Musicians: learn to generate more income and impact at Spark’s workshop
Winners of the Chamber Ensemble Competition will kick off the workshop with performances at Tapp’s Art Center on June 5. (Pictured above, first-place winners The Fourth Wall Ensemble.)
Spark: Carolina’s Music Leadership Laboratory holds its second annual summer workshop June 5 – 8 on the University of South Carolina campus. The Savvy Musician in ACTION is an intensive, experiential four-day event designed to help musicians generate more income and impact. Participants pitch arts-based business ideas, vote on favorites, form teams, design a business from the ground up, and compete for awards. The workshop is designed for:
- Professional musicians in search of solutions that further advance their professional and financial level of success while expanding impact.
- College music students from all disciplines, both undergraduate and graduate, who want to develop entrepreneurial and leadership skills that lead to greater professional success.
- College music faculty and administrators interested in experiential education and/or the pedagogy of music entrepreneurship and leadership. Please note this is not just geared to teachers of career classes or music business. Lessons explored are relevant and applicable to all faculty and administrators interested in creating a greater culture of entrepreneurship throughout their institution.
- Full chamber ensembles
The workshop kicks off with a concert featuring winners from Spark’s Chamber Ensemble Competition. In addition to music excellence, the winners expand beyond the musical-only concert format with the use of unexpected innovations like multi-media, choreography, audience engagement, theatrical elements, or unusual performance practices. The competition, hosted by the University of South Carolina School of Music, was open nationwide. Winners were chosen through a competitive juried process and evaluated on artistic excellence and innovative event design.
Learn more about Spark’s Summer Workshop and register to attend online.
The Chamber Ensemble Competition winners:
First place winner: The Fourth Wall Ensemble
Based in Indiana and founded in 2010, The Fourth Wall explores a new hybrid of the performing arts in which musicians are also dancers and actors. Stretching the boundaries of instrumental performance, the ensemble commissions new interdisciplinary works and reinterprets established repertoire to make music that literally leaps from the stage. A flutist dancer, a trombonist choreographer, and a percussionist narrator took the first-place prize and were awarded the opening night performance, full tuition scholarships to the workshop, a cash stipend and professional development coaching with Dr. David Cutler.
Runner-Up: Warp Trio
On piano, cello and violin, Warp Trio push the boundaries of music through inter-disciplinary collaborations and eclectic programming that includes electrifying original material, dynamic interpretations of popular music, improvisation and unique takes on classical repertoire. For this performance, they are joined by a drummer and dancer.
Runner-Up: Ensemble39
Ensemble39’s unique mix of strings and winds embraces many musical styles from the classical oboe to the jazz bass, the klezmer clarinet to the old time fiddle. The group, featuring graduates of Curtis, changes the conventional concert paradigm, exploring new venues, seeking diverse collaborators, loosening the presentation protocol and pursuing mixtape-style programming.
Honorable Mention: Duo Anova
Based in New York City, the cello and guitar duo opens up listeners’ minds to a new dimension of textures and sounds unique to cello and guitar.
Honorable Mention: invoke
Believing that the string quartet remains one of the most maneuverable ensembles, Maryland-based invoke, aims to reinvent the string quartet as a relevant 21st-century medium.
Via: Spark