years and, while I can't say I was as successful as I had hoped, I did learn a few things. One important lesson is to be objective about yourself. This is incredibly hard to do! For one thing, one's identity as a musician is bound up with one's identity as a person and it is so hard to see oneself from another perspective. My problem, for example, was that I tended to worry excessively about my technical competence as a "guitar virtuoso". What I needed to do was accept my limitations, realize my strengths and choose repertoire that enabled me to take advantage of my strengths and please audiences. That "pleasing audiences" thing is really important! Instead, I did too much virtuoso repertoire that tended to reveal my limitations and not my strengths. I got into this because I kept thinking I was in my developing stage too long. Long after what sort of guitarist I was became clear, I still kept doing pieces to develop my virtuosity.

Let me explain a bit. Since I started late, I had to work hard to become competent at technique. But I did the work and mastered what you need to to be a concert guitarist. Evidence of this was that I had several engagements to play the Concierto de Aranjuez by Rodrigo and the Guitar Concerto by Villa-Lobos with orchestra. You can't do those pieces unless you have the chops. But loud fast scales are not really my strength. What is, is tone color, dynamics, phrasing and counterpoint. This is stuff I am particularly good at. Musical stuff, not technical stuff. So what I should have done is chosen, from the repertoire that audiences really want to hear, those pieces where I can really shine. Perhaps this might be a good example:

Or this, a more standard piece of repertoire:

Now of course, each musician has to figure this out for themselves and it will be different from every other musician. You are unique! Don't try to copy someone else's technique, or musicianship or career. You have to present yourself as yourself. That's what audiences want: they want to connect with you as an individual human being on the personal level. They want your personal performance of the music, your individual perspective. I know that career consultants talk about this as "branding", but that seems to strike the wrong note for me. You are not a corporation, you are a human being! If you want to be authentically yourself, then thinking in terms of branding might not be the way to go.

Record yourself. Listen to yourself. And figure out what sort of musician you are. Then look at what audiences seem to like and put it all together. You might end up with something like this: