Alexandra Gardner is a great composer who, thanks in no small part to her time as an Associate Editor for NewMusicBox, knows a lot about the nuts and bolts workings of the concert music world. For this week, she and I sat down to talk about a wide range of practical considerations for composers.

  • During our conversation, we touched on:
  • Pricing your scores
  • Comparing your prices to similar scores by other self-publishied composers or put out by traditional publishers
  • Prices that reflect blood, sweat, and tears cs. those that reflect concrete costs of printing & binding
  • Taking where you are in your career into consideration when pricing your scores
  • Composer web sites
  • Integrating your non-musical interests into your composer site to make it more interesting and engaging
  • Making your site easy to navigate, and your materials/info easy to find
  • Providing the information that performers and presenters need
  • Information redundancies across your site
  • Taking into account the Luddites in the concert music world when making your site
  • Evaluating the use of your time honestly
  • Advice and “your mileaeg may vary”
  • Getting your doctorate
  • Gaining skills from non-musical day jobs
  • Networking and how we perceive it
  • Capital “N” Networking vs. lower-case “n” networking
  • Contacting new people

Links:
Alexandra Gardner
Alex for NewMusicBox
“Fair Trade for Sheet Music” by Dennis Tobenski
Alex Shapiro: Notes from the Kelp

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