Interested in collaboration?
Musical collaboration can take many forms; however, it always requires a few key phases that lead to success:
Artistic Vision
Any successful musical project always starts with a questioning idea: “what if … this?” This spirit of curiosity grows out of the initial seed, prompted towards flourishing through shared ideas and further lines of inquiry. Questions like “what?”, “how?”, and most especially “why?” are essential to crafting a vision, and the process always begins as a dream, and (hopefully) ends in reality. Not every project is practical, takes off, or fills a niche, but most ideas are at least worth exploring. Now is the time to dream! At this stage of the process, I am happy to reflect ideas in a low-stakes environment, and this sort of consultation would fall under the same category as my 30-minute free trial lesson: if we are a good fit, share similar goals, and can be productive in our collective imagination, we can move to step 2.
Action Plan
A concept is only as good as its plan of action, and here connections are everything: connections with performers, connections with venues, connections with organizations, connections with grants. This is where we discuss the scale and timeline of your project: do we want to bring it to fruition in just a few weeks? A month? Six months? A year? Once this is established, we lay out our battle map and begin strategizing: what kinds of actions do we need to make this project happen? What are the obstacles? Who are our allies and connections? What opportunities would this project be eligible for? What are the things we can set in stone, and what are the things that take time to resolve? Given that this phase requires far more investment on my part, and this is the first real step towards creating a tangible outcome for our collaboration, please refer to my Lessons/Tutoring page for hourly consultation rates. Ideally, we can be efficient with this part of the process and can move quickly to step 3.
Creating Resources
Gathering resources is one of the most difficult, yet most rewarding phases for any artistic project. It can sometimes be very expensive, and few musical projects ever turn a profit. However, with smart decisions and good negotiation, one can achieve a great deal with very little. This phase is where the main body of artistic content is created, and the details are fleshed out. If you wish to feature your own work in this project, now is the time to get cracking! I can help guide this process along with consultations as needed, providing straight-shooting, honest feedback founded in years of artistic experience and proof of concept in order to achieve the highest level of excellence, and I can help use my connections to gather performers and negotiate their fees and contracts on your behalf. If you wish for me to compose or arrange my own work for this event, please refer to the Commission Me! page!
Promotion
Once our content is created, refined, and finalized, now is the time to begin promoting our event. Since art is an ongoing process, promotion can (and should) begin while the content is still being generated, but enough of it should be in place that we know how to promote the event! This is where we return to our notes from Phase 1 to revisit our initial questions - but now with answers! When advertising a project, we need to figure out how to make it cool, relevant, and interesting. This includes finding the right audience and putting our finger on the pulse of social, cultural, and/or political ideas that we want to dialogue with. People will be more invested in following a project if they relate to its goals and experiences as aligning with their own, and while it’s not possible to tailor a personalized advertisement for each individual, there are patterns of human psychology and behavior that we can tap into when crafting our campaign. Practical steps for promotion include using social media channels, sending out personalized invites to key people that we want to attend, and running ads with local arts organizations who align with our larger goals.
Finishing Touches
This is the fun part! When the rubber meets the road, the days leading up to the event are often full of last-minute preparations. These include duties such as postering, promotion (detailed above), organizing an A/V team (for recording and possibly a livestream), seeking volunteers for duties like managing ticket sales and ushering, and coordinating with performers for a dress rehearsal. Once the event is complete, we can reconvene after the fact and strategize for next steps, as well as appreciating a job well done!