How to schedule 252 concerts, Part N+1

(Another logistical-technical and slightly complainy post. Probably boring, with apologies to my Dear Readers, as this blog serves as my personal record of project progress and reflections, as well as a place to share them publicly.)

One of the reasons I haven’t caught up on concert write-ups even after the end of my teaching year is that scheduling logistics has been taking up a huge amount of time.

Except for looking into very small towns where I anticipate it might be tricky to find a piano, I no longer do a lot of internet sleuthing and Google map searching to try to find venues. I rarely cold-call anyone anymore. Instead, invitations keep rolling in, and at the current pace of three concerts a month, I have more than a year’s worth of invited concerts to schedule.

About a year ago I decided to stop delegating searching and scheduling to my assistants. The problem was that I was never sufficiently disengaged from the discussion to make the time savings worth the complication in communication. I thought that by using a shared internet calendar, and marking blackout days in advance, it would be fine to have other people making booking decisions.  

But unlike a full-time touring musician, I’m trying to lead a more or less normie life, with a full-time day job, wanting to keep half my weekends free for non-concert activities (and not always able to plan months ahead exactly which weekends will be claimed for special family or other events). I would inevitably find myself back in the conversation soon enough, if not to confirm the place and date, then soon after to talk about finding a local collaborator. Which is also delegable, but it was hard for an intermediary to “feel out” the situation exactly how it would feel to me. Similarly for getting a sense of the piano being proposed—that’s hard for a non-pianist assistant to assess via emails or phone calls, or a quick phone video of someone playing all the keys from bottom to top.

By contrast, interns can assess the energy and enthusiasm of an inviting group—a very important factor in setting up a successful event—about as well as I can. But then there would often be a decision to make, whether to respond with an immediate yes or to politely express that we needed to consider the options in that town before settling on a venue…and again, that would involve a side conversation with me first. Again, it just felt like the time gained for me in not making the initial outreach or search was largely lost to the inefficiency of an added layer of communication.

But the grass is always greener! After spending most of my project time the last few weeks on scheduling and programming, I wonder if I should reconsider delegating more.