How to inaugurate the blog of 2021? With a little advice drawn from my own experiences of the past few months, in hopes of nourishing the innate resilience in each one of us.
The good news, which I will delve in more in depth in my next blog, is that I will be playing at the opening of the Alpine World Ski Championships Cortina 2021, during a big show that will air on TV (Sunday, February 7th at 6pm, on RAI-2 in Italy and in Eurovision in the rest of the world) from the “Queen” of Dolomites..
Opportunities to play in highly visible contexts have been rare since this pandemic broke out.
The various lock-downs and the “ban” on concerts have changed many dynamics and, in my case, the paradox is undeniable: the impossibility of “working” (playing live in front of a large or small audience) has, however, allowed my business to grow from a “reputation and recognition” point of view.
Despite the many changes on Instagram, Facebook, Google, and all other major social networks (mainly due to privacy norms and algorithm updates), “traffic” on my pages is grown exponentially, same goes for newspaper articles that talk about me and collaboration requests by part of other musicians, producers and music professionals.
Without getting too specific, I’m going to try and summarize some of the dynamics that I’ve experienced since March 2020 in 5 points, listing the more across-the-board ones that can be applied to your field, or at least inspire you.
1 show interest in others: in the whirlwind of the 200-night-a-year tours that kept me very busy up until last year, my audience’s gaze was fleeting, but now that I have more time at my disposal, “digital” distances notwithstanding, I’ve tried repay my fans with the most precious assets I received from them: attention and listening. Small gestures were often enough, like a video, a message, an answer during a conversation, a dedication; we gave – and still give – each other strength, thus intensifying mutual attention.
2 collaboration: on tour I played with dozens of DJs, singers, musicians and bands in intense live collaborations. In these last few months, I’ve had contact with many different artists, musical genres that have come together, video and photo creators, digital content creators, museum curators, enterprises, sportsmen (and women), communicators… I’ve received so many ideas of collaboration since March 2020! I hardly ever refused and I’m glad I did so, because the horizons continue to expand and what is sown during difficult times will certainly be ready to sprout when we’ll be all allowed to restart for real.
3 study: as a musician you grow with the certainty that playing the instrument masterfully is your only goal, one that will lead to results and awards and repay all your efforts; an endless search for sound perfection, each in his/her own way. Then consciousness changes, also as a result of the times that we live in, and one’s musical talent is no longer enough, so consequently the concept of “studying” means a whole lot more. Such a long period of daily reorganization gives us plenty of time to study, but we must also possess a form of clarity that will allow us to deepen our knowledge with regard to different facets of our activity. In my case, for example, I’m looking at a musician, communicator, creative, endorser, producer and multiple other micro-professionalities that have to coexist in a musical career, which in itself is a small enterprise.
4 diversification: if before my job involved 90 % playing live events and 10% producing music and visual contents, now that that 90% has literally disappeared overnight I’ve had to invent new forms of expression so as to diversify: I started off with live streaming and several experiments, which evolved into actual online concerts; I involved my team in charitable projects and touched base with a whole new and large audience of people who didn’t as yet know me; I’ve devoted more of my energy to musical productions, exploring areas and genres that I had priorly only touched in a fleeting way, and I lent the sound of my violin to other areas in difficulty – culture and sport – by playing in museums, in the midst of nature and prior to major sports events.
5 investing: an investment doesn’t only refer to money, even though it’s the word’s first given connotation. The income that online activities can generate, at least in the music sector, isn’t remotely comparable to that of live concerts, events and tours and, therefore, the continuity of the “investments” is severely tested.
So, what kind of “investing” am I referring to? The “savings” from which to draw from can be of various types: from time to trust, from gratitude to healthy work relationships, all the way up to projects that are one step away from being completed. In this pandemic time, seeing what’s around us, from co-workers and friends to those in need like us, allows us to to get closer to one another.
Granting availability in times of trouble, sharing an investment of time and resources, can generate a profitable collaboration once we reach a renewed normality.
