Success Beyond The Score

On this Easter Sunday, let's continue revisiting season 2 of the podcast Success Beyond The Score, introducing the next guest: Louise Dengate.

Louise is an exceptional vocalist and coach. After finishing her music degree, she first became a receptionist, but realised that it was not for her, and set out to grow her music into a full time career. She now has a Gospel choir, does teaching, coaching and has a music agency. During the pandemic, she navigated by developing her passion about psychology and the stage, and worked together with her husband, who is also a full-time musician, to continue their careers while also growing their family.

Here is the first part of the interview:

And here is the second part, where Louise talks about her career highs and lows, the challenges of being a female director, how to make music your career, and some truths about reality TV competitions and their influence on success:

We hope you enjoy hearing Millicent and Louise's conversation again....

On May 7, Wales will vote to elect the 96 new members of the Senedd Cymru (Welsh Parliament). In preparation, the Musicians Union has written a manifesto that describes actions to improve conditions for music, culture and the arts.

Election time is one of the best to make your needs known to leaders and politicians. If you are unsure of how to proceed, the MU has outlined some actions and provided templates in their website.

Don't sit back and wait for others to decide how your community is going to be managed. If you work in the arts and culture sector, it is vital that you make your experience and struggles part of the discussion for a better government. Let's pave the way to make Welsh music and culture shine brighter than ever!

Once done with our revisit of season 1 of the podcast Success Beyond The Score, today we want to direct your attention to season 2.

First aired in 2021, and produced under the constraints of the COVID-19 pandemic, this season introduced two big changes: the presence of guests, and the video call format. The episodes, available now on YouTube on top of all the usual podcast streaming platforms, started with a brief intro:

The first guest of the season was Tony Bean, the CEO and founder of 5AM Records. He is an international artiste developer, songwriter and record producer who has worked with major record labels such as Polydor, Motown and Warner Brothers. Tony has worked with Kelly Rowland of Destiny’s Child, Usher, Christina Aguilera, Lemar, Beverley Knight, Kenny Thomas, Tyrese, Alexandra Burke, Freddie Kofi, Nu Life, Monique Thomas and Eternal, to name a few.

The first part of the interview, which constitutes episode 2, starts with Tony talking about what it is like being a se...

The demonstration against the rising threat of the far right is this Saturday, 28 March 2026! An initiative of Together Alliance, which is a country-wide coalition of civil society organisations working for inclusion, equity and justice, this demonstration is set to start at noon in Central London.

If you can attend, please do so. Every voice is important in the effort to stop fascism from controlling or destroying the arts, and society at large, in its pursue of dominance. If you cannot attend, spread the word, and bring the sentiments of empathy, respect and equality to your daily life. As this piece of art in the remnants of the Berlin wall puts it: 

Many small people who in many small places do many small things can alter the face of the world.

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us.”
—Henry S. Haskins in ‘Meditations in Wall Street’ (William Morrow & Co.)

We tend to remain occupied with what has happened in our past and what may happen in the future, instead of looking at what we have to contribute to the world with our music in the present.

Instead of worrying about the mistakes of our last performance, and getting anxious about the mistakes we could make in the future, we should be focusing in what we can do right now to practice and improve, and what we can deliver to the audience when we are with them.

Any thoughts? Share them with us.

On International Women's Day, we want to highlight the effort and achievements of our community for emerging female musicians, Time For My Music.

As the COVID-19 pandemic forced the world into lock-down, our creative director, Millicent Stephenson, moved her projects to support women in music to the digital space. Time For My Music was thus born as an online community, where women could network, learn about the music industry, and build a path towards their goals.

As a group, Time For My Music has put together two online concerts and one live performance in the city of Birmingham. You can watch them on YouTube:

• Highlights of first online concert
• Second online concert
• Live concert, part 1
• Live concert, part 2

They also got a photographic exhibition:

Individual members have gone to become part of bands, get booked for private gigs, perform in front of bigger audiences and grown their social media following.

Women are underrepresented in the music industry, particularly as...

It has been some time since we updated and refreshed the website. Whilst it accommodates our needs, we think we can make it clearer and easier to navigate. There are also some resources and pages that we would like to highlight better, so you can get all the benefits of being part of this community.

For this reason, we will be overhauling our page in the upcoming months. If, while using the site, you have thought about something you would like to see adjusted, added or removed, now is the perfect time to let us know. We are also all ears in regard to the kind of content you would like us to provide in addition to what we already have. 

We will seek to address all concerns and ideas forwarded our way. To communicate with us, please send an e-mail to info@millicentstephenson.com.

Thank you, and we hope that you are looking forward to seeing the new look and functionality of Success Beyond The Score!

Together Alliance is a country-wide coalition of civil society organisations working for inclusion, equity and justice. Given the increasing threat of the far right, it's been decided to hold a massive demonstration against it in London on Saturday 28 March 2026.

The Musicians Union is going to be part of the demonstration, and there is a chance to join their delegation. If you are interested, you can follow the steps described here in their website.

Diversity and cultural connection are key aspects of music. Due to this, among other reasons, ideologies like fascism seek to control or destroy the arts as part of their pursue of power. The arts are and must remain expressions of humanity that transcend division and discrimination. As musicians, then, we have the ability and duty to preserve the freedom of the arts and the people.

Please, help spread the word. Even if you cannot physically attend the demonstration, you can help it achieve the impact it seeks by promoting it, and by pu...

Signups are open for the FREE webinar, ‘15 ways to promote your music online and offline’. No matter if you do music for a living, as a side job or as a hobby, you can benefit from this knowledge to expand your reach, grow a fan base, and share your art with more people.

Here’s the key information:

• Date: 25.02.2026
• Time: 19:00h UTC+0:00.
  For reference, this is 2:30pm USA EST, 7:30pm UK, and 6:30am of the 26th AEDT
• Platform: Zoom

Click here to sign up

Anyone with an interest in promoting their music can participate. Tell your friends who are also working in music, so more people can benefit!

It is already the second half of February. Hopefully, all the plans and goals you set at the beginning of the year are going well. If not, no problem! It is not too late, you have not failed, and most importantly, you don't have to wait until next December.

Here is a video by Dr. Jamie from The Productivity Psychologist, explaining some advantages that February has over January as a starting point for setting goals.  

Now, you may be wondering if this is still valid when half the month is already gone. The answer is yes. Time markers like new year, your birthday or the first day of any given month are just that, reference points that we gravitate towards, but that are not essential to start pursuing a new objective. If you definitely need a point of reference in time to motivate yourself to start something, you can learn about other ways of measuring time, like the lunar calendar, which this week marked the beginning of the lunar new year, Mardi Gras/Ash Wednesday, and the first d...