Please read my interview with Barry Alexander first.

With everyone turning to social media these days, and technology being so much a part of our lives that we pretty much take it for granted, I have started to do a lot of thinking about how concert pianists advertised in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, long before there were things like computers and Instagram.

What’s important to understand first is that many artists were under the patronage of members of a monarchy or wealthy private citizens, and they were performing for small groups of people in very controlled settings. As careers moved from private patronage to more commercial events however, there were many methods that helped them to be put before a larger public.  Newspapers, printed flyers, word of mouth, and subscription series were very much a part of every performer’s career, and without them one could find himself performing in a vacuum.

One of the many things I have come to realize as a young and aspiring concert artist—and thus The Lightbulb Moment for this week—is that business and marketing work in the same way that they do for any other product, and all artists have to realize that no matter how talented they are, they have to reach out to audiences the same way one might if he were selling cars or books, perfume or dishes, or any other commodity that requires connecting to the public. The artist has to take pride and ego out of the equation long enough to realize that he has to reach out to people almost in the same way that someone who is selling clothing or another inanimate object has to do as well.

What that means is that you have to learn how to first build relationships with your potential audiences and then gradually, over time, learn how to reach out to them using as many of the technological portals available today as possible.

Another important factor to realize is that as you are doing this, you are also competing with other musicians who are just as talented, and who are working just as hard as you to achieve the same goal—that is, getting as many people to buy tickets to your concerts as possible.

Another very important fact to realize is that the process of becoming celebrated is something that takes place over a very long period of time, and there is no one formula that will allow it to happen in less time than it takes for everything to fall into place.  It is just like when you plant seeds in the ground.  No matter how hard you try, they grow at their own pace, and that is not something that you can speed up, unless you want to sacrifice the health of the plant.

One of my mentors, Barry Alexander, says that it takes twenty years to become an overnight success, and I believe him.  I have been studying the piano since I was three years old, and at eighteen, I am making my Carnegie Hall solo debut in a few months.  When you think about it, most of my life has been leading up to this one event.

Careers, again to quote Mr. Alexander, are built with consistent effort applied over time.  That is something that has not changed, even though technology has made how we build them very different. A successful artist today will know how to use technology to build his career, and to consider it as necessary a part of his work as practicing scales and learning repertoire.

What once involved flyers and newspaper advertisements has now become social media posts, blogs and TikTok videos.  The music remains the same, but the way of getting people to learn about you and your performance of it is constantly evolving.  For those who hope to be successful, learning how to use these tools is absolutely essential.