Is your dream job a possibility? MaryClare Brzytwa went from touring Europe as an electronic musician, producer and improviser to becoming an executive director and founder of a department at one of the top conservatories in the United States. She took deliberate steps in her career to learn new skills and try out different jobs … Read more
Musicians and performers tend to resist to putting their art into words. Often they say that their work speaks for itself. It’s understandable. Sometimes trying to sum up your artistry can leave you feeling like you’re not quite capturing the essence of what you do. And that’s the reason it’s so important to try. Afterall, … Read more
This was a year of transition, more than progress, and of making hard choices for long term benefits. At the end of last year, I made a commitment to change just about everything in my life to more aggressively pursue my goals as a musician. Literally moving across the country made these hard decisions more … Read more
I am a big goal setter. I find it helps keep myself on track to where I want to go, however, in January I usually begin the new year with a thorough self-flogging about how I did not accomplish all I wanted to last year, and how another year has passed and I don’t feel … Read more
You know the drill. Literally. You’ve been drilling runs, exercises, passages from arias, motifs and more since the moment you became involved in this crazy profession of classical music. It is a perfectionist-friendly place of thousands of details that have to be correct because at least one person always knows if you are doing it … Read more
Very little of what I do is creative on a day to day basis. You’d think that being a musician implies an inherent creativity, but most of the time I find myself treading the well worn paths set out by others or by myself in the work of being a musician. It’s an easy trap … Read more
Some people think that creativity cannot be taught. “You either have it or you don’t,” they say. But I happen to know that this is total bunk. Music education is all about training the imagination! And because I’m passionate about singing well, my own imagination is constantly getting stretched, tweaked and cultivated. In the classic … Read more
I am a creative person. From the daydreams that blossom into a flood of ideas, the ability to problem solve from varying perspectives or the knack of seeing the special in the ordinary, I would be hard pressed to give you a moment in my life when creative thinking did not play a crucial part … Read more