Success Beyond The Score

We live in a busy world.  Our phones keep us active, the internet cries for our attention, and then there is the demands of family, friends, work and even our music.  There are not enough hours in the day to get everything done. You might even find you feel stressed.  

There are many tips, videos and blogs on the internet giving advice on how to cope with stress. I learnt the hard way how much my health was affected by working maximum hours with limited sleep, so three years ago I started to realign myself and it’s paying off. One of the things I did was to consciously plan breaks in my day and week.

A break can be a few minutes each day where you mentally come away from work. This could be looking at nature, the sky, having a short sleep, doing something creative, but not music. These things will help your brain, which in this regard is like a muscle, to rest, relax and recover, renewing you to do your next job. 

A break can be moments taken to deliberately breathe.  By doing this,...

As the Government plans to limit access to higher education music and the arts in England, the Musicians' Union has put together a guide to the consultation's questions and key points to raise.

There is time until May 6th to take part in the consultation, which will be taken into account when defining the final policy. It is extremely important for people involved with music in the country to voice their opinion and concerns, because access to higher education has a direct and strong impact on the future of the industry, one we can't overlook.

Review the information provided my the MU.

Take part in the consultation.

Please share this with as many people as you can; the more voices and perspectives are taken into account, the best the chances for a good outcome are!

Are you interested in setting up your own YouTube channel to widen your music reach, but are not sure what to do? Do you worry about breaking it, and feel step-by-step instructions by a musician would help you to understand the screens and get it working?

On Wednesday 30th March, 7.30pm until 9pm on Zoom, Millicent Stephenson will be running a Zoom webinar called ‘Mastering YouTube for Musicians – Part 1’ to address all these concerns and answer your questions.

The content of the session will be:

• How to login
• Understanding your Channel layout
• Steps to upload your videos
• What to put in the boxes (fields) and what tags to use
• How to share your video to get views
• How to grow your subscribers organically

The course fee is £35 and you can book your place on this website.

See you on Wednesday!

On Wednesday 30th March, 7.30pm until 9pm on Zoom, Millicent Stephenson will be running a Zoom webinar called ‘Mastering YouTube for Musicians – Part 1’. The session is directed towards musicians who want to increase their reach online through YouTube, but aren't sure of how to navigate the platform and use its tools to their favour.

The content of the session will be:

• How to login
• Understanding your Channel layout
• Steps to upload your videos
• What to put in the boxes (fields) and what tags to use
• How to share your video to get views
• How to grow your subscribers organically

Interested? The course fee is £35 and you can book your place following this link. 

It is not easy to define the sense of spectacle in classical music. Precision and speed are always a thing of wonder, yes, but the musician cannot leave behind the act of performing, of giving a character to the interpretation. Yuja Wang knows this very well, and it shows every time she sits in front of her piano.

During an interview with Los Angeles Times in 2017, she was asked about what alternative career she would have picked if she wasn’t a prodigy pianist. Her answer was: “For me, playing music is about transporting to another way of life, another way of being. An actress does that.” With that perspective, you can see the character she plays live; with the thrill of spectacle running in her fingers, her deliberated fashion choices that infuse a Hollywood glam flavour to the stage, and her empathetic approach to her repertoire.

Her brilliant and inspiring career surely comes as motivation to find our own character on stage and play its role in a musical lifetime. Don't be afraid...

Are you interested in setting up your own YouTube channel to widen your music reach, but are not sure what to do? Do you worry about breaking it, and feel step-by-step instructions by a musician would help you to understand the screens and get it working?

Perhaps you have put videos up but have had zero or one or two views. This may also be the case with your subscriber count. Would you like to know how to increase both things without paying for advertising?

On Wednesday 30th March, 7.30pm until 9pm on Zoom, Millicent Stephenson will be running a Zoom webinar called ‘Mastering YouTube for Musicians – Part 1’ to address all these concerns and answer your questions.

The content of the session will be:

• How to login
• Understanding your Channel layout
• Steps to upload your videos
• What to put in the boxes (fields) and what tags to use
• How to share your video to get views
• How to grow your subscribers organically

Millicent will talk from the experience she's got with her own YouTub...

Help Musicians UK and Musicians Union have helped funding the PiPA (Parents in Performing Arts) Classical Music Survey, which aims to identify patterns in job and working environments in relation to work-life balance, and develop practical strategies and resources for Classical Music organisations to better support parents and carers, and the wider workforce.

You can take the survey clicking here.

The survey was developed in partnership with Association of British Orchestras, Liverpool Philharmonic, SWAP’ra, Black Lives in Music and UK Music. It will investigate the impact of caring responsibilities on career progression as well as wider worklife balance and wellbeing challenges in Classical Music.

The survey will provide data driven insights to enable PiPA to develop a range of strategies and resources for the Classical Music sector to empower organisations to better support parents, carers and the wider workforce.

PiPA wants to hear from people from all backgrounds and circumstan...

Time For My Music, the online project to empower women in the music industry, is currently open for subscriptions, but not for too long! In fact, there’s only a few hours left, the system will close at 11:59pm today, UK time.

If you are a female musician who wants to step up your game and advance in your career, this is the perfect chance to join a community of like-minded women and receive all the tools and support that you need.

In this cycle, we are going to focus on how to grow your brand online and build a loyal fanbase. On top of that, you will have access to all the materials of our previous cycles and to live forums with the other women. You will also be able to participate in the next T4MM concert and have your photo and bio exhibited in Birmingham City Centre.

Sounds good? Then head to the T4MM website before midnight and join us! We can’t wait to meet you.

International Women’s Day highlights the actions we, as women, do every day to ensure our place in the world. It is a day to celebrate ourselves and our strength and to commemorate the efforts that millions of women before us have done to get us where we are. It is also a day to reflect and decide what’s the next step.

Time For My Music is there for all women who see a future in music when they look ahead. The industry is still male-dominated and there’s a lot to learn and do in order to open space for women. This community aims to close that gap by providing training and resources related to the music business.

The group is receiving new members from all around the world. You have time until Sunday 13th March to subscribe.

These are some of the themes that we are going to cover this time:
· Setting up and utilising a YouTube channel to showcase your work.
· How to grow a fan base.
· Learning about all the components for putting on a live show.

And these are the activities or results ...

This information and the services mentioned are all by GPDQ, which provides nationwide healthcare services for individual, businesses, and the NHS. We share it here because we believe it is essential to break the taboo around women’s health in all spheres of life!

Support your colleagues this IWD 2022 by breaking the taboo around women's health in the workplace.

At GPDQ, we pride ourselves on being one of the UK's leading corporate healthcare providers, and this International Women's Day we want to lift the taboo that surrounds women's health in the workplace.

Following feedback from our clients, we know that female employees often feel they have to keep their health issues private and under wraps from their employers. But from periods to pregnancy, menopausal symptoms and much more, we know that not discussing what you are going through can actually lead to an increase in mental health problems and ultimately an unhappy and unproductive workforce.

In today's “Ask the Dr”, our cl...