The inaugural New Music Gathering just announced its line-up, and it’s really fun. I’m pretty excited to be speaking on some issues related to careers in the arts, and also to be doing what they’re billing as “therapy”, which is mostly “career therapy”. Given how much stress there is associated with being an artist, and how personal a lot of the concerns people have are, I think this is a great feature to have at a gathering for artists, and I’m ecstatic to be doing it.
The event should be pretty interesting; it’s definitely not a typical conference of program items in rooms. The gathering will be a really interesting and healthy mix of the art itself and the business around it, trying to address life in new music as it really is. If you’re anywhere near San Francisco Conservatory in the January 15-17 timeframe, come join us. It’ll be awesome, and it’s really cheap!
I’ve had some interesting experience in recent years with artist gatherings that attempt to help artists somehow, some driven by service organizations, some driven by individuals, and everything in between. Different events have had all kinds of different pros and cons, but in my experience the best are the ones that meet artists on their own terms, and try to help them solve the problems in front of them, not the problems that analysis says are in front of the field as a whole. The New Music Gathering has a good chance to be one of the great ones.
See you, hopefully, in San Francisco.