'A willingness to listen, to compromise': artist managers forge new connections

It was interesting a while back to observe that the San Francisco Conservatory of Music had acquired the ailing New York-based Opus 3 artist management office. Who saw that remarkable/unlikely piece of cross-fertilisation coming? It was followed this summer by another artist management/music education conjunction: the Philadelphia-located Curtis Institute’s creation of a touring and artist management role for staff member Andrew Lane (by coincidence a one-time manager at Opus 3).

Different circumstances involved, but intriguing nonetheless to note the newly forged formal partnership between the Yehudi Menuhin School and the Cambridge Creative Management office. ‘We’re working on various projects, including the 60th anniversary of the school in 2023,’ says CCM director, Sarah Trelawny Ford. ‘However, the real aim is to give the students as many professional performing opportunities as possible. It’s an absolute honour to be asked to work with some of the world’s finest young musicians.’

The initiative for the partnership came from Menuhin School director of music, Ashley Wass, once managed (as a member of the Trio Apaches piano trio) by Trelawny Ford. The partnership with CCM, comments Wass, ‘will help ensure that our pupils have the opportunity to perform for new audiences, encounter different cultures, get a taste of life as a touring musician and gain experience which will be of great value in their future careers.’

‘It’s great to be working with Ashley again,’ says Trelawny Ford. ‘He’s very keen to treat the students as serious musicians and give them the best possible start in the industry. The experience of performing will have an enormous educational benefit to them. Providing career guidance is something we’re also currently discussing. This is an area in which the school already works closely with students: for example, Matthew Trusler of the Orchid Classics recording company recently took part in a round-table discussion about the role of the 21st century musician and how YMS students will contribute to the transformation of classical music in the future.’

Trelawny Ford reckons that having an external engagements department can help enhance the visibility of institutions like YMS, developing opportunities for students to perform on major stages. ‘The great thing about YMS is that the infrastructure is there to allow for a busy performing schedule, especially in terms of staff support. Music schools in the USA have already adopted this approach, so it’ll be interesting to see if other UK institutions follow suit.’

A new twist on the struggle of artist managements to cope with fall-out from the Covid crisis. A regional initiative is seeing companies in Germany, Austria and Switzerland pool their energies in support of the new DOKA organisation - Deutschsprachige Opern- und Konzertagenturen (German-speaking Opera and Concert Agencies). Formally established in May, DOKA is the culmination of cooperation between managers that goes back to the earliest days of the crisis.

DOKA Chair Elene Tschaidse (of the Munich-based Opern-Agentur Kursidem & Tschaidse office) recalls the early days in Spring 2020 when artist managers were seeking compensation for freelance artists when opera companies and promoters cancelled performances on account of the virus. ‘It was astonishing to see how little sense of responsibility there was towards artists. I'm not talking about small organisers who’ve had to fight to stay alive. We were primarily concerned with highly subsidised opera houses that continued to receive their state/city support and from whom nothing much came initially except hollow assurances.’

Thankfully, such attitudes weren’t universal, with many institutions seeking to alleviate the plight of freelance musicians coping without income for an indefinite period. Across the last eighteen months, relates Tschaidse, artist managers ‘have achieved compensation for artists from almost all performing organisations and established an awareness that future negotiations over engagements and the resulting contracts must be adapted accordingly.’

Tschaidse nonetheless reckons plenty still remains to be done. ’Both sides need to see themselves as partners who have common interests and who need to reach out to each other. A willingness to listen, to compromise and so on are the basis of solution-oriented communication. In these highly tense and existentially endangered times, however, this knowledge seems to be lost on some people.’

A DOKA Zoom-based meeting in May with presenting and representative organisations put on a more formal footing the many previous months of negotiations undertaken by artist managers. ‘I would rate the talks as very positive,’ reckons Tschaide. ‘In common with other colleagues and associations in the industry, we’ve made a lot of progress. We’ve set up working groups that have familiarised themselves with individual topics, negotiating with specialists from various institutions. These concern issues as diverse as deductions from social security and pension contributions, advance payments after the signing of a contract, procedures when productions are cancelled by theatres years in advance and the handling of force-majeure paragraphs in contracts. The Covid crisis has highlighted the longstanding need to deal with such matters.’

All in all, Tschaidse observes, the experience of collaboration between artist managers within a specific geographical region has been invigorating. ‘We’ve realised how many common topics we can tackle and solve together. I’m expecting that in the coming months the most urgent current problems will be dealt with. After that, there will certainly always be issues that affect us all and are worth tackling together.’

I hear that booking for the 2021 Copenhagen-based International Artist Managers’ Association Conference in late September is encouraging, despite the still circling Covid clouds. As things stand, all entry restrictions for Denmark will be lifted at the start of September.

This 30th IAMA Conference (last year’s event in Barcelona was cancelled) has as its chairman Jacob Soelberg, managing director of the Copenhagen-based Nordic Artists Management office. Details on his plans in next month’s column - Covid-related matters, yes, but much more besides. For the moment, Soelberg’s promise is of a main conference venue - at Denmark Radio - that is ‘one of the best concert halls in Northern Europe. And people can feel assured of a safe environment. Copenhagen isn’t the busiest of tourist destination, so delegates will enjoy the sense of space within what it such a beautiful city.’