Promotion and peripheries

I had an “extra” week between the Brunswick (6/11) and Bakersfield (6/25) concerts. Part of that was set aside for a 4-day family reunion, and I thought I’d use the rest to start catching up on concert writeups. However, I received a last-minute invitation to present a 3-minute elevator pitch on this project at the first annual UVM RISE (Research, Innovation, Sustainability, and Entrepreneurship) conference. This was additionally challenging because I decided to use half of that already short time for a compilation video, which meant (a) finally getting around to learning the basics of a real video editing application, Final Cut, and (b) extra effort figuring out how to get my pitch down to just over 90 seconds—as any writer or presenter knows, it takes much more time and thought to write a short summary than a long one.

I was glad of the opportunity to present my project to hundreds of in-person and virtual attendees, including possibly some looking to fund projects (though if so, I didn’t hear from them). After all, one of the main ideas of the project is talking about talking about the climate emergency, and to that end it doesn’t matter whether my audience is attending a concert or a conference. And I’d been meaning to do anyway to produce sleeker concert clips. Also, the video I made may turn out to be useful for other promo purposes. Finally, it was instructive to realize I could condense my core project spiel to under two minutes—in concerts, typically, I think I spend closer to 10 minutes cumulatively describing the different aspects of the project. Going forward I can be more pithy and have time for more music, or more chat specific to the locale and the repertoire.

That said, it really brought home just what a large proportion of my overall project time goes to non-music or para-musical tasks (something I touched on in one of my first blog posts). I spent the better part of four days compiling the video, editing, scripting, practicing, and delivering my presentation, and barely touched a keyboard. This was unusual in degree, but even in a typical week scheduling, promotion, composing concert writeups, finding my local performers and communicating with them, and so on, take up at least half my time, sometimes a good deal more.

Not complaining, just observing. I enjoy having non-music tasks. I like the feeling that I’m working on a music project even when I’m not practicing or composing. Often there’s a natural limit to how much time I can be musically productive, and the adjacent labors can feel like a welcome relief that still feels productive. I remember reading once that the poet Rilke, who wrote in hypercreative spurts in-between long bouts of writer’s block, would complain of being stuck to his friend Rodin, who was unable to sympathize because he was always busily engaged—but that was because as a sculptor, Rodin always had something to do, casting, or finishing, or realizing previously made sketches, even if he was not in a “creative” state of mind.

Anyway here’s the video I made. The first 15 seconds is just a screen capture showing me navigating the Concerts page map to get to a concert writeup. That’s followed by a one-minute, four-concert mini compilation to show the variety of venues, collaborators, music, and pianos. The drone footage of the Silvio Conte National Wildlife Refuge was taken by Neil Bainton just before the concert.