TAG: collaboration

Entrepreneurial Projects at the Yale School of Music: What Today’s Audiences Need from Classical Music:

Each fall, I teach a wonderful class at the Yale School of Music (“YSM”) entitled, Collaborative Leadership To Advance Creativity, Innovation and New Opportunities in the Arts.  My class uses the experiential semester-long collaborative project to teach graduate music students how to create innovative solutions to problems in the classical music field.  Our focus is on meeting the needs of …

The Wisdom of Improv: 6 Principles to Enhance Your Happiness and Well-Being

Last month, I was thrilled to offer a workshop on improvisation (or improv) at the live retreat of my science of happiness program in Akumal, Mexico.  It was amazing to meet our professor, Tal Ben-Shahar, and 60 other happiness journeyers from all over the world who are part of the Happiness Studies Academy community for a beautiful weekend on Riviera …

Building an Online Classroom Community: Top Strategies for Engaging Students on Zoom

Online classroom

Last week, I was honored to lead a discussion with Yale University faculty on how to build an online classroom community.  The discussion was sponsored by Yale’s Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning. The Center provides a host of resources to students and faculty.  When Yale had to convert its classes to online learning last spring, the Center was instrumental …

Innovative Entrepreneurial Projects: Engaging Today’s Audience Through Classical Music

The focus of this year’s Collaboration and Innovation class at the Yale School of Music was engaging audiences through classical music. We had three project groups exploring different ways to expand the classical music audience using different interactive strategies.  The culmination of these projects was our final class where each group presents its project.  Let’s see how each group tackled the …

Ideas into Action: How Music Entrepreneurs Create and Innovate

One of my favorite aspects of teaching my Innovation and Collaboration class at Yale is the project whereby the students take on a critical problem in the classical music field and work in collaborative groups to create and implement new solutions to these problems.  It was fascinating to see how we were able to take the spark of an idea …

Creativity for Music Entrepreneurs: Leave Time for Incubation

Have you ever found yourself grappling with a challenging problem and then leaving your desk in disgust and frustration, only to find the answer when you wake up the next morning or when you are out for a nice walk? Welcome to incubation, one of the magical elements of the creativity process, where you work hard on a problem, give …

Collaborative Artistic Leadership: 3 Tips on Leveraging Strengths to Enhance the Power of Your Team

Recently, I conducted a leadership training at Ensemble Connect, the wonderful fellowship program at Carnegie Hall that prepares young professional classical musicians for careers that combine excellence in performing with teaching, community advocacy, entrepreneurship and leadership. Our session focused on helping the Fellows develop an authentic leadership style in team settings, using strengths and communication styles.  The Fellows particularly enjoyed discovering their strengths …

How Music Entrepreneurs Leverage Strengths: The First Step to Masterful Collaboration

What is the secret of successful collaboration? One key element is trust, based on a recognition that the members of a collaborative group have a high degree of respect for each other’s strengths, expertise and knowledge. An outstanding example of a successful collaboration is the Brentano String Quartet, the quartet in residence at Yale. Last year, I had the pleasure …