Before January 20th, 2025, I’d already been talking about the need for musicians to stop waiting by their phone, or email and text notifications for work.

Instead, I recommended, find and create your own work doing something you love – maybe bringing a passion project into the future. This is something I harp on with each of the All Art is Personal™ I collaborate with, and I even teach a class on the subject at Purchase College.

There has never been as important as now for you to find and create your own work, while also finding new funding sources than it is right now.

Many have been doing this for years. They’ve done the ground work, and now it’s all there for you to get you work during the post January 20, 2025 new normal.

The Boulanger Initiative – Laura Colgate and Joy-Lelani Garbutt started an organization, “Celebrating, Performing, and Supporting Music by Women Composers,” and turned it into a massive force of musical nature for performance, research, education, and repertoire consulting. They also started their own yearly festival (WOCO Fest), and an unparalleled resource data base covering A to Z. boulangerinitiative.org/

Invoke – Invoke is sexy. It’s the nimble and assured vibe you experience when they play and interact on stage. They’re virtuosos, composers, melodic storytellers, and new music advocates. They started out as “not classical, but not not classical,” and have become “not anything but everything: Classical, Folk, Blue Grass, Americana, and a sound yet to be ‘termed,’ all seamlessly merged into a perfect one.”

Talla Rouge – Ten years ago this Cajun Persian Viola duo could probably never have happened. Lauren Spaulding and Aria Cheregosha are recording, commissioning new music, playing other music – new and old – and scoring gigs at important venues across the country. (Viola Jokes are now so 1997.) tallarouge.com/

Emi Ferguson – an exquisite performer of the flute, baroque flute, and piccolo. Emi is the consummate arranger, and creator of imaginative concert programming, and she wrote the book on DIY when it comes to self-management and self-booking, marketing, and promotion. Damn nice person too.

These are just four of many, including Windsync, Attacca Quartet, Formosa String Quartet, the Apollo Chamber Players, Brandon Ridenour, the Akropolis Reed Quintet, and saxophonist Stephen Banks.

What do they all have in common besides career success and artistic fulfillment? Please don’t be underwhelmed by the simplicity.

1. Authenticity – they knew who they were, and knew specifically what they wanted to with their careers.

2. They started. They created a strategy that they followed every day to make their “thing” happen. But primarily, they just started, found their groove, and everything fell into place.

Boulanger, Invoke, Talla Rouge, Emi – please add anything I left out.

Most Honorable O-G Mentions of the “find and create your own work” movement: the Canadian Brass and Kronos Quartet.

Here are Part 1 and Part 2 of this series.
https://bit.ly/3DCxdyv

https://bit.ly/41DNtY6

Help Wanted Part 3: “The Ground Breakers”