Creative Problem Solving for Music Entrepreneurs: What’s the Problem?

It’s exciting to observe the process of creative problem solving! Innovation can occur when you provide a solution to a problem that meets the deeper needs of your intended target audience. To do so, you need a good problem statement. In my Innovation and Collaboration Class at the Yale School of Music, my students have now coalesced around 4 project …

Creative Problem Solving for Music Entrepreneurs: Defining the Problems of Classical Music

My class at Yale on Creating Value Through Innovative Projects is off to a great start! The focus of my seminar is how musicians can generate innovative solutions to the most pressing problems facing classical music today and to work in collaborative groups to solve these problems. My goal is to make my students better thinkers so that they can lead …

Communicating Under Pressure: How to Leverage and Flex the 4 Communication Styles

This past week, I led two sessions with the management team and the ushers at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center on how to leverage and flex the 4 communication styles for world-class customer service. It was a thrill for me to be at the theater because I have been a balletomane since high school. In fact, when …

How to Jumpstart Your Creative Success: Take the Creative Success Assessment

I am passionate about empowering creative success!  In fact, my mission is to help creative people achieve success so that the world is teeming with creativity. Why? Because I believe that when we put our passions and talents to work in the service of spreading creativity throughout the world, we are making the world a better place. The goal of …

How’d You Get That Music Job Podcast: Career Success for Today’s Music Entrepreneurs

I am thrilled to be on the most recent music job podcast episode of “Hey, How’d You Get That Music Job?”, one of the top career podcasts of 2018.  The host is L. Ariel, singer/songwriter/producer of dance synth pop, who hosts a series of podcasts with music industry experts with advice on how to succeed in the music business today. …

Bang on a Can: Inspiring Innovation for Today’s Music Entrepreneurs

Last week, I had the privilege of participating on a panel examining the music powerhouse, Bang on a Can,  as a case study in successful arts entrepreneurship. The panel, a Career Development session for composers and other musicians, was sponsored by the American Composers Orchestra as part  of the Underwood New Music Readings, a program that discovers today’s brightest orchestral composers and …

Executive Director

Astrid provided coaching to our small team as we were preparing to launch a new consulting company. She inspired our team to dig deeply into our short term and long term goals for our new venture to develop a sound and personal mission statement that has guided our new company from day one. As a lawyer, I am protective of …

Leadership For Arts Entrepreneurs: 4 Key Elements of Your Leadership Style

In my last post, I dissected the lessons of leadership from Itay Talgam’s TED Talk on conducting and leadership and Marin Alsop’s interview at Yale, and highlighted 4 key elements of a leadership style: Be Yourself Find a Mentor Learn from Failure Create a Relationship of Mutual Respect These lessons  provided the backdrop for a call that I recently led with …

Conducting and Leadership: Lessons for Today’s Arts Entrepreneurs

What lessons can today’s arts leaders glean from conducting and leadership? Conducting is a terrific metaphor for leadership since you have a large number of highly-trained and gifted people (the musicians) who must come together to produce a great product (music) which they can only do with skilled leadership Conducting and leadership provided the backdrop for a call that I …