Artist Managers: Passing the baton

A new year and Cornelia Schmid looks forward to the pace of her working life slackening still further. August 2024 saw her relinquish the position of owner and managing director of the KD SCHMID (Konzertdirektion Schmid) network of artist management offices, whose origins lie in the founding by her father (the legendary Hans Ulrich Schmid) of the original KDS business in Hanover, in 1959. ‘Times are changing so rapidly in the music industry and in artist management,’ says Schmid, ‘and it’s time the next generation took over at KDS.’ Now, in April this year, comes the prospect of handing on the chairmanship of the International Artist Managers’ Association to London-based Ben Rayfield.

As we speak, in mid-December, Schmid has recently returned from a lengthy holiday with her husband in South America, with a trip to Australia lined up for mid-January. There’s a suggestion that, in part, the travelling is a means of keeping her distance from KDS while the new (joint) managing directors, Karen McDonald and Christoph Drescher, find their feet. Schmid nonetheless remains available in a consultancy role as the company’s honorary president.

It’s a wonder that Schmid was able to make room in her life to be IAMA chairman. In fact, she resisted the possibility, put to her by the association’s chief executive Atholl Swainston-Harrison, for some time. ‘I several times said ‘no’ to Atholl simply because of the demands of running KDS. I felt there were always going to be things that needed my close attention at KDS that would get in the way.’ Under her leadership the company expanded dramatically, with additional offices opening in London, New York and Berlin (now the KDS German base), plus the securing of a ‘strategic partnership’ with the longstanding Goette artist management office in Hamburg (DK Deutsche Klassik).

So what changed Schmid’s mind? ‘It was partly the persuasion of the previous IAMA chairman, Aino Turtiainen-Visala, but also my sense that I wasn’t going to be running KDS for all that much longer, so if I was going to ever become IAMA chairman then it would have to be now. It was the right time in my career to give something back to the profession.’

Having assumed the IAMA chairmanship in the spring of 2019, Schmid was soon facing the daunting task of helping artist managers everywhere through the pandemic, the biggest crisis in their profession’s history. An early initiative saw Schmid and Swainston-Harrison presiding over regular Zoom sessions, which drew IAMA members together during the crisis and offered an outlet for their many worries. There were swift moves to form an IAMA business committee. ‘We discussed the key artist management issues around the pandemic,’ Schmid recalls, ‘especially the matter of concert promoters often being very reluctant to pay anything to artists for concerts cancelled because of Covid, on the basis of force majeure. It was important to have promoters on that business committee – after all, everyone in the classical music industry was in the same boat. In fact, the work artist managers did to handle the fall-out from concert cancellations earned them a great deal of respect from promoters. Equally, artist managers gained an understanding of the pressures under which promoters were having to operate.’

Cornelia Schmid: 'What I am is a “people person”'

Talking of committees, Schmid is also gratified to have helped create a new IAMA committee on sustainability, aimed at addressing the need for the music industry to consider the environmental impact of travelling to perform. ‘With the world currently in crisis on various fronts, distracting attention, it’s perhaps going to be difficult to make a real impact soon, but I look forward to seeing how the committee develops its role.’

Elsewhere, Swainston-Harrison and Schmid have sought ever-closer relationships with sister organisations, the European Association of Artist Managers and the Opera Managers Association International. ‘It’s so important to build bridges when there are many areas of common interest and concern,’ Schmid observes. ‘If there’s one thing that’s particularly mattered to me during my chairmanship it’s been bringing people together. I’m not so good at the politics that can occasionally invade artist management – as such a diplomat, Atholl is extremely good in this area – but what I am is a “people person”.’

Talking of politics, as a non-UK national Schmid rebuts any idea that the association is still to some extent a disguised British Association of Concert Agents, the organisation which gave birth to IAMA. ‘Yes, IAMA is based in London, where a good number of significant artist managements are to be found. Yes, when I became chairman I was struck by the very formalised, ‘British’, way in which board meetings were conducted. But I really don’t think of IAMA as anything other than a fully international organisation.’

There is fulsome praise for Atholl Swainston-Harrison (‘It would have been an impossible job without his extraordinary work on the day-to-day running of IAMA’) and longstanding deputy chairman, Helen Sykes. ‘With Helen continuing in that role alongside Boris Orlob, and Ben Rayfield becoming chairman in April, the association is in very good hands. And with Ben and Helen knowing what it’s like to run smaller artist management companies, perhaps we’ll see a greater emphasis on the particular needs of such businesses.’

The overall challenge for the future of classical music, says Schmid, is ‘the maintenance of the place of culture in societies around the world. For one thing, we’re all very aware how cuts in public and private funding for classical music are introducing stresses into the system. It’s important that artist managers play their part in championing culture as such an important part of all our lives. We mustn’t be frightened of raising our visibility and our voice. People like me look to a new generation of artist managers to take on the challenge of doing this.’

Schmid is aware that in some musical quarters artist managers are still regarded with the kind of suspicion that has always dogged middlemen and commission-takers. ‘OK, there will always very occasionally be artist managers who are not a credit to the profession, but that’s the same in any field of work. What I can say is that IAMA has paid great attention to the developing of professional standards, and these have been raised still higher during my time as chairman. But there will always be cynics. It’s just something you have to live with.’

So, a quieter life beckons for Schmid. ‘There’s no doubt you always feel the burden of your responsibilities as IAMA chairman, so it will be good to not have that weight on the shoulders. Ben is the ideal person to handle those responsibilities. I look forward so much to seeing him take IAMA into the future.’