The Collaborative Piano Blog Facebook Page Is Now an Open Forum for Members/Fans

One of the coolest things about writing the Collaborative Piano Blog over the last four and a half years is being able to connect with so many people in the musical world, hearing so many opinions, and having a lot of fun at the same time. I get lots of emails from people all over the world, many of them from people asking questions that I simply don't have answers to. Many of you still feel that there needs to be an open forum where people from the collaborative piano community can connect on a wide variety of matters. Therefore, as of now I would like to open up the Collaborative Piano Blog Facebook Page (which just broke the 600 fan mark!) to the community as a place where you can:

• ask questions to the readership about a wide variety of CP-related subjects, such as the best places to study, recommended teachers, suggested audition rep, and best business practices either in a discussion group or on the wall
  
• post information about upcoming events on the wall
• post concert programs, videos and pictures
• post links for programs
• ask questions about degree programs and summer festivals
• find a pianist in a given geographic area (after all, the membership is largely a who's who of capable pianists from around the globe)

I would like to keep the tone positive, so if you're looking to expose an unscrupulous employer, please use the People for the Ethical Treatment of Accompanists Group instead. For now, I would like to give fans a wide berth to talk about and post the things they feel are important.

However.

I would like the discussion to remain on topic, so I'll check the content of the page regularly, and if anyone posts anything in the least bit spammy, I won't hesitate to remove the content.

So if you haven't already become a member of the Collaborative Piano Blog Facebook Page, I invite you to become a fan right away and join the conversation!

More About Social Media, Trust Economies, and Classical Music

Grace Nikae has just written a long response to some of the questions I posed regarding Chris Brogan and Julien Smith's ebook manifesto on emerging trust economies on the web. Grace's article is required reading for anyone in classical music that is the least bit interested in the redoubtable field and its encounter with technology. I couldn't agree more with the heart of her argument, which is that the underlying motivation for engaging with people through technology should be a personal and artistic vision rather than a desire to get more engagements or fill seats:

The death of any artist is the day they stop growing - the search should continue to the last day of your life, until the last breath you take. And of course, I don’t mean simply locking yourself up in a practice room and looking only at scores for the rest of your life - although there are many people who believe this is what is meant by growing and improving. One has to grow consistently as a human being, in all facets - emotionally, mentally, spiritually - because this is what will always color the lens through which one can perceive and understand humanity, and thereby deepen one’s relationship and understanding to the nature of music and art itself.

Free Ebook Manifesto on Trust Economies--Is This Relevant for Classical Musicians?

Trust Economies: Investigation into the New ROI of the Web is a new ebook manifesto by Julien Smith and Chris Brogan that addresses the ongoing debate about trust in today's marketplace. Musicians should take a serious look at this article as they work in a field where authority and trust are often two separate things. Here's a small excerpt:

The goal isn’t to roam around on social networks handpicking friends. Instead, get involved with communities of interest, and grow these experiences and relationships BEFORE you need them. And remember, if you are building relationships strictly for business, they will have less impact. That’s because being part of relationships is what real people do.

When you enter a market, be a real person. Act like one, care like one, and feel like one. Those subtle signals, verbal and non-verbal, help people figure out how to react to you and see whether they should hand you any of their attention.

I've had a number of conversations with people on this issue in the last while. In the musical field, authority and influence often have very little to do with trust. Yet the world of Facebook and MySpace are threatening to overturn that order and replace it with a situation where demographics and recommendations rule the day.

How will this impact the world of the arts? Is the best route to professional success in classical music achieved by staying away from technology in the interest of privacy and getting recognized the old way, via cover letters, auditions, and interviews? Or is it more important to develop a large number of friends on Facebook and release your demos on MySpace?

Save Classical Music at the CBC Facebook Group

On the heels of recent news that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation will be seriously curtailing the amount of classical music on CBC Radio 2, there has been a huge influx of members at the Save Classical Music at the CBC group on Facebook. At the moment, there is a letter writing campaign going on to express the outrage that many feel at the CBC's betrayal of its core Radio 2 audience.

On the Facebook group, you can find addresses and emails of many of the top brass at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, including Hubert Lacroix, President and CEO, Jennifer McGuire, Executive Director for English Programming, Timothy Casgrain, Chair of the Board of Directors, and Richard Stursbrg, Executive Vice President of English Services.

Now is the time to voice your opinion on this matter, whether you are a Canadian taxpayer (the CBC is publicly funded), listen to CBC Radio 2 outside Canada on the internet, or would like to voice your support as a lover of classical music.

3 Ways for Arts Organizations to Get More out of Facebook

Justin Smith at Inside Facebook recently wrote an article entitled The Facebook Marketing Bible: 24 Ways to Market Your Brand, Company, Product, or Service Inside Facebook that should be required reading for any individual or company interested in taking the plunge and engaging with the rapidly growing social network.

There are a large number of musical organizations that have recently started networking on Facebook, with varying degrees of success. I have a few suggestions for both individuals and organizations in order to make the most of this encounter:

1. Don't be a spammer. I've seen several musical organizations join Facebook, become members of a large number of groups, only to spam all of them with photos, event listings, and web links. Putting your most impersonal foot forward is a sure-fire way to ensure that no one will take your events seriously.

2. Don't set up shop and then leave. Many organizations join, friend a large number of people in their regional network, set up a group, then leave, never to return. I understand that it is important to be able to say "we're engaging with technology" these days, but doing Facebook is no different than starting a corporate website--it demands a lot of effort up front, and plenty of maintenance time down the road as well.

3. Use the personal touch. The most successful way for organizations to get more out of Facebook is for a large number of their employees/artists to actively use a variety of Facebook media to first of all, interact with people, then to advertise their events. Groups, notes, posted items, photos, videos, event listings, and personal messages all add up to the possibility of making new friends and growing your audience. For example, I received an event listing to see a show written by a writer I recently worked with. A few days later, I received a message personally inviting me to see the show. While I didn't have time to go, the personalization of the event listing + personal invitation was extremely classy of this person, and I will do everything I can to see shows that they write or produce in the future.


There is a big upside to Facebook. In September, Tapestry New Opera Works' Opera Briefs 7, an evening of brand-new short operas, was well on its way to selling out nearly a week from opening night. A few days before opening, advance sales were cut off so that a dozen or so tickets could be held for walkups, who would otherwise have been turned away. While it is difficult to nail down precisely how this came about, I believe that it was a combination of traditional marketing (via press listings and email) and the event's singers, pianists, writers, and composers sharing the event listing (by clicking on the +Share button on the event page) and spreading the word among friends in their networks. I'm sure Tapestry isn't the only arts group experiencing this newfound ticket-buying frenzy, but it came about because members connected to the organization took the time to connect with others and utilize their social capital to fill seats.

Free eBooks on Organizational Creativity and....Facebook

Here are links to two great free ebooks I found this evening.

Time Management for Creative People

by Mark McGuinness

Trying to be creative but stay organized as well? This book can help. Its purpose:

Organisation, structure, discipline and habit – these often seen as threats to creativity. Not to mention corporate-sounding phrases such as ‘time management’ or ‘workflow’. We like to think of creativity as a space for untrammelled imagination, free from all constraints. Yet while freedom, rule-breaking and inspiration are undoubtedly essential to the creative process, the popular image of creativity overlooks another aspect: examine the life of any great artist and you will find evidence of hard work, discipline and a hard-won knowledge of the rules and conventions of their medium.

The Web: Hidden Games

by C. Weng

This ebook looks at the game-like attraction of Digg, YouTube, and Facebook and how to "win" at them, specifically, how to succeed at the interactions that these sites enable. The section on Facebook is probably the most important to those in the performing arts. For those of you who doubt the power of Facebook, ask anyone who works in the arts in Toronto and has noticed greater attendance at events (Tapestry's Opera Briefs 7 sold out largely because of a event listing that went viral) and greater engagement with audiences this season. The Facebook section starts on page 84 and covers both the basics of setting up an account and the ins-and-outs of succeeding in your social network:

Game-wise, Facebook is more comparable to The Sims rather than let’s say, Mario. The object of the game is more to monitor or to guide characters in daily life rather than to win at something. There’s no simple goal in sight but it is all about the process of playing. Since the site is all about the experience of keeping in touch, it has maximized customization and features to make doing so more enjoyable.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to check out Digg.

Facebook Group Lists Toronto Operatic Events

One of the drawbacks of traditional media such as newspapers is that not all of a city's event listings actually get advertised, but only those of the major companies that have the connections to warrant giving them print space. The Opera in Toronto Facebook group created and lovingly maintained by Ziv Kenet goes much farther in its attempt to chronicle all the operatic events in Toronto, including productions by smaller companies such as Opera by Request, Amphion Opera, Opera Lirica Italiana, and Brampton Lyric Opera. If you're an opera lover in Toronto and need to grok the entire scene, this is the Facebook group where you can find comprehensive listings.

Tapestry New Opera Works Launches Facebook Group

Tapestry New Opera Works has just launched a Facebook group, which will chronicle the many activities of the company as well as those of its studio ensemble (of which I am a member). Worth a peek is an essay by mezzo-soprano Jessica Lloyd about Tapestry's process of how the partnerships get from the Composer/Librettist laboratory to Opera To Go. An excerpt:

Believing that collaboration is the key ingredient at the heart of opera creation, each year we mount the Composer-Librettist Laboratory. This 10-day intensive workshop allows four writers and four composers to discover how to access the best of each other’s creative energies by creating 5-minute operatic scenes over a 48-hour period. The scenes are rehearsed by a skilled set of singing actors and répétiteurs, and performed in recital for the teams. The results are discussed, the partners switch and the cycle begins again. By the end of the Laboratory, we have accumulated 16 5-minute mini-operas, from which we pick up to 12 to share with our audience in a programme called Opera Briefs. Produced with lighting and minimal props, in our home venue, the Ernest Balmer Studio, Opera Briefs has been sold out two years in a row. We also take the “briefs” to free venues like the Word on the Street and Nuit Blanche.

The next step in our process is to invite the creative artists to write a 15-minute opera. The teams are self-selecting but the judging of these submissions is much more rigorous. We choose up to six projects that we develop into an evening called Opera to Go. This format allows the artists to experience a more detailed dramaturgy and workshop schedule, utilizing the members of the New Work Studio Company, under Resident Director Tom Diamond. Further, they are brought into production meetings to learn the complexities and financial scale of producing opera. This intensive programme has proven to be a critical step in developing the creative artists’ capacity for embarking on larger works. This year’s production at Harbourfront’s Enwave Theatre includes an epic creation saga with large-scale puppets and the premiere of a Bravo!FACT film. There will be 8 performances with post-performance audience discussions to further the dialogue with the creative artists. Opera to Go has been so important to the artists’ growth of their operatic “muscle”, paralleled by a significant increase in our audience base, that we have decided to make the programme an annual event. We are enjoying a large growth in our audience generally, but in particular, programmes like Opera Briefs and Opera to Go appeal to a much younger demographic.

This group is open to all Facebook members. Hope to see you there!

AFEBU (Accompanists for Equal Billing, Unite!) on Facebook

A while ago I mentioned a number of accompanist/collaborative pianist groups on Facebook. Earlier today I noticed a new group with a quickly growing membership: AFEBU (Accompanists for Equal Billing, Unite!). Facebook membership is required, but once you're signed in, anyone can view or join the group. If you've ever showed up at a recital and noticed your name conspicuously absent from the concert program or been told by a concert organizer that it isn't their usual policy to actually pay accompanists, you might want to join this group.

Accompanist/Collaborative Pianist groups on Facebook

For those of you in our noble field that haven't yet joined Facebook, here are some of the groups that you are missing:

• Collaborative Pianists (31 members)
  
• People for the Ethical Treatment of Accompanists (791)
  
• Accompanists Unite! (5)
  
• Collaborative Pianists (AKA Accompanists) Rock! (16)
  
• PETA - People for the Eating of Tasty Accompanists (24)
  
• Salvation Army Accompanists Anonymous (18)
  
• Appreciate Your Accompanist! (158)
  
• Martin Katz Fan Club (4)

All membership numbers are accurate to May 6, 2007 and will probably grow as the Facebook community expands. Right now the largest and most visible group is PETA, with a lot of fascinating thought and dialogue going on.

So this is what it's like in the Borg Collective

After several months of futile resistance, last night I finally gave up and joined Facebook. After previously been warned about the dangers of runaway social networking, I am proud to say I am completely addicted to the site, and have spent already too much time furiously friending my way through the Toronto arts community.

I must say that this type of community is much more polite than ones of yore. In the mid 90's I was a dedicated member of Cafe Utne (now renamed The New Cafe), a first-generation conferencing site where members could discuss various issues on several "conferences". The level of discourse was educated, but extremely rude with flames abounding--Cafe Utne (using a format similar to The Well) was known more for conflict than friending. After two years I gave up, never to return. Many years later, the social networking site has come back with a vengeance.

Anyway, my new addiction calls--time to get back to the Crackbook, find some more friends and write on walls.

Resource Roundup: Join the Club

Feeling like you're the only one on the planet who's got a full day of playing? Want to know what everyone else is charging? Tired of playing only concertos? You're not the only pianist on the planet going through these things. Here are some of the places you can connect with others in either a professional organization or place to rant:

MySpace Collaborative Pianist Group
Created by Hugh Sung, this is a place to chat, discuss issues on a forum, or post an item on a bulletin board.

Classical Lounge Collaborative Pianist Group
Also created by Hugh Sung, you can interact with members and post on a forum here.

Accompanists' Guild of New South Wales
A professional organization in Australia.

Accompanists' Guild of South Australia
Another professional organization in Australia.

Piano World Forums
Like hanging out with other pianists on a forum? Here's the place.

The New Forum for Classical Singers
Like hanging out with other singers on a forum? Here's the place.

AccompaList
If you work as a church pianist, this is the Y!Music group for you.

If you know of any other groups around there, please leave a comment. I'm especially interested in knowing if there are collaborative pianist communities that meet in languages other than English.

Update 5.9.07

Also check out some of the many collaborative pianist groups that can be found on Facebook.