Artist Managers: Christmas crises and festive fixes

Veteran artist manager Jonathan Groves recalls the days when the sorting of Christmas crises depended on whether or not you happened to be available to answer calls on a landline – an – artist going sick or a promoter desperate to fill an unexpected gap. ‘One year I returned home to Wimbledon after Christmas Day lunch with family in Sussex to find the phone ringing. It was the casting director of Paris Opera. He'd lost his Isolde for a Tristan & Isolde performance the next day and had been ringing all afternoon to see if Anne Evans was available, which – as it happens – she was. Happily, that was one example where things worked out OK in spite of what now seems like primitive technology.’

Maxine Robertson now runs her own boutique management company for singers and conductors but remembers Christmases past when working for a larger company. ‘The office would be firmly closed across the Christmas period. One member of staff's landline number would be on the answering machine. He or she had a list of numbers for all the management team, for use as appropriate when urgent calls for help came in. In my own company, I remember that one year all the artists’ diaries were photocopied so that the person answering the phone had information immediately to hand on who might be available to perform.’

Nowadays, while most artist managements still lock the office doors over the Christmas to New Year period, the concept of a company being ‘closed’ isn’t what it used to be. The mobile phone in particular has, of course, changed everything. ‘As artist managers we’re just always available,’ says Groves, ‘not least as contact information is easily accessible on the internet.’ Christmas crises particularly relate to singers, he says, given how many seasonal performances require them. ‘With perhaps less work available these days, singers will generally make themselves available to step in over the Christmas period. German opera houses, for example, may well have performances on Christmas Day itself. So as a manager you have to be alert to all this. I'm fortunate in having a very understanding wife when it comes to such disruptions, but anybody with an artist manager as a partner realises what the job entails.’

The Intermusica office closes for the Christmas/New Year period, ‘but of course members of staff are available to deal with problems if they arise,’ says the company’s director of finance and operations, Peter Martin. ‘Nowadays, when situations occur and need dealing with at Christmas, it isn’t any different to how things are all year around for managers – that’s the difference mobile phones have made.’ Even, it seems, to the extent of handling emergencies or opportunities while on family summer holidays, if what one artist manager told me is anything to go by. ‘Understanding partners’, and all that. ‘The fact is,’ adds Maxine Robertson, ‘that an artist’s personal manager is best-equipped to deal very swiftly with a tricky situation that arises. In fact, when one of your artists is available to do a ‘jump-in’ after a cancellation at this time of year, it’s extraordinary how incredibly swiftly a negotiation can be completed compared with other times of the year, simply because everyone wants to get back to their Christmas!

‘Whether a singer chooses to accept a jump-in over Christmas will depend on different factors. On the one hand he or she may not wish to disturb time with family, even if a significant fee is offered. On the other hand, the opportunity to further one’s career with an opera house or a conductor may tip the balance.’

One artist management office taking a radically different approach to handling Christmas these days is AskonasHolt, as the company’s head of people Kate Bursey explains. Having a sizeable staff from a wide variety of backgrounds demands, she says, an accommodation of how any one individual may view Christmas. ‘We aim to be totally flexible. For one thing, we take into account the fact that people are not all of one faith. Equally, they may have other reasons for opting out of Christmas. If anyone wishes to work as normal over the Christmas period we’re completely happy with that. Yes, it's no longer a situation where staff are given "free" days of holiday at Christmas, additional to annual leave, but we give a very generous overall holiday allowance.’

The idea of working from home over Christmas is no big deal, given the way Covid has changed mind- and skill-sets. ‘During the pandemic we were responding daily to changes in regulations, borders closing and artists testing positive,’ says AskonasHolt artist manager, Antonio Orlando. ‘We were all working remotely and had to be adaptive, making the most of modern technology to aid connectivity and resilience. Compared to these challenges, handling an engagement cancellation over the festive season seems like a piece of cake.’

AskonasHolt embraces the desire of members of staff to observe festivals relating to other faiths through the year. ‘If it means somebody coming in to work later or leaving earlier because of fasting issues, for example, that’s no problem,’ Kate Bursey observes. ‘If they need to leave early on a Friday for religious reasons, that’s fine. Inclusion is the key thing. In fact, we regularly circulate a calendar in our office newsletter which includes all the different religious events through the year so that staff can be aware of what colleagues may be celebrating.

‘When we interview people for jobs here, we’re very mindful of the fact that we ourselves are being ‘interviewed’ by the applicant. They may look at our website, read what it says about our commitment to DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] and check out how it will apply to them and their faith. Generosity is the key to how we handle things.’

The occasional Christmas crisis apart, the season can have a calm to it which an artist manager doesn’t experience at any other time. So say several individuals I spoke to. Opera artist manager Helen Sykes reckons ‘it’s the one period of the year when it’s extremely unlikely that – crises apart – anyone’s going to want to book your artists. Promoters, orchestras and opera intendants certainly don't expect you to be selling to them. So, you can wind down… and even go to a performance solely because you want to. I remember one year when an artist of mine, the soprano Ana Maria Labin, was booked after a cancellation occurred in the line-up for a huge New Year’s gala in Dresden. It wasn’t vital that I should go to this, but I went simply for the pleasure of it… without feeling it was work-connected. It was absolutely marvellous.’