“I’m always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning. …Every day I find something creative to do with my life.” -Miles Davis, trumpeter and composer (The Musician’s Way, p. 309) Thanks to the code-happy primates at...
“I don’t say that I never feel fear before a performance, but I have learned to channel it.” –Claudio Arrau, pianist The Musician’s Way, p. 162 Imagine that you’ve arrived at a venue 90 minutes before you’ll perform. You have to set up the stage, check the...
“The beauty in playing the instrument is not to be better than the next person but to stay true to oneself, to set one’s own standards and keep to them.” –Andrés Cárdenes, violinist The Musician’s Way, p. 305 In many ways, we succeed or flounder as...
The June/July edition of The Musician’s Way Newsletter brings together 18 articles and online resources of value to musicians and all creative people. For instance, resilience is essential to creative work because it enables us to learn from setbacks and keep...
“Display confident body language, come what may.” –The Musician’s Way, p. 194 Are you confident in your ability to deal with on-stage mistakes? I’ve found that rising musicians seldom practice handling errors, so they typically don’t manage them as gracefully as they...
“Meaning is what matters most in your day-to-day practice.” –The Musician’s Way, p. 312 Might there exist people who devote themselves to music solely for material gain? I doubt it. Rather, it’s the psychic income that we derive from our work that we most...
“Diverse careers are available to musicians because people worldwide consume huge amounts of music-related products and services every day.” –The Musician’s Way, p. 300 Are there too many musicians for the marketplace to support? I think not. For...
Arts entrepreneurship isn’t a slice of the educational pie – it’s the pan. I adapted that opening sentence from a statement attributed to Andrew Rasiej (“Innovation is not a slice of the pie – it’s the pan”). The concept of pan...
“You don’t always have to chop with the sword of truth. You can point with it too.” –Anne Lamott The Musician’s Way, p. 299 Although criticism is essential to all sorts of collaboration, poorly handled critiques can undermine our ability to work...
