People say there’s a lot of creativity in classical music, but I see the classical music ecosystem tyrannized by the institutions purportedly set up to protect it. We need to play Beethoven correctly. We need to play Beethoven and not find a living composer who has written something worthwhile. Classical music has become about reproduction, rather than creativity. As entrepreneurs, we can bring balance back to the Force by finding opportunities to connect more (actually) daring players and composers with audiences who hunger for real creativity. We have a responsibility to foster new artistic life. Surely, Mozart won’t be the best thing to have ever happened in concert music for all time. But we can only find something better, more current, and more resonant with today’s audiences by actively searching and giving those artists and their art the room to grow.
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Other people don’t get it. They don’t understand why you don’t just go get a normal job. Take the usual auditions. Use what’s already there. But you have a hard time accepting that this is it. The same old institutions are the best we can do. You believe there’s something better out there. You believe with some work you have something to contribute. You see the lines connecting everything in the classical music ecosystem. So, contribute. Cultivate trust. Connect people. Add to/ reshape/ challenge the status quo. Other people might not get it, but you do. So go on and do something.
When you wake up sore the next day after a workout, you know that you did something worthwhile. Your body is healing--and you feel it. You also probably feel good about it (as long as you didn’t hurt yourself.) Soreness and discomfort mean we are doing something right. Who really wants to send one more email? But we do--we stay up late, we push ourselves beyond what we think we’re capable of. We take on the persona of a mad scientist who sees what others do not. And we work to make that vision real through the awkward first emails we send to sponsors, through the people who tell us our work (or we ourselves) is nothing, and through all the pain of the many mistakes we make with business and with people. Cherish discomfort.
I recently started doing CrossFit. The people who go there amaze me. They willingly show up to do workouts that they typically don’t like--but they know that they’re good for them. In one workout, participants had to do tiered numbers of exercises, something like 33, 27, 21, 14, 9. There was a time limit of 20 minutes. Almost nobody was actually capable of completing the workout. Most could only do a fraction of it. Yet everyone kept trying. They would do one, then pause, then do another. No matter what, they kept getting up and go after the goal. I think it’s a great mindset for entrepreneurship because most of us really aren’t capable of doing everything we need to. There’s just too much to do. But we keep going after forming and running our ensembles. We run out of daylight, then do it again. We may never have the ensemble of our dreams, but we can have the ensemble we’ve worked for--that we’ve paid for by giving musicians and the concert-going public something that matters.
What kind of a leader do you want to be? Caring? Professional? Commanding? Inspiring? Aspiring? When you look at what you’re doing right now, do your actions align with the kind of person you want to be? If you don’t do caring things, you’re not caring. If you don’t do inspiring things, you’re not inspiring. If you don’t do extraordinary things, you’re not extraordinary. The great thing, though, is that you can change what you do any time. (You’re in charge of you.) It takes time and effort, but you can be whatever kind of leader you want to be. And there are many ways to be the kind of leader who motivates musicians to play their best and who brings audiences together.
The best part about being an entrepreneur in the music field is that you have an opportunity to make meaningful change by connecting different people in new and exciting ways--ways that they just happen to want to pay you for. If you don’t want to connect people or don’t want to try new things, then being an entrepreneur is not the right path for you. (And there’s nothing wrong with that.) But the classical music ecosystem needs entrepreneurs to do new things, connect with new audiences, and move classical music into the future. We need you.
If you were to give yourself advice, what would it be? Why not follow it? After all, you know the most details about the projects you’re working on. Why export the responsibility to someone else? Maybe asking someone else is a tactic to delay action, allowing your inner resistance to win. If you know what to do, do it.
It’s cliche to say that it’s good to leave our comfort zones. Maybe it’s (sometimes) better to run as far away from them as quickly as you can, seeing the world from a completely different perspective. It might be best to combine the perspective from inside your comfort zone with that from outside it, which gives you a fuller understanding of the world. You might even notice that the border between comfort zone and the rest of world blurs.
In the present, all sorts of things can go wrong. Things we planned for. Things we didn’t see coming. No matter what happens, the nature of startups forces founders into a “let’s figure it out” mindset. The great thing is that as long as you’re not dead or in jail, you can keep figuring it out. Things will go wrong, and you keep going.
We can use the past and the future to help us actualize the present. We learn from the past and plan for the future. When we plan using the lessons we’ve learned, we can be more sure in what we’re doing right now. After all, the present is the only time where anything actually happens.
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