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Recommended Reading
What are the professionals in the music business reading? What has been inspirational to them and helpful for their music careers, teaching, and artistry? Here they share a personal selection.
 Live in the Real world: How to Make Music Graduates Employable
An essential resource for helping musicians realise their dreams of success, Life in the Real World is the only music career guide offering a truly international perspective. With the linking theme of exploring one’s professional identity, the book explores crucial issues for global musicians and provides 35 creative learning prompts for educators, coaches, and readers worldwide for use with both individuals and groups. Click on the image to order this book.
Understanding the Classical Music Profession, 2008
Dawn Bennet
Understanding the Classical Music Profession is an essential resource for educators, practitioners and researchers who seek to understand the careers of classically-trained musicians, and the extent to which professional practice is reflected within existing classical performance-based music education and training. Musicians in the twenty-first century require a broad and evolving base of skills and knowledge to sustain their careers as cultural practitioners. Bennett maintains that a musician cannot be simply defined as a performer, but that a musician is someone who works within the profession of music in one or more specialist fields. The perception of a musician as a multiskilled professional working within a portfolio career has significant implications for policy, funding, education and training, and for practitioners and students seeking to achieve sustainable careers.
 How to grow as a musician: what all musicians must know to succeed, 2005
Sheila Anderson
Professional musicians tell how they developed as artists, how they approach performance, and how they handle the business side of the music business, offering solace and heartfelt inspiration along the way. How to Grow as a Musician is packed with advice on everything from overcoming failure to the art of writing a song to doing that all-important "ego check." It also covers vital practical areas such as the role of contracts, self-promotion, getting and keeping gigs, and managing money. A special self-evaluation section lets readers assess whether they have what they need to succeed in the music business.
Beyong Talent: Creating aSuccessful Career in Music
Angela Myles Beeching
The first edition of Beyond Talent quickly became a favorite among classical and jazz musicians, and has been used in courses at scores of conservatories and universities. This expanded second edition provides updated user-friendly advice, inspiring examples, and practical tools to advance a career in music. Packed with new tips and resources, Beyond Talent now covers everything from social networking tools to commissioning, branding, and online fundraising, as well as tips on staying motivated, assessing one's strengths and weaknesses, and managing time, money, and stress. Loaded with new sidebar profiles from entrepreneurial musicians, artist managers, and concert presenters, the new edition balances warmth and candor with straightforward advice on developing and sustaining a meaningful life in music. Beyond Talent is the ideal companion for students and professionals, emerging musicians and mid-career artists.
 The Creative Entrepreneur: A DIY Visual Guidebook for Making Business Ideas Real, 2008
Lisa Sonora Beam
The Creative Entrepreneur is written by a visual artist who has an MBA and teaches workshops. The book is packed with wonderful tips for your creative business, no matter what it is. It uses a visual journal technique to help creative types deal with their natural resistance to managing the business sides of their art life. Over the course of many years of teaching workshops Lisa Sonora Beam learned that business savvy in an artist is rare: most creative people shy away from the strategic skills necessary to make a living doing what they love. So after yet another artist friend responded to Lisa’s business insights with, “I never thought about that,” she decided to help make sure they did.
 The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, 2009
Alain de Botton
The Pleasures and Sorrows treats readers to a cast of eccentrics as it examines the thing we spend most of our lives doing. To get a handle on his subject de Botton explores warehouses, skyscrapers, and career fairs, homing in on jobs that tend to fall into one of two categories: heavenly or hellish. The book has 10 chapters covering 10 professions from cargo-ship spotter to career counselor.
 Marketing Culture and the Arts, 2001
François Colbert
This book is written for managers of cultural enterprises of all types, whether large or small, non-profit or commercial, local or international, part of the cultural industry or a creative venture. In addition to presenting basic marketing concepts, it discusses how these have traditionally been applied and, most importantly, how they apply to the specific context of culture and the arts. For cultural managers interested in marketing, this book offers an analytical framework and a series of reflections that will help them assess their current practices while providing a frame of reference for selecting future courses of action.
 The Talent Code, 2009
Daniel Coyle
"This is a remarkable and inspiring book. Daniel Coyle has woven observations from brain research, behavioural research, and real-world training into a conceptual tapestry of genuine importance. What emerges is both a testament to the remarkable potential we all have to learn and perform and an indictment of any idea that our individual capacities and limitations are fixed at birth." - Dr. Robert Bjork, Distinguished Professor and Chair of Psychology, UCLA.
 The Savvy Musician, 2009
David Cutler
Talented, well-trained and passionate about music? You’re not the only one. The professional practice is flooded with great musicians, all competing for fish from the same music-pond. The Savvy Musician will help you balance three essential aspects: building a career, earning a living, and making a difference. Discover how you can work out your own strategy and build a meaningful and prosperous career. Discover how you can build a ‘brand’, and use technology from Internet-tools to the new recording paradigm, expand your network and earn enough money to realise your dreams. The Savvy Musician is an invaluable source for everyone interested in a thriving musical future.
 Outliers, The story of success, 2008
Malcolm Gladwell
In this book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on a journey through the world of ‘outliers’, the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks: what makes high-achievers different? And feels that we think too much about what successful people are like, and not enough about where they are from. In Outliers he shows us the role their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing plays. He explains how software billionaires like Bill Gates got to where they are, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band. It’s brilliant and entertaining, and may provide some interesting and provocative ideas for educators and those concerned with education.
Preparing for Success: a practical guide for young musicians, 2012
Susan Hallam and Helena Gaunt
This book provides a practical guide for young people around the world who wish to pursue a career in music. It draws on cutting edge research and thinking in the field. Each chapter includes case studies taken from interviews with professional musicians and practical exercises to help readers connect what they read to their own experience and development. Illustrations are used to stimulate readers to reflect on the relationships they have developed with one-to-one teachers. There are chapters on Learning, setting goals and motivating yourself, Practising, Improvising and nurturing your creativity, Career options, etc.
 Creative Arts Marketing, 2003
Elizabeth Hill, Terry O'Sullivan, Catherine O'Sullivan
As a comprehensive overview of all aspects of marketing in the sector Creative Arts Marketing remains unrivalled, and in addition this edition gives new coverage of current knowledge and best practice about marketing and advertising through new media, about the impact of Relationship Marketing techniques and a completely revised and enhanced set of cases. Updated data on the arts 'industry' Creative Arts Marketing reflects the diversity of the arts world in its wide ranging analysis of how different marketing techniques have worked for a diverse range of arts organizations. As such it is an invaluable text for both students and arts managers.
 The Gift, 2007
Lewis Hyde
By now a modern classic, The Gift is a brilliant defence of the value of creativity and of its importance in a culture increasingly governed by money and overrun with commodities. Widely available again after twenty-five years, this book is even more necessary today than when it first appeared. Illuminating and transformative, and completely original in its view of the world, The Gift is cherished by artists, writers, musicians, and thinkers. ‘A beautiful book about artists, society, livelihood. When I read it years ago it helped me to understand why it sometimes felt so crazy to be a musician in this society.’ – John Steinmetz.
 Engaging Art -The Next Great Transformation of America's Cultural Life, 2007
Bill Ivey and Stephen Tepper (editors)
This book explores what it means to participate in the arts in contemporary society, from museum attendance to music downloading. Drawing on the perspectives of experts from diverse fields (including Princeton scholars Robert Wuthnow and Paul DiMaggio; Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice; and MIT scholars Henry Jenkins and Mark Schuster), this book analyzes key trends involving technology, audience demographics, religion, and the rise of do-it-yourself participatory culture. It becomes increasingly clear that art's managers are as much a part of the problem as they are of adopting some of the potential improvements that could and should be made. In short, if the creative experience is not a reciprocal one in which the viewer, attendee or reader has a role, true engagement is problematic. Engaging Art offers a new framework for understanding the momentous changes impacting America’s cultural life over the past fifty years.
 The Musician’s Way, 2009
Gerald Klickstein
The Musician’s Way is a guide for singers and instrumentalists who strive for musical excellence. It can help musicians enhance their practice and performance skills, expand their musical knowledge, overcome performance anxiety and build their music careers. Gerald Klickstein has written a very comprehensive guide about developing the skills of a successful performer, and discusses, for example, health issues for musicians and how to prevent music-related injuries, and constructive creativity. He wonders whether schools encourage students to become intrepid learners, or whether forces are at work that undermine creativity. The Musician's Way is a very useful and comprehensive book, which every music lover, student, professional, amateur, and teacher should own.
 Standing Room Only: Strategies for Marketing the Performing Arts, 1997
Philip Kotler and Joanne Scheff
This is a complete and up-to-date source book of marketing strategies and techniques for music, dance, opera, and theater organizations. Philip Kotler is one of the world's leading marketing authorities and Joanne Scheff is a well-known educator and consultant to the arts management community. This book will help performing arts organizations define their goals and focus on strategies and techniques that can improve their impact and practices. From cultivating an organization-wide marketing mind-set, developing a strategic marketing plan, doing market research, and understanding your target market to delivering an effective message, designing attractive offerings for multiple market segments, managing volunteers, and sustaining viability through fund-raising, the book covers everything you need to know to put a strategic marketing programme in place and run it for the future.
 This is your brain on Music: the science of a human obsession, 2006
Daniel J. Levitin
In this meeting of art and science rocker-turned-neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin explores the connection between music - its performances, its composition, how we listen to it, why we enjoy it - and the human brain. Drawing on the latest research and on musical examples ranging from Mozart, Ella Fitzgerald, and U2 to Schoenberg, Metallica and 'Twinkle, twinkle little star' Levitin talks about how composers exploit the way our brains make sense of the world, why we emotionally attach to music we listen to as teenagers and why 10.000 hours of practice - not talent - makes virtuosos.
"Deepens the beautiful mystery that is music" - David Byrne, founder of Talking Heads
 The Courage to Create, 1994
Rollo May
Rollo May was personally familiar with the creative process: he was not only a pioneering psychotherapist and philosopher, but also a prolific and poetic author and a gifted watercolourist. Here he shares with readers some core truths about creativity and its psychology. Courage, he says, is at the very heart of creativity, since to be creative requires us to risk seeing reality anew, and to try to express our experiences in creative work, despite the anxiety such soul-searching and self-revealing endeavours inevitably engender.
Jonathan R. McKee and Thomas W. McKee, 2007
More than ever, today's volunteers work online, need flexible hours, and want to play a role in defining their jobs. They also want to feel a sense of responsibility for an organization's overall mission. This book tells you how to best make use of this passion and potential in three parts: The Volunteer Recruiter, the Volunteer Manager and the Volunteer Leader. The book is informative and easy to read and gives sound and sensible advice, for example about how different generations can work together: understanding how people think helps in finding the right people. In the appendix on pages 148 and 149 you will find a Sample Project Charter which may be easily adaptable for class purposes.
 The War of Art, break though the blocks and win your inner creative battles, 2003
Steven Pressfield
This book is about being more creative and about fulfilling your potential as a human being. To do this, Pressfield says, you must overcome Resistance (he capitalizes the "R" to indicate that it is a very real entity). The whole aim of Resistance is to prevent you from doing the work you are called to do. Resistance wants you to take it easy, to be ordinary and mediocre, to take the low road. Resistance is the reason so many people place a basket over the brilliant candle that shines within them. The fight against Resistance is, Pressfield says, a war to the death.
 The Perfect Wrong Note, 2006
William Westney
In The Perfect Wrong Note prize-winning pianist and educator William Westney helps readers discover their own path to the natural, transcendent fulfilment of making music. Drawing on experience, psychological insight, and wisdom ancient and modern, Westney shows how to trust yourself and set your own musicality free. He offers healthy alternatives for lifelong learning and suggests significant change in the way music is taught. For example, playing a wrong note can be constructive, useful, even enlightening. Teachers, professionals, and students of any instrument will benefit from this unique guide, which brings artistic vitality, freedom, and confidence within everyone's reach.
Do you also have tips you would like to share?
Please send an email to a.j.smids@pl.hanze.nl
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