Starting a career

[russda_man]

Hi, I am a concert pianist. I am having an interruption from college for a year, due to lack of funds. I am starting to look around for opportunities for getting into festivals, and concerts, and maybe some competitions. Basically getting known! Does anyone know any good starting points??

Thanks
Russ

[gyzzzmo]

winning competitions is a good starting point for getting invitations (and a proper CV)

[lostinidlewonder]

You don't need to know anyone to host your own piano concert. Find a venue you can afford and go and do it If what you present is interesting for your community you can do the concert again in the same place and it gets easier and easier to fill the seats. Go play for free at social clubs, retirement villiages, churches, schools and offer tickets to your concerts. You can also look for master classes and meet famous teacher that way, I met a number of famous teacher this way and made good connections (may require a little bit of travel however).

[imbetter]

Convince good enough venues that you're worth hiring.

[russda_man]

You don't need to know anyone to host your own piano concert. Find a venue you can afford and go and do it If what you present is interesting for your community you can do the concert again in the same place and it gets easier and easier to fill the seats. Go play for free at social clubs, retirement villiages, churches, schools and offer tickets to your concerts. You can also look for master classes and meet famous teacher that way, I met a number of famous teacher this way and made good connections (may require a little bit of travel however).

Thanks!

[avguste]

email colleges,community orchestras and presenters for concerts.Send them your resume,repertoire and such.
Sell your own CDs

[russda_man]

email colleges,community orchestras and presenters for concerts.Send them your resume,repertoire and such.
Sell your own CDs

Cheers.

[lostinidlewonder]

When you do your first few public concerts invite a lot of people to your event. That is give free tickets away. You should invite the media, local politicians, teachers/students from music schools, give some free tickets to music schools to give to whoever they want. Inviting the media such as local and state newspaper reporters is very good to get your performance published in their newspapers. Whenever you do concerts invite these VIPs, it is an essential investment for developing your concerting status.

When you plan to do a solo concert you must be able to know exactly what is happening in every single aspect of your concert. That is, stage preperation, lighting, sound, ticketing (booking fees etc), rental of venues, insurance (public liability), selling of tickets and promotion of your concert, decoration for your stage, speech presentation, etc etc etc. You have to know the business of what it means to set up a concert performance. One must plan, envisage, set goals and dreams for their concert, this process must be thought about always.