The first email of this type I got was from an “artistic management” company. I was excited to get an offer and I went on reading it carefully, thinking a manager was interested in my projects. In fact what I read was a weird offer : paying a high monthly fee + a commission to get a pdf press kit and have a call center phoning presenters to try to get me concerts. In brief, “pay 300$ or 500$ a month for minimum one year, and maybe you’ll get something“.

Just for fun, I checked their roaster : something like 30 pianists with a nice empty schedule for the next years, and obviously 25 of them had been listed less than one year ago. Conclusion : obvious rip-off. (Well, Norman Lebrecht posted a warning on his blog about these “agencies”).

For me, that’s not the way management works. I take a risk putting my career and interests in the hands of a stranger, the manager takes the risk of believing in and trusting an artist. Reimbursing the manager’s expenses can be considered as normal (press-kit design, web-mastering …) but paying a high monthly fee for nearly nothing is unbelievable. The couple manager/artist works as if they were associates : they both invest time and money for a common goal, it’s a win-win deal (at least, it should theoretically be one). They must trust each other and I’m pretty sure commission-based work is the only way to keep the motivation alive for both parties. And don’t expect to do nothing because you got an agent. It’s your role to help him.

I spoke earlier about record labels because the same kind of rip-offs take place in the recording business. The deal is generally something like this : Record, bring them a master, and add a 8000$ to be listed in their catalog and produce 500 copies. They claim they’ll advertise a little, do the P.R., distribute your recording and take a 20% on the sales. Usually the only things appearing in contracts are the fees you have to pay, and obligation for them to send promotional materials to some random journalists. When you know how the promotion business is working, you also know this kind of “obligation” doesn’t mean anything and have no impact.

Of course, if you need copies for yourself (the copies you already paid!) you have to buy them from the label (at a discounted rate, but anyway you already paid the goods…). What a good deal… for the label! They have nothing to invest, and they earn money even before the recording has been published, why should they bother to promote your recording? And I don’t want to speak about their releases, usually as bad as the deal is.

The musician’s life is complicated enough and we don’t need these vultures flying around our heads. My question is : do they really think musicians are that dumb and rich?

Related posts:

1. Label record deals Pros and cons
2. Recordings: a help or a hindrance to artistic creation?
3. Music Management in Conservatories?

“Musicians can’t compete, music is not a race, there is no winner, no looser”. Yes, it’s surely aesthetically ugly, maybe inappropriate, at least not romantic at all to make musicians compete for a trophy. I agree with this. BUT, music is for us a business too, a passion/business certainly, but a damn hard business. And in any business there are competitions and competitors. This doesn’t mean that we hate each other and we want other pianists to burn in hell. No. I meant competitors in a sense that other people are “providing the same kind of service”. Like it or not, competition even in the fabulous and marvelous world of music exists, that’s a fact. And music competitions can be a way to learn that. As well as a way to set a practice goal.

So why did I stop competing if competitions are so great? (sniggering in the audience) In fact, I was expecting to get a constructive criticism about my playing and meeting people doing the same thing as I do. What did I get? None of that. Participants didn’t want to speak to each other (as if I was going to steal them their talent just with a conversation) and I met nobody I could keep in touch with. For the constructive criticism, let me tell you a short story (here comes the connection with Janáček).

A couple of years ago, I performed In the mists for one of the rounds of my soon-to-be last international competition. After the jury’s decision, I decided to test the water and ask the jury members what they liked and what they didn’t like. I got various advices, a third of them could have been helpful if I had not been told the exact opposite right after, and the last third of these precious “advices” didn’t make any sense at all. And here came the cherry on the cake. One of the members didn’t like at all my Janáček. OK, I can take that you know, but what I was really interested in was why? Suspense… Let’s precise here that members of the jury are supposed to have no information about participants: The guy didn’t know anything about me, and that’s why it was so hilarious.

He advised me to listen to Czech people speaking, for me to get the color of the language, maybe even learn a bit of Czech or work with a Czech teacher because I was obviously not aware of Czech culture, how Czech music has to sound and of the bohemian background of Janáček’s music. Wow. Frankly, I’m still surprised I stayed impassive. The guy, (I’m sorry I can’t remember his name but I made my research in those times) obviously never spoke Czech, never had more exposition to Czech culture than his 3 days trip to Prague 10 years earlier. Anyway, I just wanted to throw in his face I was a 5th year Czech speaking student of Prague Conservatory and that Janáček had no bohemian roots or background but Moravian ones. I didn’t do so but I can remember myself standing in the room with a piece of quiche in the hand just looking at this guy and thinking “this competition thing is a huge joke”. I made up my mind: I would never apply for one again.

Was it a mistake to make up my mind having only one experience? Was it a childish reaction? No, in fact I think I just found a good excuse not to be involved in more competitions. Admit it, it was a very good excuse! But the truth is I never needed to have external practice goals, and I don’t care much about what other pianists can say about my playing. As far as I can remember, I’ve always hated competitions, but when I was a child I did not really have a choice. In my childhood, that maybe taught me how to deal with stage fright. I certainly could have used the kickstarter an international competition can be, but I’m happy I didn’t use this shortcut: I’ve learned a lot more about my job and the music business that way.

Competitions aren’t good or bad, they are a tool in the pianist’s life. A tool you choose to use or not, a tool you know how to use or not, a tool you like or not. Life is not easier nor harder with or without a prize. The important is what you can learn from the experience, and believe me, I learned a lot, even if I didn’t find what I was looking for in the first place.

Related posts:

1. Leoš Janáček: On an overgrown path
2. First Solo Album : Janáček / Ravel
3. A new hall for České Budějovice

As I was writing in my post Label record deals Pros and cons 9 months ago, recording is not a source of income anymore but a kind of promotional tool. We are not expecting to earn anything but coverage and pomotion is THE important thing. But promotion is expensive and nobody wants to pay. The artist, because he already paid the product and the label services. The label, because they don’t want to invest money, so they propose only (nearly) free promotion. At least all the one I contacted. I’m sure there still are labels willing to take calculated risks but I couldn’t get my hands on them.

In fact it seemed to me the label was not a partner, but a kind of subcontractor you pay to organize (little) promotion and distribution. Moreover, for those I tested, I even had to explain how to market the product, which communication channels we should use, in fact I was simply doing their job, the job I was supposed to pay for. Funny, isn’t it?

Distribution : let’s face it physical distribution is moribund, what’s the point of distributing physical goods? Oh wait, yes, being reviewed, because most reviewers don’t want to write a line about a digital only release. If a reviewer could explain why, I would be happy to hear him.

Oh, I’m so stupid, I forgot you had to buy advertisement in the newspaper if you want to get a review, so even with a physical product and no investment in promotion/advertisement I won’t get a review. Again there are still people doing a great job and not fitting to my description, I thank them all.

So after all this thinking, I just wondered : “does releasing my CD under a label really worth the extra work, extra money and extra troubles?” In fact the answer was the same than 9 months ago, but this time my intuitions were confirmed and what was a feeling became definitely an absolute certainty : no, it doesn’t unless the deal is fair and the two parties benefit from the partnership. I would be happy to join a label under these conditions, but this kind of deals seems to be a myth nowadays, even with a solid project.

Finally, I’m happy to release this CD on my own : I’ll learn a lot, I won’t loose more time, I’ll get exactly what I want, last but not least, I’ll be totally free to do what I want to do artistically speaking.

Related posts:

1. Happy Holidays!
2. Label record deals Pros and cons
3. Is the debate over piracy a “false” debate?

• Internet is time consuming : The pianist’s schedule was already pretty tight and with internet we have no free time left at all. Social networks, Blog, website, forums… We have to join the conversation and its immediacy : interactions on internet are now on a real-time basis and people expect you to react faster than ever. If you’re not careful about the time you spend on internet, it can quickly become your one and only activity of the day.
• It increases our workload : As other media are not dead (yet?), we have to plan a web strategy in addition to other “traditional” media strategies. We all know how media strategies are difficult to set up and how painful this planning process is : since internet has been a mainstream media, I have much more work concerning the media planning.
• Good marketing is always pricey : Internet may be smoke and mirrors. Free marketing? It doesn’t exist. As other media, Internet has a price and increased our communication budget : running a website, advertising, creating multimedia content… Being on the web is not enough, you have to reach your audience and I don’t think you can reach someone by just saying “Hello, I’m here!”. Internet is a really good medium, but a real effective web strategy with a good ROI is far from free.
• Internet broadened offering : The classical music market is a tiny market and gets tinier every year. Internet made it easier to contact presenters and present our work, but on an already saturated market, Internet in fact broadened offering and that’s really not helping musicians : It’s more and more difficult to find concerts and our fees are going down. In brief, a logical outcome of the market over-saturation.
• Copyright issues : Yes, there are copyright issues. Who has never seen one of his articles stolen? Who can deny the impact of digital piracy on music sales? Internet made it easier for us on certain points, but the relative easiness of piracy on the web really hurts the business.

To sum up, Internet is here and you must adapt your work style to survive. In any case I would go back to the old times without Internet. It has brought fantastic opportunities to all of us in recent years and made so many things possible that were never possible before, but there are some negative points of course. The key is to recognize the drawbacks and try to minimize the negative effects. Ultimately, I would say the positives of the internet far outweigh the negatives.

Related posts:

1. Does Internet help Classical musicians? (1/2)
2. New Layout!
3. The SACEM’s twists and turns

• Contacting presenters and media: Remember these paper booklets and CD demo we had to put together and send by physical mail? It’s now over. We don’t and can’t work like this anymore, it would be too expensive and not fast enough. We use electronic press kit and electronic promo kit sent by email. Thanks to internet, it’s now easy to find and contact presenters as well as media.
• New, cheap and effective ways to promote your business : The web created new tools to promote yourself : social medias, blogs… are very low-cost and can be great to target a particular market, if you know how to use these tools.
• Reaching an international market: We are in a global society and musicians are now working at an international level. Or at least they can do it. Back in the old times, it was really difficult to spread your influence beyond borders and gain new markets. Even if it’s not that easy, mainly because of national/cultural specificities, musicians can promote themselves out of their country without spending thousands dollars.
• Save time and react faster : We don’t have to spend time at the post office anymore and don’t have to wait for an answer for ages. Decision making has been optimized and we are now able to react in real time. Mobile devices and Internet have made us much more responsive without loosing your time sitting in front of a computer. I can pratice my piano and stay connected. I can cook and work at the same time.
• Connect with people : Internet made it possible to connect easely with other musicians (great not to feel lonely) and, much more important, connect with our “fans”. That’s what I do on a daily basis with my facebook page and twitter account.

Sure, Internet made our lives easier in a way. It also completely changed the business and not necessarily for the better, but this will be developped in my next post!

Related posts:

1. Does Internet help Classical musicians? (2/2)
2. The SACEM’s twists and turns
3. A useful year (2/2)

1. Staying fit and healthy is part of our business priorities. I underestimated their importance in our profession but playing sports, doing yoga, relaxation, receiving massages are far from useless. They are essential moments in the pianist’s life. We (over?)use our bodies, so we must take care of this body and remember we could not play an instrument without it. Of course, I mentioned exercise here, but staying in shape affects many other areas of our lives: food, lifestyle, sleep …

2. Musical Excellence, of course, but not only. Communication, marketing, business negotiations, law… there are a lot of subjects a musician should know about, and he must master certain concepts outside the music to be able to take the right decisions for his career. We can delegate part of this work, but we are always asked for the final decision, and making a decision requires a clear understanding of the situation. How can you do that if you really don’t know what your collaborators are talking about?

3. Time management: our daily fight. We have many, many things to do and little free time. Poor time management leads inevitably to overdue tasks, stress and disasters. Planning, respecting a schedule, estimating the time you need to complete a task are real challenges: we must learn how to stay organized to avoid drowning in work. Free time is precious to us, and is in fact a passive working time : cultivating your imagination, reading, watching movies, all this affects your playing, and therefore your work. This part of “free time” is essential to “feed us” as an artist.

4. Saying no. This was one of my biggest weaknesses. We must understand that as professionals we have rules: we have busy schedules, we must make choices about what fits or not our season and our long-term plans, what interests us or not, what suits us or not. It is our job, we can not do everything, nor accept anything. Quality over quantity. And being professional means you sometimes have to say no. And we must learn to do that because it’s not as easy as it looks.

The pianist’s career path is long, difficult and requires many skills that nobody teaches us during our student life. It is a major weakness in our educational system and if we were really prepared for this life, many of us would avoid many of the art business pitfalls.

Related posts:

1. A useful year
2. Blog season 2: Independance
3. One year to change

First of all, I had time to do a background work that was essential: rethinking my piano technique and exploring the repertoire really deeply. I needed to improve a few technical issues which have been embarrassing me for quite a long time, so I decided to work on it seriously. This year was the perfect slot to do this kind of thing: no deadlines and time to work or rework certain pieces. I’ve also been exploring the repertoire, and it was essential to know which path I wanted to follow. Finally, these investigations reinforced in me the idea that I feel particularly close to music of the XX^th and XXI^th centuries, although there are some other composers I love playing but only for myself.

I also discovered something else: I like solitude. Last year, I thought I would suffer from isolation but not all. In fact, far from the hustle and bustle, and far from the permanent “intellectual” disruption, I’ve really stayed focused on my work which is not as easy as it sounds. If I could in the past think that solitude was the soloist’s scourge, I find it essential now. Not that I’m antisocial, but it seems to me that if an artist wants to use his brain for a creative work, the so-called self-discipline – which is nothing but a way of moving away from society – is absolutely essential. Any creative artist who intends to produce a work worthy of interest can not help being a relatively poor social being. (I’m paraphrasing G. Gould, I know it’s a shame I can’t quote him exactly…)

On a personal level, this year has been particularly interesting. I have made a lot of progress, learned a lot about myself, and about my relationship to the piano and music. Professionally, things have changed also. I’ve changed my view on the career as a pianist, but I’ll share this in my next post.

Related posts:

1. One year to change
2. A useful year (2/2)
3. Blog season 2: Independance

Your first step towards a recording is a good definition of the project. Clearly, why do you want to record? For promotion? To be a worldwide famous star? Every artist has different expectations about recording and the solution must be tailored to his needs. In my case, I want to record because I love working in studios, because I have a program that is close to my heart and deserves to be heard by a wider audience than the concert one. Of course, I also need a CD as promotional support, I do not deny it.

My current experiments with independent labels and those of my colleagues are not very successful. The music market is going through a crisis. None of them provides conditions satisfying my own desires and needs, and the ratio time and investment vs. benefits is quite inconclusive. I still have to produce the CD on my own with a lot less freedom than via self-production while promotion and distribution remain uncertain. Apart from wasting sponsors’ money, which is not in my interest, I do not really understand the advantage of such a system, especially since the days of many independent labels are numbered: if the label collapses, you must take everything from scratch once again.

Majors: not an option for me right now. While distribution and promotion are almost perfect, it is a double edged sword and can hurt you very badly. I’m not big enough to negotiate a fabulous contract with a major label : I’ll be “washed-up” quickly. It is indeed very interesting to record for DG, Sony and others when you have access to their premium service. Not when you are one of the thousands average artists who recorded for them. In short, you don’t call them, they’ll call you, if they fell in love with you or if there is business to be done, in brief if you represent a profitable investment.

If running his own label was a really crazy idea for an independent artist a few decades ago, today many are doing well running their own company. The advantages are numerous: you can keep control over your career, control product quality and have an opportunity to truly express your unfettered musical vision. But it’s no bed of roses. It’s a titanic task, and promotion and distribution are difficult to handle when you start from scratch. But the development of new distribution channels and growth of music downloads are pushing us in that direction and help us to realize such projects. So why not?

Recording is not (except in very rare instances) a source of income anymore, the industry has substantially changed, technologies have changed, but we, classical musicians, are still thinking as we used to years ago. It is time for us to move on, to get a different perspective on the recording industry and finally create a business model serving the artists’ and music lovers’ interests.

Related posts:

1. Record labels & artistic agent deals
2. I want to be free
3. Is the debate over piracy a “false” debate?

My vacation was studious: no articles, but the 33 variations on a waltz by Diabelli (those who follow me on Facebook already know it), and some work projects I had not completed yet. I also relaxed, don’t worry, and I finally could enjoy a summer in my beautiful city of Prague, siping a few cocktails on the banks of the Vltava, or walking around the many parks of the city. I had the need to recharge my batteries after a particularly trying year.

September, month of the start of school. This year, for the first time since preschool, I am not going back to school. I did not notice before but I had never been really independent, I mean pianistically speaking. Always having someone directing me, never really free. I left the institutions to which I belonged in order to stand on my own two feet. Well, on my own two feet but under control, because I am not saying that I won’t get coached from time to time… So, independence means change in the way I live. But also in the way I work: more time to get to the bottom of things and to develop myself along a single line.

This “special” year, I have decided to start it with six months of introspection. Take the time to think, put back into question some basical things, work on some problems I haven’t had the time to deal with before, and reexamine my interpretation according to my own taste. A student’s life does not always allow radical changes, for the first time I will be able to build on what I have learnt and live my own life. Exciting but terrifying.

As for the blog this year, I will try to offer more interactive content and maybe educational. Why not some video analysis if I feel capable. Till then, back to the piano!

Related posts:

1. A useful year
2. One year to change
3. First post of 2009

It apparently seems difficult for some to imagine that spending 8 or 10 hours every day at a piano is a serious job. It also apparently seems difficult for some to imagine that there is an aesthetic and intellectual research and that this is not just about pushing the right keys at the right time… I reassure you, being musician is a profession with many facets, taking up 100% of our time and asking a lot of work.

In the same vein, imagine for a moment the situation: you are invited to a dinner where at the back of the host’s living room is standing a piano… and suddenly it’s a drama, someone exclaims: “Are you going to play us something?” No way! The piano is often not tuned or in a so miserable state that it is almost unplayable, and in any case, is it really polite to ask a guest to work? It would not cross my mind to invite a friend surgeon and ask him to remove me an unsightly melanoma immediately with a kitchen knife as only instrument.

These little comments or situations, which have the knack of irritating musicians are legion… If today I (almost?) do not hear them anymore, it’s because I do not have much time to get out of my “jar”, within which everyone knows what I’m doing. A few years ago, I also had to face this fact and this is not always easy. Have mercy on us, simple musicians, think before speaking too much and good luck to you newbies, this will end up tailing off!

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