Beyond Talent: Creating a Successful Career in Music

Contrary to the standard joke about how to get to Carnegie Hall, "making it" in music is not simply about practice, practice, practice. Today, over 200,000 people in the United States work as musicians. With competition for traditional employment opportunities for musicians becoming ever more heated, today's musicians must know how the music industry works and how they can tailor their skills accordingly. How can musicians create their own professional paths?

In Beyond Talent, veteran music career counselor Angela Myles Beeching offers up a comprehensive guide for musicians in search of work, demystifying the steps to success. Drawing on a wealth of real-life examples, the book untangles artist management and the recording industry and explains how to find and create performance opportunities. Guidance is also provided on grant writing and fundraising, day jobs, freelancing, and how to manage money, time, and stress. Straightforward and reader-friendly, Beyond Talent is filled with practical tips, examples, checklists, sample budgets, goal-setting exercises, and extensive resource listings.

This essential handbook goes beyond the usual "how-to"; Beyond Talent helps musicians tackle the core questions about career goals, defining success, and imagining and then creating a meaningful life as a professional musician.

Angela Myles Beeching directs the New England Conservatory Career Services Center, a comprehensive career resource office, internationally recognized as a model of its kind. Ms. Beeching has presented workshops for Chamber Music America, Eastman School of Music, the University of Kentucky, Boston University, and University of Texas, Austin. Since 1997 she has designed and facilitated the annual Young Performers Career Advancement seminar for the Association of Performing Arts Presenters conferences. Her articles on career issues have appeared in the National Business Employment Weekly, Inside Arts, Chamber Music magazine, and in Managing Your Career, published by the Dow Jones. She co-chairs the annual conference of the Network of Music Career Development Officers, a group dedicated to improving music career development services.

Earlier in her career, Ms. Beeching taught cello at California State University, Fresno, and at the Crane School of Music, SUNY Potsdam. A Fulbright Scholar and Harriet Hale Woolley grant recipient, Ms. Beeching also received fellowships at Banff and Tanglewood Music Center. An alumnus of Boston University and New England Conservatory, she holds a doctorate in cello performance from SUNY Stony Brook.