Ah the wonders of the interwebs…
Two days ago I chatted for almost three hours (!!) with my new Twitter friend and future musical muskateer @HelenKim. (We have some very exciting plans in store for our readers over the coming months…) Being a former whizz with a cello, Helen and I have a lot in common – and one thing we share is a passion for bringing the music we love to the people who just don’t know they love it yet. (Watch this TED talk by Benjamin Zander to see how an audience can be transformed into lovers of classical music in barely 15 minutes…)
And today Helen “twintroduced” me to Greg Sandow (@gsandow), a music critic, educator and writer whose blog I have been digging into this morning.
This particular passage struck me as being worthy of sharing;
Ecosystem. The classical music world, I think, sometimes forgets that it needs one. Instead, we substitute a kind of entitlement. “This is our art. It has to exist.” When funding is plentiful, it might be safe to think that way. But today?
Added later: What I’m saying here isn’t simply about funding, management, or the cultural position of classical music in our wider world. It’s a human thing. If you’ve written a modernist piece — or any piece; or if you run an orchestra — don’t you want to look out at your audience and see people you care about, people whose thoughts and feelings and needs and loves and hates are a central part of everything you do?
And if not, why do you want to work — and, maybe, live — in such cold artistic isolation?
Isn’t this just a lesson in basic marketing? If you want to create a product, you can do one of two things – continue reading…
In any endeavour, how you start is crucial. 
But I would go even further and say it is not the start itself but the quality of the intention that precedes it.
For example, when I start to sing, the performance doesn’t begin with the first note. It begins with the intention, and it is the intention that inspires the breath. Not just a taking in of air, but a breath that has a definite meaning – why am I about to say what I am about to say?
I find myself more viscerally engaged with a performer (and I believe this applies in any field, but I feel it keenly in music) when they are completely in control of the silence between the notes. The gaps between the phrases. The thoughts between the words…opera singers especially are very adept at acting when they are singing, but sometimes they forget that they can also act with the breath. When a singer breathes with intent, with meaning, it connects the entire performance and raises it to a much higher level.
Inspiring public speakers understand this very well. An effective leader can sometimes fill the pauses in a speech with more power and meaning than the speech itself. When we have a conversation with a friend who is inspired by a brilliant idea, there are no gaps, just fizzing energy and excitment all over.
Play with this a little – focus on the way you breathe automatically between thoughts as you speak. Notice how it is inseparable from the heart of what you mean to say.
A start is just a beginning until it is breathed into life - with focus, passion, meaning and authority ( and even, conversely, humility).
Tiny me as Susanna in "The Marriage of Figaro"
Chris Brogan posted the fifth video in his Overnight Success series yesterday, and it really got me thinking about the idea of belief systems and how people get sucked in to the story of their own hyped-up greatness.
You see, coming from the opera biz, I know a lot of people who appear to be huge believers in their own awesome press.
(I remember hosting a dinner party where one up-and-coming baritone spent the entire evening flicking through all my opera mags and reading aloud all the great reviews of his performances . The rest of us just rolled our eyes and kept drinking.)
And of course, opera has this great stereotype of the “prima donna” who symbolises this very idea – strutting and pouting her way across the stage demanding the world love her the way she deserves to be loved, and having a catty tantrum when the world fails to deliver the adoration she expects.
But there is something I have always noticed about people who feel the need to loudly broadcast their apparent greatness to the world. It’s not that they believe the hype…it’s that they don’t believe the hype. continue reading…
Have you ever watched a politician make a speech that sounded like it should have moved you, but it just left you cold? Or a sports player who is technically brilliant but really doesn’t “do” it for you?
I see this all the time in opera – excellent singers who are great at hitting all the right notes, just not so great at making me care whether or not they die at the end of the show. (Which in opera, let’s face it, happens all the time.)
My very first singing teacher once said, “I don’t want to watch a safe singer. I want to see a singer on the edge, being vunerable, like walking a tightrope. That is what really moves me. ”
It’s thrilling when we see someone take a risk and push themselves beyond what we assume is possible. When we hold our breath and bite our lip because there is no way…ever…that they can pull that off!
The thrill is in the risk – it’s the stretch that comes from pushing yourself beyond what you think you’re capable of. When you take a chance and stick two fingers up at what everyone else assumes you can do. This is leading. This is what moves us.
There’s no risk involved when we watch someone who is practised in a cosy kind of “just turn it on” perfection. We can admire it, even aspire to it, but it’s hard to passionately love it when it seems so damn easy. So safe.
There’s nothing wrong with being carefully excellent at what you do. But if you really want to move people, stop playing it safe.
“What mankind wants is not talent; it is purpose.” ~ Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton.
There is a general consensus that talent alone does not make you a success. You also need application and the right kind of hard work. You need the skills to analyse the results you get, and the perseverence to continue where others give up. And luck, of course.
But is it really as simple as that?
I was moved to write this article in response to a Triiibes discussion I have been taking part in. One of my friends on this excellent forum was discussing the book Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else
and the thoughtful, intelligent responses were very much in line with the consensus I described earlier.
But my perspective on this is quite a different one, and I’ll do my best to not make it too lengthy.
As a teenager I was considered Gifted and Talented. I attended a school based on academic selection, and very soon I discovered that I also had an unusually beautiful singing voice with operatic potential. continue reading…
You cancel a performance because you’re sick.
Your students don’t show up for their lessons.
You’re on holiday (I know, like you ever take one.)
Your agent is on holiday (like, all the time.)
You are between contracts. For what seems forever.
You just don’t feel like singing and want to lie down somewhere for a few weeks. (Okay, make that a few years.)
Basically, no matter how glamorous you think your life is, the truth is if you are self-employed and you’re not showing up, then you’re not getting paid. continue reading…
