Joanie is coming to town!

This picture was taken at the beginning of the Fellowship year on a hike in Aspen. Pictured from left to right are Joanie, Edgar, Hilary (League program director), Kevin and myself.

Joan Gordon, the Dean of Student Services at the Aspen Music Festival & School and all around hip lady has been traveling around the States all October recruiting students for next summer’s festivities in Aspen. Today, her travels take her to my neck of the woods in LA where she will spend time at the Colburn School of Performing Arts, the USC Thornton School of Music and the Los Angeles Performing and Visual Arts College Fair.

This past summer was Joanie’s second year as the AMFS Dean. Prior to that she had worked as the Assistant Dean, a position now held by the suave Brad Blunt, also a hip guy. We will be meeting up in the evening for a little dinner and catch up. Joining us will be Gloria Kim (’03 Fellow and Manager of the Annual Fund at the LA Philharmonic).

Should be a good time!

Thank-a-Thon madness

It seems as though my year so far in the Fellowship has been full of “1st-annuals”. In Aspen, I was appointed coordinator of the 1st annual Day of Music where we programmed a morning and afternoon of free music for the community and visitors. Here in LA, I am lending a hand with the 1st annual Children’s Musical Masquerade (a children’s benefit concert) on Nov. 14th and just last night, I helped coordinate the 1st annual LA Chamber Orchestra Thank-a-Thon.

A Thank-a-Thon is the distant cousin of the more commonly known and feared phone-a-thon. You know phone-a-thons don’t you? Phone-a-thons are those events where an organization rallies its fund-raisers and board members together to call a “hit-list” of potential donors and ask them to open their checkbooks. Usually, people equate phone-a-thons with walking across hot coals or forgetting to wear pants to work. Thank-a-Thons, thankfully, are quite different.

In a T-a-T, constituents of an organization (in this case it was musicians, board members and staff) gather a “hit-list” of its existing supporters (such as donors and subscribers) and do absolutely nothing but say “thank you” to them.

Despite their rare implementation, T-a-Ts are a great way of accomplishing goals on many levels. They create positive relations between an organization and its supporters; they promote interaction between constituents that may not normally come in contact with one another (board, musicians and staff); they soften up callers and those being called for other forms of phone interaction; and they can be a great way to have fun.

Organizing the T-a-T, as good as it may seem, had its painful moments. Originally, we had planned on scheduling two dates for the event relatively close to each other but due to a Dodgers playoff game, the first date was cancelled. When we tried to reschedule, the alternate times just did not work out. In the end we had to roll our sleeves back, cut down on the number of calls and hope for the best.

Last night, I am happy to report that we packed about twenty staff, board members, musicians and their kids into our offices at the AON building, downtown LA, and collectively called over 400 donors and patrons in just under 90 minutes. We got through our whole list with plenty of time to spare and socialize around wine and pizza.

It was a fun experience for all. Mostly, the people we called were very appreciative for the thanks and were in many cases shocked that we were not asking for anything. All in all, it looks as though this new 1st annual, like the Aspen Day of Music, will live to see its 2nd.

Considering the Fellowship? (part 5: research)

Read other parts of this series 1 | 2| 3 | 4 | 5

When I began to seriously consider the Fellowship, I asked the inevitable question,” what does it take to be accepted?” This question led me to research what I could into the backgrounds of Fellow alumni. The short online bios posted by the League were a great starting point.

From these bios, I learned that two of the five Fellows from the class of ’03, Gloria Kim and Ari Solotoff, had come straight out of undergraduate school into the Fellowship. However, I found out one year later that every single member of the class of ’04 had multiple years of experience and/or advanced degrees. For heaven’s sake, just check out the credentials of Francis Lai (now executive director of the Northbrook Symphony, congrats Francis) and Emma Dunch (congrats to you as well Emma).

From this information, I gathered that extensive full time experience and/or advanced degrees, although very helpful, were not solid prerequisites for acceptance. This only further sparked my curiosity. What were the connecting factors between these seemingly very different people? What qualities or qualifications was the League looking for and did I have them? Unfortunately, there is only so much printed words can tell you.

The summer after my first of two undergrad senior years was spent as a marketing and public relations intern at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Here I had my first of many informational interviews. This one was with Fellow alumnus and Director of Public Relations, Synneve Carlino. This interview and many of the ones that would follow focused on both the general field, grad school and the Fellowship.

I walked away from my first interview with three main pieces of advice. Synneve encouraged me to always follow my gut instincts, seek out interviews with other arts managers, and maintain a steady diet of reading industry news. This steady diet now includes:

• reading up on daily news and blogs at artsjournal.com
• subscribing to the League’s daily email newsletters
• reading the arts section of major newspapers such as the New York Times
• periodically checking in with other websites such as andante.com and musicalamerica.com
• reading books suggested to me through other interviews (book topics range from orchestras to leadership to popular management techniques)

Later that fall, with the possibilities of entry level jobs, grad school or the Fellowship before me, I started to track down managers for answers to a growing list of questions. That year, the League started setting up informational interviews prior to the annual Fellowship application deadline. Naturally, I signed up for an interview and eventually had a very nervous conversation with Jesse Rosen, Vice President and Chief Program Officer at the League.

Over time, I assembled an interview “hit list” and either spoke, emailed or met with a dozen managers; everyone from Fellow alum to grad school directors to critics of the League and the Fellowship.

Here are some of the major points I gathered from these interviews:

Regarding the Fellowship:

• Ability and potential to lead are the number one qualities sought after in a Fellow.
• Many Fellowship applicants, at some point in time, have aspired to be performers (not so in my case).
• The program is always changing. Graduates once were expected to become Executive Directors but these days, that pressure has declined.
• Not everyone out there agrees with the League or the purpose of the Fellowship.
• According to several sources, the two-day finals in New York were “the most stressful but rewarding two days of my life.” Having been through them myself…I agree.

Regarding grad school:

• Most senior level managers in the field do not have advanced degrees related to their work.
• Those numbers, however, are changing. This could very well be due to the increasing number of available programs around the country.
• Although having an MBA is not necessary, it sure comes in handy when relating to board members who do.
• Ultimately, those who have advanced degrees told me to look into an MBA while those who did not said it was not necessary (read into that what you will).

Regarding jobs:

• Executive Directors have traditionally risen from operations but that trend is fading and many new EDs have backgrounds in fund raising, finance or marketing.
• The larger an organization you are working in, the more narrow your responsibilities (this can be good and bad).
• Working for a large orchestra might give you better connections but working for a small orchestra will give you better all-around exposure.
• If you know that you definitely want to work in a specific department (i.e. marketing), look for a marketing position at a large orchestra. If you are unsure what department best suits you, look for any position at a small orchestra.
• Smaller orchestras theoretically have more flexibility to try new things whereas larger organizations move much more slowly.

I hope that you find some of these pearls of wisdom useful. Please keep in mind that they are not rules but merely observations and answers from individuals.

All of my research taught me that the answers are out there, I just had to get on the phone or type an email to find them. I also learned to be equipped with good questions and ask people about themselves. People usually love talking about themselves and you can learn a lot from listening to their stories.

If you are interested in the field or the Fellowship, I encourage you to start asking your questions. As always, please feel free to send any my way at jtsai@tsailog.com.

Read other parts of this series 1 | 2| 3 | 4 | 5

LACO, one month in

Has it seriously been four weeks already? Apparently it has. As you know, I am currently working with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in this, the first of three residencies with professional orchestras during my Fellowship year.

So how is it going so far? Well, we just had our season opening concerts this past weekend. LACO has a seven concert series peppered with additional special events and concerts. We play at two primary venues in two very different parts of LA: the Alex Theatre in Pasadena (eastside) and Royce Hall on the campus of UCLA (westside). In addition to these, the orchestra played a special run out concert at Copley Hall in San Diego this past weekend presented by the La Jolla Music Society.

The Chamber Orchestra is absolutely fabulous. Its musicians are comprised mainly of independent artists that often win their bread and butter as studio musicians. It is no secret that for these musicians, LACO does not represent a cash cow source of income. They do it because they truly love the music. These men and women were all trained classically at the nation’s top conservatories but spend their days in the lucrative, but less emotionally rewarding, world of studio recording. LACO is their artistic outlet; a “return to roots” of sorts.

This past weekend, music director Jeffrey Kahane featured an up and coming Norwegian violinist, Henning Kraggerud, on Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. Remember that name. (Jeff has a talent for spotting young talent just before they hit the mainstream. This tradition earned its roots with the LA premiers of Lang Lang and Hilary Hahn with the Chamber Orchestra in years past.) Last weekend’s concerts included performances of Ravel’s full Mother Goose ballet (as opposed to the standard suite) and Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture. I was very impressed by the Mendelssohn and moved by the Beethoven but the Ravel was less to my liking. The execution was great but I just don’t care for the piece.

Meanwhile, life in the office has been quite busy. One of the first things Fellows are required to do when arriving at an orchestra (and before as well) is to complete a “work plan.” This work plan is developed in conjunction with our direct mentors at each organization. The evolving document lists the major duties and projects each Fellow will be responsible for during the course of his or her stay. Combined with the work plans at my other two orchestras, these documents will serve as a tangible list of my accomplishments and areas of specific experience over the course of the year.

Along these same lines, brand new this year, the three executive directors of my assignments (LACO, Memphis Symphony and Pittsburgh Symphony) will periodically hold conference calls with each other and the League to discuss my progress and development. In the end, my completed work plans, along with these calls serve to ensure that all of the facets of my “learning contract” have been covered. The learning contract, another evolving document, is first composed by Fellows at the beginning of the year in Aspen and acts as a statement of what we individually want to get out of the year.

So as you can see, developing my work plan was key to my first weeks here. After that was completed, I began working on several projects simultaneously (is there any other way?). So far, I have written one grant application, kick started an e-mail address collection campaign for our online newsletter, attended three workshops on grants and marketing, started the ball rolling on the budget for our ‘05-’06 season, attended strategic planning meetings, board meetings, finance committee meetings and artistic affairs meetings, met regularly with the executive director and senior staff, helped with the hiring of three new employees, met the musicians and music director, attended three LACO concerts including a run out to San Diego, helped coordinate a Thank-A-Thon audience development campaign, mingled with patrons over wine and song, and much more.

It has truly been rewarding so far but very challenging at the same time. The biggest challenges so far have actually been personal, not professional. Simply put, it is very difficult to uproot and move to an unknown area for a short amount of time knowing full well that you’ll have to repeat the process over and over again. It has taken some adjustment but I feel as though I am finally getting to know the area and settling in.

Well that’s all for now. Tonight, I’m off to use my free ticket to the new musical The Ten Commandments starring none other than Batman and Iceman himself, Val Kilmer as Moses! Imagine that!

Until next blog...