Speaking of the Arts

Welcome to Speaking of the Arts! Today’s episode features an innovative company in the music industry called Open Studio. Open Studio was founded by the great pianist Peter Martin. The company has created a unique way of teaching music lessons online. They feature some of the industry's greatest performers by creating an immersive learning experience using innovative software called Living Notation. I took a few lessons prior to interviewing Peter so I could better understand the experience and I was very impressed by the variety of lessons offered as well as the incredible high quality of video and audio. We talk more about what Living Notation is during our interview but that feature alone makes the lessons worthwhile. A little bit more on Peter Martin...Peter is an acclaimed jazz pianist and entrepreneur. Over the past 25 years he has performed at most of the major venues and jazz festivals on six continents, including twice at the White House for President Obama. Peter was recently featured in the New York Times for his ground breaking work. Open Studio is offering our listeners $10 off any course of their choosing. Simply enter the coupon code WELCOME10 and head to https://www.openstudiojazz.com and sign up!

Hello everyone and welcome to Speaking of the Arts. Today's episode is part 2 of my conversation with Ulysses Owens Jr. If you did not listen to part 1, I would suggest you start there before listening to part 2. In today's episode we cover what I would consider essential information for both artists and presenters including: How Ulysses avoids burnout How to break out of the artist sidemen mentality When you should start saying No Ulysses's new touring projects Diversity inclusion in the arts and why a comprehensive educational outreach program is essential for every arts organization What Ulysses is currently reading Thanks again to Ulysses for his time and wisdom. I learned so much from speaking to him and I hope you will too. Please enjoy part 2 of my conversation with Ulysses Owens Jr.

Hello everyone and welcome to Speaking of the Arts. I am Mike Epstein, your host. Today’s episode is a real treat. We are featuring the drummer, educator, entrepreneur, author, non-profit organizer, band leader, producer, etc. etc., the list really goes on and on, Ulysses Owen’s Jr. I’ve always been a fan of Ulysses’s drumming but until I did my research for this interview I had no idea how multifaceted he is. In fact, it was a challenge just to summarize his extensive biography for this introduction. A few quick highlights - Ulysses has been named a Rising Star by DownBeat’s Critics Poll for five years straight. He is a recipient of the 2013 ASCAP Plus Award, a Gold Medal winner of the 2014 Global Music Awards, a 2015 Jazz at Lincoln Center Swing! Awards Honoree, and 2019 “3rd Runner-Up,” in Classic Jazz Category in the Modern Drummer Magazine Readers Poll. Among many of Owens’s accomplishments are his performances on the 2010 GRAMMY award-winning Kurt Elling live album, Dedicated to You, and the 2012 GRAMMY award-winning Christian McBride Big Band album, The Good Feeling. His work with Joey Alexander, the Christian McBride Trio, and Gregory Porter have also received recognition by the Recording Academy, garnering GRAMMY nominations for the albums; My Favorite Things, Countdown, Out Here , Live at the Village Vanguard, Nat King Cole and Me. This is really just the tip of the iceberg with Ulysses and our conversation turned out to be part 1 of 2 because there was so much to cover. In today’s episode, we talk about his approach to jazz education, his new podcast series From the Drummers Perspective, his thoughts on entrepreneurship, and his new book The Musicians Career Guide. Ulysses is the real deal folks and be sure to tune in again soon as we will be posting pt 2 of our conversation in the next week or so. Thanks for listening and now please enjoy my conversation with Ulysses Owens Jr.

Hello everyone and welcome to Speaking of the Arts. My guest today is Michael Fox. Michael and I go way back and I’ve wanted to have him on the show for a long time. Fox is the Founder and Owner of the booking agency Fox Performances, LLC. Fox previously worked as the Midwest Agent at International Music Network. (Side note, you can check out Episode 12 of Speaking of the Arts in which we featured the founder of International Music Network, Scott Southerd). In his tenure there, Fox booked National tours for Buena Vista Social Club, Wayne Shorter, Terence Blanchard, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and Dianne Reeves, among many, many others. In addition to booking artist tours, Fox also works as a consultant for San Antonio Parks Foundation to help curate Jazz S’Alive, an annual two-day jazz event in Travis Park. Fox has also served on panels at the Arts Midwest and APAP conferences as well as a handful of colleges, speaking about the cultivation of Global Music audiences, activism in art and artist representation. Fox holds a Master’s degree & Artist Diploma in Double Bass from the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati. Our conversation covers a variety of topics including Michael’s own unique approach toward running his booking agency and what he is looking for in terms of prospective clients. Thanks for listening everyone and I hope you enjoy our conversation!

My live experience includes performing at Woodstock ‘94, supporting The Rolling Stones, REM, Bon Jovi, Van Halen, Oasis and Bryan Adams at Wembley with my first band Del Amitri throughout 1994-97, followed by touring and playing with Marianne Faithfull, Sinead O’Connor, Sheryl Crow, Robbie Williams, James Morrison, Will Young, Squeeze, Lewis Taylor, Hamish Stuart, The Waterboys, Jeff Lorber, Trevor Horn and Seal, Rumer, Terry Reid, Ronnie Wood, Dionne Warwick and many more. View my Live credits. Other experiences I’ve had include playing the 2012 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony with Mike Oldfield, being the house drummer on the BBC/ITV TV show The Voice for 7 years and playing on the Terminator Genisys and Mission Impossible Fall Out (Bongos) soundtracks for composer Lorne Balfe also Kung Fu Panda 3 and The Lion King 2019 for Hans Zimmer. The main part of my career has been within the recording industry, and over the past 20 years or so I have recorded 58 Top 10 albums for artists including Cher, Seal, Robbie Williams, Billy Idol, Adele, Enrique Iglesias, Dionne Warwick and Rumer, James Morrison, Cee Lo, Celine Dion and Ronan Keating. My discography also includes 18 Top 10 singles and to date, I’ve recorded 29 No. 1 albums and 10 No. 1 singles which have featured on various pop and rock charts around the world. View my full Discography. Spoiler alert! This is not the bio for myself, Mike Epstein which I’m sure you’ve realized by now. I’ve just read the bio of Ash Soan, one of the top session drummers in the world. Over the course of almost 70 episodes for SpeakingoftheArts, I can honestly say I was both more nervous and excited in preparing for this one than probably any other. Sometimes we are lucky enough to meet our own personal heroes and people who have a strong influence on us and how cool is it that when you finally meet them, they turn out to be even more generous and kind than you’d hoped for. That was exactly my experience in speaking with Ash for this episode. We talk about his trajectory as a musician, how technology has changed both the way Ash records music and listens to it, how he prepares for sessions with major pop stars, what his process is for saying No and Yes to projects, and much more.

Alison Stolpa is the Content Manager for https://www.CareersInMusic.com and its sister site https://www.CareersInFilm.com. Founded back in 2010, CareersinMusic.com set off on a mission to curate and deliver truly valuable music career information, sourced by trusted experts. Their aim is to provide deeper insights, reveal more piercing data, and genuinely help users gain an edge on the competition through many Industry Insights articles, Gear & Software reviews, and over 100+ music career profiles. Alison's day-to-day duties include managing a staff of writers, publishing content, and interviewing industry experts. She is a graduate of the University of Westminster, London's Music Business Masters program and has worked in music retail, college radio, and entertainment PR. A Minneapolis native, she now lives in Los Angeles with her two work-from-home assistants/cats. Alison reached out to me to see if I'd be interested in talking about what booking agents do. I told her I'd be happy to and that I also wanted to use it as an opportunity for our listeners to learn more about CareersinMusic.com. We cover booking agent basics in our conversation as well as some of the many topics that CareersinMusic.com offers. Thanks for listening everyone and I hope you enjoy our conversation!

It's been several months since we did an episode and a lot has changed in the time between! Thanks to the Shuttered Venue Operator Grant, the SBA has released just over 4 billion dollars to venues and agencies around the country. The total funding for the program is approximately 16 billion, so there will be a lot more released in the coming weeks. We are already seeing the impact of this with more and more shows being scheduled in the coming months and, even more exciting, are all of the shows currently taking place with sell out crowds and enthusiastic audiences everywhere. I think back to a year ago this time during the summer of 2020 and how far we've come. A huge debt of gratitude is owed to all of the scientists and doctors and of course frontline healthcare workers who worked tirelessly for months to deliver the vaccine and who continue to do so each day. Without them, the music industry would have truly ceased to exist. I thought we could use today's episode as an opportunity to hear from our listeners. We are asking the simple question - how have you survived the last year and what are you most looking forward to in the coming months? We want to hear from promoters, artists, managers, agents, and anyone else in the arts. Please email us at [email protected] with your story. Assuming we receive enough interest, the plan is to compile approximately 10 responses or so into an upcoming episode where we will highlight each story. Thanks again everyone and we look forward to hearing from you.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Speaking of the Arts. What a year this has been. At a time when live music is needed more than ever, we’ve had to put it on hold and watch musicians perform almost exclusively on our screens. There is some good news though as we wrap up 2020. Through the tireless efforts of NIVA (the national independent venue association)www.nivassoc.org and NITO (the national independent talent organization)www.nitolive.org , as well as several other arts organizations, our community has rallied together and witnessed the passing of the Save Our Stages act. The bill provides 15 billion dollars in direct funding to venues, agencies, and other arts organizations and is a much needed lifeline at this point in time. You can visit SaveOurStages.com for more information on how this might apply to you. Thank you to everyone who took the time to write their congressmen and women these past several months. It truly paid off. Today’s episode continues our discussion on best practices for live streaming. My guests are Nicholas Milos and Chad Hilligus. Nicholas is currently the general manager of the Luckman Fine Arts Complex www.luckmanarts.org in Los Angeles, where he oversees production of all of their live music events. Chad is currently the executive and artistic director of Performance Santa Fe www.performancesantafe.org . Our conversation goes in depth into how each organization has had to pivot to both producing live streaming events and also producing new content to serve as future virtual events. We talk about what is working and not working for them, how to think about exclusivity in the world of streaming, whether or not streaming has a place in the future once we can do events in person again, and what new opportunities might arise as a result of the new Save our Stages act. Before we begin the episode I want to thank all of our listeners and I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year. Here’s to 2021. Stay safe and take care.

Today we are featuring the one and only Donny McCaslin https://www.donnymccaslin.com/music . Donny made national headlines a few years ago when he worked with David Bowie on what would ultimately be Bowie’s final album, Blackstar. Since then, Donny has released the critically acclaimed album BLOW and, prior to the COVID shutdown, he regularly toured the United States, Europe, and Asia as the leader of his own high energy band. On August 14, Donny released a new single called Reckoning https://www.donnymccaslin.com/music , an emotional response to the recent months of heightened protests in the wake of increased racial violence. From the press release, “While certain sections of the song channel anger and a sense of urgency, other sections reflect the possibility of hope for more positive and meaningful actions like those of the Black Lives Matter movement. McCaslin worked on the piece with GRAMMY®-nominated producer, (re-)mixer, bassist and composer Ben Rubin. Rubin used news coverage samples of recent protests at start and end along with a DJ premier - inspired boom-bap beat to set the song’s focus. McCaslin laid down some of the saxophone and flute tracks through his phone, recorded in a closet, expressing his emotions in a raw, unfiltered setting." The track is available on your favorite streaming platform now and I encourage listeners to check it out. It is Donny’s artistic reaction to the long history of injustice facing the black community and is very timely.

Since the beginning of social distancing, live streaming has been the one major performance opportunity available to artists. We can easily spend all day everyday now tuning in to watch artists of all types. As a result, our industry has simultaneously become flooded with live streaming and confronted with many new challenges. For example, how do you compete for people's attention with so many streams happening? How do you determine the proper price for virtual tickets when your patrons are used to viewing content for free? What type of artist fee should you offer an artist for a virtual concert? Should you use Facebook, YouTube, and/or Instagram to stream the event or are there better platforms out there? How do you make a unique experience for your patrons when you no longer have the ambience of your venue? If you are an artist, how do you make a unique experience for your fans who may be watching your show on a small phone? Lastly, what will all of this look like when live music can finally resume in person? These questions and many more are fundamentally changing how live music is presented and received. While we won’t have time to address everything on today’s webinar, our goal is to share new ideas that address some of these basic challenges. Today you will hear from Laura Simpson, CEO and Co-Founder of Side Door (https://sidedooraccess.com/home). Side Door’s platform marketplace is built to connect artists with curators, venues, service providers and audiences to make booking, ticketing and payments easy, fair and transparent. Next you will hear from Andrew Baranbom, Founder & CEO of First Tube Media (https://www.firsttubemedia.com/), a full-service livestream content platform that makes it turn-key for brands to execute innovative sponsorship programs. Next up will be Eric Essex, Director of Programming at the University of Alabama Birmingham’s prestigious Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center (https://www.alysstephens.org/). Over the years, Eric has booked everyone from Herbie Hancock, Wynton Marsalis and Pat Metheny to Diana Krall, Yo-Yo Ma, Emmylou Harris and Oscar winning actor Al Pacino. Next you will hear from Nicholas Russotto, Director of Music Programming at the 92nd Street Y in New York City (https://www.92y.org/). Finally, you will hear from Emmet Cohen (https://emmetcohen.com/), winner of the 2019 American Pianists Awards and the Cole Porter Fellow of the American Pianists Association. I also want to thank my team member Marie Le Claire who is with us today to ensure things run smoothly. Thank you Marie.