Posts Tagged ‘Business Plan’

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Free Webinar: Live from CoOPERAtive Program, Saturday July 7th

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2012

I am really jazzed for the opportunity to teach another seminar this Saturday at Laura Brooks Rice’s program at Westminster Choir College, The CoOPERAtive Program. We will have a large group of some fantastic young singers and expect a good crowd to join in online!

    Business of Singing Seminar

    10:30 am – 1:00 pm EASTERN time
    Saturday July 7th, 2012

Laura was wise to open this up for FREE. Email bill@velvetsinger.com to reserve a spot and I will email you the seminar materials (slides, preparation assignment, etc.). Then at 10:30 am EST, click this link:

Business of Singing Seminar

CoOperative Program 2012
10:30 – 1:00 pm EST, Saturday July 7th

“The Greatest Hits”
Getting the Most Out of Your Plans

This seminar will utilize what I have found to be the greatest exercises and discussion topics to help initiate a new vision and optimism for your career. The goal for our time together is simple: to help you bring the same level of instinct, polish and joy to “the business side” of what you do as you naturally bring to your singing.

  • The Two Halves of the “Business of Singing”: Process vs. Tools. We will hit both the process (what, why, when) and the tools (how) during this session.
  • Artistic Business Planning 101. Why you need one, what goes in it, when do you revisit it, what do you do with it?
  • Approaching Your Business Plan from the Top-Down. What are the most basic elements of your story at this point? How can you make that story compelling and interesting to other people? How can we make this tap into your creative and fun side?
  • Business Plan Take 1. We will take some time during the session to get started creating your strengths & weaknesses list, goals, artistic interests and 1,5,10-year ambitions. Remember to bring your computers! This is when we will tie in your pre-seminar preparation.
  • Action Items. After going on that journey, jot down a few “action items” that require follow-up after the session. I will ask you to pick one action item and read it to the group.
  • Sharing Your Business Plan. You will identify three contacts to share your business plan with, and make a plan for when, what to share, and the specific reason why you are sharing with this person. I will also ask that you email me your results in a week’s time.
  • Resume Formatting. How to use MS Word to format a really nice-looking resume! Review the most common pitfalls I see and show you a better way.
  • Singer Resources. We will flip through a list of the most important technologies and web sites that each singer should know about and know how to use.
  • Velvet Singer 3.0 Sneak Peak / Feedback. I have been hard at work on a new version of my software, and I am excited to show some things off and get your take.

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Longy and Turning Pro

Friday, December 16th, 2011

Earlier this week I had the privilege of returning to the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Mass to work with the Masters level voice students as they prepare for the holiday break.

I expected some serious burnout at this point in the semester, and I tiptoed into the topics, not knowing how the reaction would be. I asked, “How y’all doin?” and leaned on the desk as we got to know each other. It immediately became clear: far from burnt out, these singers were “amped up” and eager to get a plan in place. We were off and running on what was to be a very productive two hour session.

At Longy, they do something very smart — they require this Monday seminar for all of their graduate level singers, and it becomes a catch-all for guest artists, special presentations and collaboration. I think it really pays off that they have this time set aside to bring in folks like me. Then they don’t have to pull teeth or beat a drum to get the students excited and energized about these “special” topics. The field is tilled, the soil is ready to receive. I think this setup helps make my visits to Longy very productive.

We talked through some of the basic principles of maintaining an active, “living” document to serve as a business plan. It doesn’t need to be perfect, it doesn’t need to contain every last element fully fleshed out, it just needs to be alive and relevant and easy.

It also helps to drop a reminder into your calendar for the two or three times a year that you will revisit these topics. January and August are the best planning times for me, and it sounds like for many other singers. Some of the students at Longy also suggested that mid-semester can also be a great time to revisit your strengths & weaknesses list or to check in with a goals list.

While in Boston, I also had the chance to meet with a few colleagues at different schools, checking in with them and learning a bit more about how their work is progressing. When they asked about my sessions at Longy, I ended up mostly describing the one-on-one sessions that I did Monday afternoon.

I began these sessions a touch low on energy after scarfing down some delicious New England clam chowder, but I found myself basically bouncing off of the walls by 5:00 when I wrapped up. These students each had such unique stories and such profound passion for what they do. I was delighted and invigorated because I felt well equipped to address so many of their questions, and where I wasn’t sure, I confessed my ignorance and moved the topic along.

Among other things, I kept revisiting what has become somewhat of a mantra for me:

    If you want to be a professional singer, simply do one thing: build and sustain a lifestyle of singing.

It is completely within your control. Fear not! Those that ‘win’ at this game are those that can sustain the lifestyle the longest. That’s it. Talent helps, sure, as does getting a few good breaks. It is easier to sustain the lifestyle if you have the support of friends and family, of course. But it is completely up to you.

As Stephen Pressfield writes in his fantastic book about battling resistance and self-defeating behavior in the creative arts, The War of Art:

    “There’s no mystery to turning pro. It’s a decision brought about by an act of will. We make up our mind to view ourselves as pros and we do it. Simple as that.”

If you don’t already have a copy, I highly suggest picking one up, especially if you want to get psyched up over a holiday break!

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Northwestern Summer Session Revisited

Friday, August 5th, 2011

I love getting invited back! This was my second seminar at Northwestern’s stand-out summer session, which helps prepare some very talented young singers for their college careers.

    MUSIC 330-0, A Vocal Career Seminar
    1 week. M Tu W Th F 6:30 – 10pm

    In these classes you will learn to audition for an agent, an opera company in the US and Europe, and a musical theater company. We will find three pieces for you that will make you the most marketable and help you to perfect them. Also discussed: How to present yourself most effectively by clothes and grooming; creating a useable resume and bio; advice on the proper picture for your voice type; tax issues. Guest speakers include a New York agent for opera and musical theater, a tax specialist, photographer, stage directors. Class is limited to 12 singers and 30 auditors.

    Pamela Hinchman

Is there anything better than that in the performance world, too? When you perform a gig and get invited back, you know that you have earned the respect of your employer. That is the free market moving and working and voicing (pun intended) its opinion.

It was nice to see a few familiar faces and offer them something new on the second time around. We were able to dig a little deeper and help this group think critically about what it is they want and how to accomplish it.

And we had some fun too. That is part of Pamela‘s brilliance as a teacher: people learn more when they enjoy it!

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OperaWorks — Own It

Tuesday, July 19th, 2011

I was privileged to travel to Los Angeles to stay on the beautiful campus of California State University Northridge with the OperaWorks faculty and students for a few days this summer. Ann Baltz made great use of our time together, setting up a morning seminar preceding group Yoga. After lunch we divided into group break-out sessions.

Yoga was a fantastic way to break up what can be fairly heavy topics. (While discussing how to create and maintain an artistic business plan, I often find that some of the attendees are busy contemplating even larger life questions: who am I, what am I doing with my life, where do I want to be in ten years?)

The seminar was the last seminar in a solid string, and so I felt very comfortable in directing a good discussion. The topics seemed to flow very naturally and I was impressed with a few attendees in particular, who brought a diversity of opinion and an outstanding intelligence to the dialogue. They really seemed to “own” the session and genuinely wrestle with the implications. Overall, all of the singers brought an earnest desire to dig into these questions and to arrive at their own conclusions. It was a delight to not have to spend any time trying to get the group psyched up and connected — they were ready to learn.

They brought that same energy to our group break-out sessions. We went around the room digging into each singer’s unique path in a little more depth. Each singer brought such candor and self-knowledge, and it was a delight for me to get to offer my perspective on opera companies, resumes, websites, branding and marketing. Some singers were very new to the scene, some were quite seasoned veterans looking to chart a new course. Some came from California schools and some came from the school of life. Several shared stories of great entrepreneurial spirit including very creative fundraisers to help them pay for their time at OperaWorks. They “owned it” start to finish.

In talking with the singers and with Ann, I discovered that “owning it” is more than just a coincidence among this group, it is core to what the OperaWorks method is all about. The students buzzed about the final touches they were putting on their show:

Each year at OperaWorks, the singers create an original production, from a mashup of arias and scenes that are relevant to each performer and fach-appropriate. To the traditionalist, this might sound non-boring, but it makes total sense when you break it down:

  • Polish relevant, fach-appropriate arias / roles / scenes
  • Create an intense sense of ownership and pride over the production
  • Flesh out the sub-text and back-story, grounding your audition rep into a real situation

I bet many programs of this type struggle to fit all of the students into an opera, trying to balance the talents with the requirements of the show, often having to ask several singers to sing things that are not quite appropriate. And there is the question of gender balance in shows too. What to do with all of the women? Carmelites again?

Also, how much better do you sing when you actually care what you are singing about rather than feeling like a cog in a giant wheel?

I know I have experienced both sides of this “ownership” thing myself. I recall countless auditions feeling like I needed to get “Dies Bildnis” to sound just like Fritz Wunderlich, or I had failed. And so I ended up pursing some more obscure literature to present in auditions such as Gluck or Berlioz. Then I could feel like I was doing MY version of that aria, owning it start to finish. But that doesn’t quite work either, because most audition panelists prefer to hear things in the standard rep (and most humans enjoy hearing things they already know).

If I had only attended OperaWorks years ago I would have set Tamino in outer space and owned that aria start to finish, perhaps vividly connected to my lovely Pamina floating off to Mars in a space pod.

If you believe in the power of owning it, why not consider a few weeks in LA? Check out OperaWorks 2012 auditions.

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Teaching Generation Net

Monday, July 18th, 2011

I am learning all of the time to stay up on “my game.” This NPR feature provides excellent insights into how this current generation of college students may absorb information in a radically different way than their grandparents, their parents or even me!

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/14/137853462/rethinking-how-we-teach-the-net-generation?ft=1&f=1008

“‘This new generation comes home and they turn on their computer and they’re in three different windows and they’ve got three magazines open and they’re listening to iTunes and they’re texting with their friends,’ [Author Don Tapscott] says, ‘and they’re doing their homework.’”

This is a great encouragement to the methods we have been employing in our seminars. In asking the singers to begin constructing their business plans on their free time, before the seminars, I hope to inspire them that this ‘assignment’ should become a personalize thing. You don’t need to take long on it, you can do it while you are on Facebook and it just might help set the foundation for your career.

Check out his book at: http://www.macrowikinomics.com/.

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Residency at BASOTI

Tuesday, July 12th, 2011

Last week I took up residency in one of the most beautiful places in the world: San Francisco. I had spent a formative summer in San Fran during the internet boom, working with a web page design firm called Adjacency. The three founders ended up selling ADJ for $67 million in stock to Sapient. The stock proceeded to triple in value allowing these entrepreneurs to buy a few fancy cars then start other businesses.

And so I felt quite the buzz to fly into SFO and take the BART up to Mission Street and get set up for a three day residency with Sylvia Anderson’s stellar program: BASOTI. In addition to being deeply appreciative of the work they prepared for me, they gave me a great shout-out on their newly redesigned website. It is maybe not quite as slick as the Range Rover or Tag Heuer websites I worked on in the 90′s, but it will give you a great taste of just how cool this program is.

During my stay, I provided my business plan seminar to several different groups, and did countless one-on-one meetings in the stunning San Francisco Conservatory of Music. We worked a lot on resumes and out of that work I was able to develop my resume tips and templates. Interestingly, that resume-tips page seems to have caught some eyes. Every day, more and more singers keep finding and clicking that link, according to my Google Analytics web traffic reports. How fun is that?

I also had the opportunity to hear some musical rehearsals and watch staging. They were in the final throws of putting together an ambitious production of Clemenza di Tito, a work I performed with Chicago Opera Theater. The mezzo who took Sesto by the proverbial operatic horns brought such power, grace and intensity to her work. And the soprano that undertook Vitellia’s demanding role had such range and color to her performance. I was thoroughly impressed.

    “If you’re going to San Francisco / You’re gonna meet some gentle people there”

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