Savvy Musician in ACTION names winners of Arts Venture Challenge and Chamber Showcase
The Savvy Musician in ACTION has announced the winners from its intensive entrepreneurial workshop and Arts Venture Challenge, plus the winner of the Chamber Showcase. Sixty participants from around the country pitched arts-based business ideas, voted on favorites, then formed teams and designed a venture from the ground up to compete for awards on the final day.
Attendees completed assignments that examined innovation strategies, business models, competitive research, finance, marketing, and social media, allowing participants to develop transferrable skills directly applicable to their own careers and environments. Multiple art forms – music, dance, theatre, and visual art – were used to teach lessons in success. The teams had three days to develop their product or business and pitch it to three judges – Ken May, executive director of the South Carolina Arts Commission, Juliana Iarossi, professor at the Darla Moore School of Business, and Philippe Herndon, founder of Caroline Guitar Company.
Arts Venture Challenge winners:
- Top Arts Venture – Janet’s Band: a music hospice program
- Runner Up and Audience Choice – impromptu: an app to sell discounted unsold event tickets
- Best Exhibit – Music for Transformation: a music program for prisons
Arts-based businesses developed during the workshop:
- Musique Unique: live arts experiences for brick and mortar retail stores
- ARTSploration: mentoring program where high school musicians are paired with professional musicians
- Wigglebug Box: subscription box of developmental toys for ages 0-3 year
- Fire It Up!: stage production workshop for musicians
- Sound Crawl: classical music bar crawl event
- Musical Passages: a music program for refugee families in Utica, NY
Chamber Ensemble Competition
Innovative event design and artistic excellence were the criteria for the Chamber Ensemble Competition, held in conjunction with The Savvy Musician in ACTION. Peter Ferry and Xuan (pictured above) took first place, and Cre.Art Project won second place and audience favorite. Among the prizes are professional management, a USC School of Music residency, and a performance on a Chamber Music America showcase concert in New York City.
Michael Harley, artistic director of Southern Exposure New Music Series and coordinator of the chamber competition said, “The duo of Peter Ferry and Xuan, who began working together as students at the Eastman School of Music, represents a new performance paradigm for musician-artist collaboration: one that stretches the definition of “chamber music – what they do might better be called chamber arts.”
Ferry is a percussionist who is also well versed in video and other multi-media platforms. Xuan is a video artist who, because of her training as a classical pianist, brings an unusual amount of musical insight to her video designs. Together, they create programs that unite music and video with extraordinary skill, humor and sophistication. Ferry is typically the main performer and Xuan the video designer. However, for a short portion of their prize-winning performance, which included site-specific video created in Columbia, they turned the tables: Xuan played piano, accompanied by a video designed by Ferry.
Learn more about The Savvy Musician in ACTION at sc.edu/music/savvy. Learn more about the Chamber Ensemble Competition at sc.edu/music/chambercomp.
Via: The Savvy Musician in ACTION