Joel Plaskett: Nova Scotia Hero

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I'm posting this because I like it. And because that's my parents' house in the opening shot.

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Taking a Break

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I may return to posting, but, for now, I'll be packing it in. It's been harder than I thought to keep blogging up since moving to Los Angeles and taking on a new job at the Colburn School. If you want to get in touch, or just want to keep up with me, follow me on Twitter @berrymark, or find me on Facebook. Thanks for stopping by.
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What Are the New Models of Professional Musicianship?

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On his own blog, my colleague Nate Zeisler describes two models for musical careers . In the first model, musicians are mechanics, creating within "a very narrow, accepted window of performance practice which has been dictated by your teacher, conductor and the music written on a page." In the second model, musicians act more like designers, and come up with "new ways of thinking about the art form" by drawing on new genres of music and artistic disciplines. For Nate, the path toward a successful career is to fuse the two: In the field of classical music, there is very little room for people who can’t infuse qualities from both sides of the aisle into their career. Great designers in music will have little to say and won’t have credibility in the field if they aren’t great mechanics. Great mechanics, for the most part, won’t have a sustainable career if they’re not thinking as designers. I agree that the most successful musicians will be able to be both mechanic...
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Promoting an Orchestra and the Importance of Personal Contact

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Back in December, Tim Smith wrote enthusiastically about how the Baltimore Symphony was using a series of ads-- last week, they won an award from the American Marketing Association of Baltimore --to acquaint the city with its players. The images, done by videographer/producer James Bartolomeo of Protagonist Films, may not lead to a surge of ticket sales or mobs of new fans huddled outside the stage door. But it's always worth reminding the public that real live people are up onstage playing all that Beethoven, Mahler and Bernstein, people with individual personalities and tastes, people worth getting to know. The best thing orchestras can do to raise their profiles within their own communities is to put the focus back on its musicians, and the Baltimore Symphony's campaign provides an effective model of how to use paid advertising to achieve this. But ads alone won't build loyalty: it takes personal appearances where people can meet the musicians face to face, learn abo...
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