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It occurred to me that even before exploring work options for musicians, it might be helpful to go over some basic principles that may be ridiculously obvious for non-musicians, but for some reason seem to completely escape the mindset of too many artists who seem to think that their talent somehow magically absolves them from all sense of personal responsibility. In addition to my musical duties as a collaborative pianist at Curtis, i'm also responsible for overseeing the concert activities of the students, particularly when that involves hirings for both internal school functions (like backstage concert work) and outside venues ("gigs", in the musical vernacular). Time and again, i see so many talented students tripping up their own hire-ability - here are a few examples:

not showing up for assigned work

showing up late for a job

showing up on the job, but not doing anything (the old "clock in and hide")

leaving in the middle of a job

submitting proposed programs with incomplete information (key signatures? movement headings? the name of your pianist - ahem ahem - ?)

trying to change pieces at the last minute in a program that was set well in advance

canceling scheduled performances at the last minute

accepting a job, then grumbling out loud about the fee

being too lazy to respond to a job offer

I could go on and on, but you get the point. And i should emphasize that i've seen this behavior in professional as well as academic contexts (and, yes, i should confess, i've been guilty of several of these shenanigans myself...like the time i was on my way to New York to accompany someone on a major audition, forgot the music (back in the day when i used paper music), showed up 30 minutes late...needless to say, i didn't get paid, and i felt horrible for ruining someone else's career opportunity...)

With that in mind, i humbly present 10 basic working tips to help musicians not only get work, but to actually make themselves MORE hire-able:

1. Say "YES". A good friend of mine was approached by a presenter after an audition and invited to perform in a high profile concert with only 1 week's notice. Not knowing the repertoire, she initially said "no". After some gentle cajoling, i convinced her to take a chance, call that presenter back, and accept the offer. Turns out the concert drew some terrific publicity and a prominent mention in a major newspaper, effectively launching her career. You never know what wonderful opportunities you will discover unless you take a chance and say "YES"!

2. Say "YES". It's one thing to accept a big offer, while admittedly it's not very exciting to accept small ones. But if you will take a long-term view of work and realize how small things eventually grow to larger ones, you'll eventually see opportunities that the vast majority of musicians will miss simply because they are waiting around for the "big one", the spectacular job that will launch their career into the stratosphere (with the same statistical rate of success as the mega-million-dollar lottery...) i was trained as a solo pianist and had my sights set on a "solo career", whatever that meant. It just so happened that my friends were always asking me to help out by accompanying their lessons, coachings, and student recitals - i did it for fun, mainly because i love working with other people, not thinking that these little "jobs" would actually one day give me the sight-reading and social skill-sets to become a professional collaborative pianist with far more work (and a steadier income) than i could've hoped for as a struggling soloist.

3. Say "YES". Particularly when everyone else is saying "no"! Many times, fear of being unprepared will prevent us from actually using that fear to propel us to greater performance and better opportunities. i call this "perfection paralysis", and it's particularly rampant among classical musicians. Too many times, i see musicians wait until every note is perfectly in place and they can spit out a performance on "auto-pilot" before they'll accept a job, then wonder why nothing's available. More often than not, using the fear of a deadline can actually be used to heighten your musicianship and free up your creativity - and certainly to grab those job offers that everyone else is too afraid to take on!

(ok, enough of the "yes" answers - now for some nitty gritty)

4. Communicate promptly. Timely responses will win over your hiring resources and presenters big time - they'll be reassured that you are reliable and professionally capable.

5. Present complete information. Few things get under my skin as a contractor than to see incomplete repertoire information like "Sonata #2 by Brahms" (Piano and Violin? A major? Op. 100? Johannes?) Why not impress your presenter by showing that you really know your repertoire? Take the time to check those umlauts! Use Google to look up that BWV catalog number! If you need help typing in diacriticals and other international markings for your titles and movement headings, check out http://www.starr.net/is/type/kbh.html.

6. Read. Slowly. i'm amazed at the number of times i've received phonecalls from musicians i've hired asking for the phone number of the presenter and the address of the concert - THE DAY OF THE CONCERT! My answer is usually, "um...did you read the email i sent you?" Again, this is another opportunity to dazzle your presenters with your intelligence and professionalism. The alternative is usually called a "blacklist" - why deal with difficult-to-manage musicians when there are so many others out there that are more than willing to do a little extra homework? Presenters like to work with artists who present the least resistance to professional protocol.

7. Keep your word. Those last-minute program changes can end up being very costly for printing costs, as well as wrecking whatever publicity was set up ahead of time. Bowing out of a gig with a poor excuse can cost you future hiring opportunities. Presenters generally appreciate simplicity - if you simply do what you say and communicate that clearly, everyone is happy. You'd be surprised at the ratio of re-requests for reliable musicians as opposed to those who put on a prima donna debacle.

One the time management side of things:

8a. Know your schedule. I'm amazed that in this day of ubiquitous calendar apps on cell phones and even old Palm Pilot PDA's (passe as they may be these days) there are still students that walk around with no idea of their availability a week from Tuesday! There are two terrible sins here - 1) Not being able to commit because you don't know if you're available, and 2) committing to something that conflicts with your schedule because you thought you were free "off the top of your head", then having to deal with correcting that afterwards. Remember, you'll always be in control of your schedule IF IT'S ALWAYS WITH YOU!!

8b. Don't be on-time - BE EARLY. i'm personally guilty of this one several times over - i tend to estimate my travel times to arrive right on the dot. One of these days i will learn to get to my hired event with plenty of cushion time. You simply never know if traffic will be snarled, the train is delayed, or if American Airlines suddenly cancels 300 flights due to inspections...

9. Be flexible. Many times a gig will present us with unexpected situations - perhaps the acoustics are too dry, perhaps the stage is a lot smaller than what you're comfortable with, or just maybe the piano is out of tune (heaven forbid!!) Whatever the case, work opportunities will tend to flow more often to the musician who has the flexibility to adapt to varying situations.

One time, i was scheduled to have a recording session for a new string and piano sonata. The string player was full of confidence and bravura during the rehearsals, but the minute he stepped under the microphone, he completely froze. Suddenly, the microphone wasn't placed right - the balance was off - the room was too dry - the session basically ground to a halt as the string player sat down for 4 hours and sulked about everything that was wrong about the recording studio.

Don't get me wrong, i'm all for pursuing the highest quality in my art, but there comes a point when flexibility needs to overcome "perfection paralysis" in order to accomplish the job at hand.

Remember my example of arriving late for that NY audition? Turns out that there was another pianist there who had the flexibility to step in for my absence at the last minute to accompany my friend's audition. I'm sure the level of gratitude heaped on that pianist led to several more opportunities, thanks to that person's flexibility!

10. Be grateful. Nothing makes a job more unbearable than a bad attitude. A prima donna will put the tiniest problems under a microscope and make mountains out of anthills. A grateful artist, on the other hand, will appreciate the opportunity and make something wonderful with whatever's at hand. Now if you were the hiring presenter, who would YOU want to invite for a return engagement?

Look, i'm not saying that being a page turner or playing in an environment where the dinner plates clink louder than the music is going to be much fun. But you never know if that page turner can discover a better page-turning system or if that gig musician meets an investor willing to front the production costs for a new CD project! You'd be amazed at how many opportunities can be generated from just having the right attitude - and conversely, how many of them get repelled by a sour spirit.

There you have it, a 10-point checklist of working tips for musicians. Believe me, there are several areas that i have to work on improving myself, so i'm not holding myself above the fray! If you have any other suggestions, please leave comments. Now, back to work!


[ 30 April, 2008 ] • [ Hugh ] •[ Leave comment - 0 ] •[ Link to this article ]

i once worked with a student who for the life of her could never seem to get her schedule organized enough to show up on time to any of her rehearsals (or even lessons, at times). One day, in utter exasperation, i asked her why she didn't at least have a schedule book to keep track of her appointments. In a huff, she told me she already had a schedule book - in fact, not just one, but THREE! One book for her rehearsals, one book for her orchestra schedule, and another one for her personal appointments. Problem was, she never bothered to reconcile all those schedules together...no wonder she never had any idea where she was supposed to be at any given time!

This story gives a pretty good illustration as to why i had such a hard time getting rid of my debts and making fiscal traction. On one hand, i had about 6 or 7 credit "holes" where the accumulated payments worked to overwhelm my paltry incoming cashflow. On the other hand, i had a number of half-hearted attempts to save money across a broad range of tools like auto-drafts into savings accounts and deposits into a Morgan Stanley investment fund. Problem was, things were so out of balance that i would either be constantly overdrafting my checking account by the end of the month, racking up larger debts to cover the differences, or withdrawing whatever i had saved every few months to plug up my fiscal holes in a vicious cycle of save, spend, and plug.

Without a specific focus and plan for getting my money under control, my money was simply getting scattered all over the place and having no effect in any direction. "Treading water" was about the best way i could describe myself at the time - that, coupled with "willful ignorance" (i dreaded looking at my bank account statements and made a hobby out of avoiding them as long as possible) was spelling a recipe for disaster in a slow cooker crockpot.

In Dave Ramsey's "The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness", Dave outlines some basic "baby steps" to put one's financial house in order. Step #1 involves building a baby emergency fund of $1000 - step #2 involves attacking debt using the "debt snowball" method, where all the debts are listed smallest to largest, irrespective of interest rates and whatnot. The bare minimum payments are applied to everything except the smallest debt, which is attacked with everything available. Once the smallest debt is wiped out, the money that had been used to attack that is then applied to the next largest debt until that is taken care of - attack, eliminate, move down snowball list, repeat.

Of course, no plan of attack could begin to commence without a written plan, involving the dreaded "B" word: "BUDGET". i'm sure glad i'm looking back on this side of experience, because i can still remember how painful, humiliating, and utterly repulsive it was to slog out that first budget, item by item, line by line. i had sensed that things were going to look bad, but i wasn't prepared for just HOW bad until i had all those ugly numbers staring back at me. Outlay was surpassing income, and by a pretty scary amount - we weren't treading, we were actually SINKING, and it was only the fact that our credit card companies were SOOO generous (kaff kaff) that the bottom of the pit was still some ways off. So what to do? Where to cut?

Here are some ideas to help jump-start your budget if you find that you need to get your sinking fiscal ship sea-worthy again:

Things to CUT:

Subscriptions - i never thought we were being extravagant, but the accumulation of little expenses can be as deadly as a pool full of little piranhas. Consider cutting:

Magazines

Video memberships and subscriptions, like Netflix

Book clubs (i had to let go of my beloved subscription to Audible.com, the online audio book resource) - my iPod was a lonely pod for a long time...

Cable TV

Gym memberships - this was hard for me, as i really loved our gym, but running on the street is absolutely free...

Luckily we discovered the joys of our local library!

Dining/Food - verboten restaurant dining was pretty obvious, but some of the more subtle cuts may involve:

Coffee (if you saw my 'debt-free' video, you saw how i substituted instant coffee for Starbucks...*shudder*)

Soft drinks (use the water fountain at work!)

Snacks (i found that bulk microwave popcorn was much more economical than individual bags of potato chips)

Lunch (i read somewhere that packing your own lunch only costs around $2, as opposed to fast food meals which run at least $5-$10+)

Groceries - this was actually the last area i tackled, as i was so reluctant to give up buying yummy things on impulse. A great resource to help with economical food shopping and recipes that utilize everything you get without waste is e-mealz.com, an online meal-planning service. It costs a little money to sign up, but the savings make it worthwhile - and the recipes are pretty tasty too!

Alcohol (i'm a micro-brew kind of guy, so when i had to resort to drinking budget Budweisers, my wife knew i was serious about saving money...)

For more ideas on creative ways to cut expenses, try reading "Frugal Living for Dummies":


Here are some other ideas to actually put money INTO your pocket:

Pause your retirement/401(k) contributions temporarily - 12-24 months of suspended retirement investment won't make that much difference compared to the tremendous advantage of ending up debt-free using those extra funds.

Car Insurance - Get GEICO. i never realized how bloated my auto insurance plans were with State Farm until i took a closer look. I think i'm saving close to $1500 a year by switching insurance carriers and getting the bare minimum coverage

Switch to Term Life Insurance - we cashed out our Whole Life policy with Mutual of Omaha and were able to collect a nice $12,000 check for the accumulated savings. Whole Life's gimmick is the added savings plan, which in the end isn't much better than a wimpy savings account anyway at a much higher premium than Term Life.

Cash out your scattered investments and focus them on pounding down your debt - we stopped our silly monthly deposits into our Morgan Stanley account and cashed out our various Money Market and Mutual Funds (nearly all of them posted losses in capital gains, so at least i was able to apply those losses as tax deductions). If you find yourself saving a little, but then cleaning those savings out to bail out credit card payments every few months or so, you'd be better off just focusing your funds solely for debt reduction than for scattered cyclical 'gains'. Once you're debt-free, you can restart your savings plan and actually see your money stick!

On his radio show, Dave Ramsey is always giving out income-increasing advice like delivering pizzas at night or cutting grass. I'll spend some time in my next articles exploring creative ways for musicians to pick up some extra income to help attack their debt-snowballs.





[ 28 April, 2008 ] • [ Hugh ] •[ Leave comment - 0 ] •[ Link to this article ]

Welcome to the first post of my new blog, "The Prosperous Musician" - yes, yes, i know, a somewhat cumbersome name, but hey - richmusician.com, wealthymusician.com, and several others were already taken (and not really being used, sadly) - starvingartist.com goes to an online art gallery, and starvingmusician.com goes to a chain of music stores on the west coast.

So who am i?

My name is Hugh Sung - i'm a classical pianist on the faculty of The Curtis Institute of Music with a passion for technology. That passion, unfortunately, led me to make a lot of very expensive purchasing decisions to fuel my craving for the latest and greatest toys. Despite making a decent faculty salary and being married to a wonderful physician wife, we could never make ends meet, and for years we both felt like we were on a fiscal treadmill with absolutely no traction and a mountain of looming debts.

Early in 2007, my pastor introduced me to a crazy radio guy named Dave Ramsey, along with his book, "The Total Money Makeover". Dave's principles are simple: get completely out of debt, stay away from credit, build up a sound financial foundation step by step and save/invest for the long term. Something about this message - the delivery? the simplicity? the brute honesty? - struck a resounding chord (you can read about my coming to terms with the reality of my fiscal situation here). The result was that in just 9 months, we got "gazelle intense" and paid off almost $55,000 in credit card and home equity loan debt!



This has been a tremendous learning experience for me and my family, and in many respects we're still at the very beginning of a new financial journey. We aren't rich (yet), but i'm hoping that this blog will help to chronicle my explorations into breaking the old clichés that classical musicians are doomed to "starve" for their art. To start, i'd like to encourage you to take a look at the Amazon Book Carousel along the left column which features 10 recommended books on finance and business topics that i found incredibly helpful and relevant for musicians. Other recommended reads (like "Making Music in Looking Glass Land" by Ellen Highstein - not currently available on Amazon, but definitely worth tracking down - you can order it directly from Concert Artists Guild's website publications page) will be featured along the side bar and in blog posts from time to time.

If you're a musician blogging about finance and the business of music, i'd love to hear from you and add you to my links column!

Welcome, and i hope you enjoy this site!

tags: musician,, classical, music,, finance,, business,, Dave, Ramsey,, debt,, money


[ 27 April, 2008 ] • [ Hugh ] •[ 6 Comments ] •[ Link to this article ]