Now into their second year, my coaching groups at the Yale School of Music have provided a powerful measure of support to our budding artists as they forge the joys and the uncertainties of the artistic path. This year, our coaching groups were much more free form than last year. Students shared their challenges and successes and we improvised our topics …
How Music Entrepreneurs Make Decisions: Play the Pain/Gain Game
What happens when you are faced with two appealing alternatives and you do not know which one to chose? Now that festival offerings, graduate school acceptances and other training opportunities are rolling in, our students are often faced with making choices that affect their future. How does one decide, say, between going to New York to embark on a freelance …
Managing Transitions for Music Entrepreneurs: Articulate Your Fears To Generate Solutions
With the end of the school year fast approaching, our students are leaving Yale to pursue new ventures, including doctoral programs, joining a military band, studying abroad, and starting their new careers in the freelance world. These external changes signal the process of transition: an internal process that people go through and the emotions that they experience when faced with …
The Power of Yet: How Music Entrepreneurs Are Inspired to Create Long-Term Success
I greatly admire the groundbreaking work of Dr. Carol Dweck of Stanford University, who lays out her research on the type of mindset that leads to success in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Dr. Dweck identifies two mindsets: the growth mindset and the fixed mindset. Those with a growth mindset do not simply rely on “talent” …
Innovation in the Arts: What the Olympics and Happy Hour Can Teach Us About Audience Development
How could the Olympics and Happy Hour possibly help lead to a solution on how to attract more audiences to classical music? This was the topic of a fascinating workshop that I led last weekend at the Juilliard School Leadership Retreat on The 21st Century Artist as Entrepreneur and Innovator. My goal? To tap into the creativity of today’s bright young …
Cultivating Long-Term Happiness through Meditation : A Skeptics’ Guide to Meditation for Music Entrepreneurs
My last two posts on happiness practices showed how to cultivate optimism and build social support. Here’s another great way to build long-term happiness: meditation. This week, I am happy to share an infographic on the benefits of meditation called The Skeptics’ Guide to Meditation, created by the website happify.com and Dan Harris, author of 10% Happier. I have flirted …
Building Social Support: 3 More Happiness Strategies for Musicians
I am fascinated by the research showing that happiness breeds success and have been sharing information with the students at the Yale School of Music on how to create life-long happiness. In my last post, we examined how to create the happiness habit by cultivating optimism. This week, I would like to share 3 happiness strategies that strengthen your ties …
Cultivating Optimism: How Musicians Can Create Life-Long Happiness
I had the privilege of participating in the Community Day at Yale’s Institute of Sacred Music this past weekend, a day-long celebration of transformation through the arts, where I spoke about how musicians and artists can create long-lasting happiness. I am fascinated with this topic since research shows that happiness and optimism generate the positive emotions that make it possible to …
Community Engagement and The Future of Music: Lessons from Mozart in the Jungle and the NEA Report
I think a lot about the future of music and the arts. It’s my calling and my passion to help today’s musicians use their art in order to make their mark and have an impact on society in our changing landscape. It is also my job at Yale to inspire and empower our students to take their artistic training and …
Developing The Growth Mindset: How Yale Music Entrepreneurs Embrace Growth and Change
This past semester, my students at Yale experimented with the growth mindset in order to learn how to approach challenges in the spirit of growth and experimentation, as opposed to perfectionism and fear of failure. The growth mindset is premised on the belief that talent and intelligence are just the starting points of success and that success happens through hard work, …