I haven’t said much here about my team of crack assistants, all undergrad Music Technology and Business majors at UVM: Elizabeth Indorato, Brady Jalili, and Willow Phoenix. Elizabeth and Willow run the Facebook and Instagram sites, respectively (Reason #17 for geezers to keep young people around, though honestly they’re a bit young for Facebook) while Brady helps coordinate publicity with the various presenters for each concert.
They also assist with booking. To be brutally honest, the reason I didn’t mention them earlier in this context is that we only recently passed the crossover point where their help in this regard actually saves me time. It can at first take longer to explain how to do something than to do it oneself, all the more so because not only were they not very experienced with this—neither was I, so I was figuring out how to do it at the same time that I was figuring our how to ask for help.
But now we’ve progressed to this magic place where one of them will message me and tell me I’ve got a gig on this date, in this town, on this kind of piano. Sometimes I was involved along the way, but increasingly it just gets sprung on me. It’s an amazing experience for someone who has never had management.
Side note: as a typical performer/composer type, I’ve always seen promotion and advance work as a grind, and done it only begrudgingly (and minimally). It is odd to me that my team of music business majors are actually glad for the experience!
Though of course I pay them. On this Labor Day, I feel compelled to opine that unpaid internships should not exist. They devalue not only the worker but the work, lowering the market value of the labor of others doing similar work for a living. And they make internships a privilege not affordable to students who need to earn, helping to perpetuate inequities.
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