Most of my piano and composition students do not pursue a degree, much less a career, in music. This is how it should be. While I am prepared to take a student to the college level, my main goal is enabling a lifelong joy of music through developing the accomplished learner. Additionally, I coach self-patience, perseverance, and high personal standards – skills useful in any career.
But when the stars align, it seems, I am blessed with a student interested in a career in music. I love the college audition preparation phase, where the literature is necessarily diverse and meaty. I love that the attention to detail is consistently deep. The student’s motivation jumps a few notches higher, and the rate of growth is that much more pronounced.
Getting into a music school is the immediate hurdle. However, I am aware that making a career in music is another hurdle usually not covered at all within the 4 year programs our students take. Thus I also coach how to make a living as a professional musician, or at least to find opportunities to play as a professional musician. More often than not, that means making your own opportunities.
Most Don’t Continue to a Career in Music
It seems that most music majors do not make a career in music. Maybe a decade ago, I looked up the careers of my music school classmates. How many were actively in a career of music? I recall maybe 25%. For years Prescott’s Yavapai Symphony Association has offered generous scholarships to college students majoring in music performance, specifically to grow future performers. How many recipients of these scholarships are actively performing on a regular basis? I counted 2 out of 14, from one of the years I checked. (Several others do teach.)
I suspect that many music graduates choose not to make a career in music because something more fun has caught their attention. (Is that possible?) Another reason comes to my mind: perhaps graduates are not coached on how to make a living as a musician. Music schools often explicitly or implicitly teach that a successful career in music means to succeed at auditioning for or being hired by a third party.
From my observations, that is not a viable option for most of us. Few orchestras pay a living wage, and competition for those jobs are tremendous. If you wish to teach at a higher educational institution, you must have an advanced degree (typically a doctorate). Many of the higher-ed jobs available are adjunct and part-time positions at community colleges, where wages are low. Teaching at public schools seems to be a reasonable and potentially rewarding career option, yet I have heard that the time left available for personal musical growth and performance is limited.
What’s Needed For a Music Career
I coach my students that making a living as a musician is possible and rewarding if you continue to grow in your craft, you limit your debt, you are flexible in how you make your living, and you make your own opportunities to perform.
Much of this is obvious. Growing your craft means to practice your craft and seek mentors after you graduate. Limiting your debt is necessary (yet perhaps difficult), since music usually is not a high-paying nor steady-income career. Being flexible in your career usually means integrating teaching into career. But making your own opportunities? What does that mean?
Making your own opportunities means not waiting to be discovered or hired. The independent musician actively takes control of their career. They seek a variety of ways to pull in income and find ways to perform (and compose, in my case).
Making Career Opportunities
When my wife Maria and I moved our family to Arizona, we made a conscious choice to make a living only as musicians. We both have other skills we have peddled for money, yet we both wanted to focus on music. Here are some of the various ways we have made our own opportunities over the last twenty years:
- Private Teaching – this is our primary source of income. We teach out our home. At one point, Maria ran a small after-school band program that catered to homeschoolers and students of schools without a band program.
- Sticks and Tones – This is the name of Maria’s and my duo. For years this was our major secondary source of income. We played concerts for schools and libraries, and often we would lead week-long or longer residencies in other cities. Most of these gigs and residencies were subsidized with grants we helped each hiring organization receive.
- School Teaching – For some years, Maria taught in the public schools. She loves working with middle-school bands. Budget tightening and unreasonable schedules eventually lessened the joy of these jobs, so Maria returned to private teaching.
- Orchestral Playing – Maria has always had a healthy C.V. of regional orchestra jobs, professional orchestra substitute playing, and pickup orchestra gigs. In Michigan, Maria played in five different regional orchestras plus a number of other professional ensembles. Gigs are less frequent in Arizona than they were in Michigan. Yet even the sparse Arizona market has played an important role in our income.
- Composing – Depending upon the year, my composing has generated anywhere between close-to-zero to 15% of our income. Yet, it is a passion of mine that demands my attention. I am thankful to multiple ensembles and individuals from within our community and across the country who have commissioned, performed, and premiered works of mine.
- Music Flash Class – I suppose this isn’t a music job, but it is an iPhone application I wrote to facilitate my teaching. It pulls in a very low but steady and predictable income.
- Arts Organizations – Over the years, Maria and I have founded or co-founded a number of organizations to serve the local arts and music education community. For 11 years the Chaparral Music Fest offered performing opportunities and workshops that paid us and many other musicians. I co-founded the Chaparral Suzuki Academy with Dr. Laura Tagawa. For many years I, Laura, and a handful of other faculty taught piano and violin to students from across the southwest. Maria regularly participates as faculty for the annual Chaparral Chamber Music Workshop. A grant I received to perform my orchestral works and the support of Yavapai Community College were the catalysts to starting Arizona Philharmonic.
- Recitals – It is not hard to organize a recital. Many places will let you use their facilities for free or little charge. While we typically do not use recitals as an income source, they are an opportunity to grow as musicians, find an outlet for pieces we want to play or new works to be premiered, and perform with friends. I recently organized a community recital series that would share profit with local musicians, but COVID-19 delayed that project.
Some Other Hints
And, there are a few other things I’ve learned along the way that guide my advice to future musicians:
- If you are a composer, start your own ensemble to perform your own works. Seek and create local opportunities for your works to be performed by your ensemble or other ensembles.
- If you are creating an organization which pays others, make sure you pay yourself for administration. Which leads to …
- Consider carefully if the nonprofit route for an ensemble or arts organization is where you want to go. Most of our organizing efforts have been nonprofit oriented. We put in a lot of volunteer hours, requiring income from other hours of our lives to subsidize this time. One colleague of mine organizes a lot of concerts and avoids the nonprofit model, because it complicates paying oneself. Nonprofits are important only if you need outside sources of income that include donations and grants. We chose the nonprofit route so often because our projects involved hiring other musicians at professional rates, and that necessitated donations and grants.
- When starting larger organizations, first line up others equally passionate about the vision to help. It makes it easier and more fun.
- If possible, hire someone else to do your bookings for a share of the cut. Paper work can be a distraction from your art. Rather than seek out a major manager, identify or cultivate your own manager for your local market who is willing to work with other (non-overlapping) artists.
- Do not be afraid of crossing into other styles and instruments. Learning another style will feed all your styles and open up other opportunities. Seek sources of learning and mentors who can guide you. Many of our gigs involve me singing and playing guitar – not part of my official college training. I have studied with improvisors who had no classical training but toured with national artists, taken voice lessons with several teachers, and joined the stage with local folk singers who introduced me to cowboy songs at the campfire.
Final Thoughts
Maria’s and my careers in music have not been the traditional careers imagined by most. While most of our income has come from teaching, much of our careers have involved very diverse projects where we made our own opportunities. We have performed and taught in unique places that offered phenomenal experiences not part of a traditional career. We have explored many musical styles outside our original training, and consequently we have grown as musicians. And we are proud to have bucked the trend and made a living strictly as musicians for 20 years.
Making your own opportunities to make a living as a musician does not have to be as crazy as what we did. There were times when we devoted over half of our work time to volunteer efforts. But, we created opportunities both for us and for others. That speaks tremendously on what is possible when a musician does not wait around to be hired.