“Guitar and Friends”

in collaboration with the

New England Conservatory of Music

presents

Why Labels and Large Venues Don’t Matter: Building a Successful Career as a Young Performer

A Workshop with Matthias Röder

Organized by Zaira Meneses

New England Conservatory of Music
Jordan Hall Building
ROOM 124
May 21, 2011from 6-8pm
Free Admission

This workshop addresses the fundamental challenges that every young performer faces at the beginning of their career. In this two-hour long seminar participants will learn how to build a successful career in the classical music industry using simple marketing tools and web technologies. The course focuses on management issues and marketing strategies that help independent musicians achieve their goals step by step. The workshop content includes the following topics:

1. Music as a business: Thinking strategically about your career.
2. Being different: How to find a market niche that you can own.
3. Create meaningful content, or why connecting with your audience is the most important.
4. Music is communication! How to effectively use the web, facebook and twitter to achieve your goals.

Prerequisites: No background in music management is needed.

What to bring: pen and a notebook. No computer is needed.

Matthias Röder is a music consultant, artist manager and artistic advisor who has worked with musicians, orchestras and non-profit organizations in the US, Germany, Austria and Turkey. Having produced several CD recordings, concerts, video, and educational events, Matthias currently teaches at Harvard University where he earned his PhD in 2010. He is also the founder and editor of zeitschichten.com, a web magazine for music, history and the music business. For his pedagogical achievements Matthias received multiple “Certificates of Teaching Excellence” from Harvard University as well as the Oscar S. Schafer Fellowship awarded for excellence in undergraduate, non-major teaching. Before coming to Harvard, Matthias studied Classical Guitar with Eliot Fisk at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg.

Back in October I helped out American rockband Incubus to put together a Youth Orchestra for a benefit concert in Santiago de Chile. Here is some video footage from the evening as well as an exclusive look behind the scences of that memorable event. The part about the fabulous Youth Orchestra starts at around 8:35 min. Enjoy!

In February 2010 I had the great pleasure to introduce Kent Nagano and Jürgen Partenheimer to a large crowd at the German Conference at Harvard 2010. The two spoke about the relation of artist and state, a multi-faceted topic that proved to be a fitting closing for a conference on diverse matters such as renewable energy, peaceful revolutions and health care reform to name just a few. For those of you who had to miss the event, here is the conference report which includes a thoughtful essay by Jürgen Partenheimer and a synopsis of Kent Nagano’s remarks.

Conference Report German Conference at Harvard 2010