Almost as early as I can remember, music has been an integral part of my life. My father was, at various intervals, a trucker and diesel mechanic. But at home, he was a musician through and through. He played both the accordion and the piano. It wasn’t until my parents bought an upright grand Baldwin piano that I really started to take notice of my dad’s playing. I was five years old at the time. And I remember sitting on the edge of my parent’s bed watching my dad play a selected passage from the Spinning Wheel by Ellmenreich Albert.
He would play this repeatedly, over and over again. A children’s song, it is simple in technique. But when my father saw Horowitz’s encore performance, he was determined to yield the same level of nuance, to get it just right. I remember being completely mesmerized by the flow of his fingers and the sound they were producing. Eventually my dad got up and went to the kitchen to wash dishes.
More by curiosity than anything else, I sat down at the piano and started mimicking the pattern of his fingers. In later years, my father told me that when he heard me playing, his jaw dropped, and he knew right then and there that he had to teach me the rest of the song. And that’s what he did.
There is more to this story, as there always is, but this was the beginning of my life-long love affair with music.
Having recently graduated college in January of 2012, my chosen profession is one in which networking is vital to my survival. And I’m sure all musicians have recognized this at some crucial point along the way. I graduated with the slight tingling regret that I never took a music business class, or even just a basic business class.
My story may seem to be no different than any other recently graduated student…a massive amount of student loan debt just…looming. I’ve always been told that you should major in something you love rather than something that would just make you a lot of money.
But why is there this assumption in the first place, that musicians don't make any money? For any artist, money doesn’t seem to be the objective. And rightly so. But money should always be the result of hard work because it does indeed represent energy in any form it takes. Being an artist/musician takes dedication and due diligence just like any other profession. And there are plenty of musicians making a living at what they do. If my mother hadn’t so graciously allowed me to move back in with her…where would I be? Would have survival mode just kicked in, and I would suddenly be making a living probably doing something I didn’t enjoy? I wonder.
But to my unending gratitude, my mother is allowing me the freedom to become an established music teacher and performer in my community.
So this is a story of me and my music, a very personal, close to home story. My hope is that other artists who are just starting out may gain some useful insights about the process of starting your own business.