A Musician's Dilemma: Balancing Commercial Interests and Artistic Intent
Feeding the belly versus feeding the heart: it’s the artist’s age-old dilemma. For creative professionals who are struggling to establish themselves while also paying the bills, the challenge can feel like a no-win situation. If we focus on making money, we have little time for be artistic; if we focus on our art, economic stress can choke our ability to create. Composer and pianist Simeon Walker, in a recent email exchange about the upcoming release of his new EP, Imprints, voiced the dilemma perfectly when he wrote,
“I am really trying hard to keep finding ways to craft my pieces and develop my artistic/creative voice, whilst trying to do make my career a sustainable one. I guess it's a dilemma that t'was ever thus! Balancing commercial interests versus artistic intent.”
We dream of unfettered creative and financial freedom, all the while knowing that the history of the arts is littered with stories of people struggling to create art while still finding a way to pay the bills. But success (when it arrives) brings its own limitations. We may be able to worry less about financial concerns, but for many artists, once successful, our public wants us to keep offering the same thing over and over again. Imagine being Mick Jagger, singing “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” at every single concert…since1965… Or Rachmaninoff, whose Prelude in C# Minor became so famous that he grew to loathe it. Nearly 30 years after it was composed, he was quoted as saying,
“I am often sorry I wrote it… I can never, never escape from a concert hall without playing it. It pursues me everywhere… I have a feeling that the public comes to my concerts only to hear me play that one selection – that they sit through the rest of the concert just waiting for it. And I have become very tired of it.”
And so, unless we’re willing (and financially stable enough) to practice our art in splendid isolation, we’re faced with the same challenge—how to meet the demands of the marketplace while still answering the pull of our hearts. Solving this dilemma requires us to get really real about what we need, both financially and artistically. This is the point where we must assess our needs soberly, concretely, and with deep honesty. And we must do the same with the marketplace, because our ability to support ourselves lies in the intersection between what we’re good at and what people are willing to pay us to do. In discerning this, I’ve found these considerations to be an important step:
Get really real about your finances
How much do you owe? What do you need to earn in order to live? This seems like a basic step, but I’ve had numerous conversations with musicians who (sadly) choose to remain ignorant about financial matters because they prefer to dream about success rather than implement sound strategies to achieve it.
Know your bottom line
By this I mean, know exactly what standard of living you need to have in order to not feel deprived or anxious. This differs from person to person. One talented friend discovered that she could be content living in a rented room of a shared house. I, however, knew that my bottom line was that I had to be able to afford my own apartment (however small). Once I discovered this about myself, I could compute how much I needed to bring in every year in order to live at this level.
Find or create a stable source of income
For some musicians, this may involve teaching; for others, it may include a university posting. Quite a few of my most talented musical friends have found that their art flourishes when they meet their financial needs with a steady, non-musical “day job.”
Once our basic needs are met, our task becomes knowing which creative opportunities to pursue, and which to ignore. No one has infinite time, and with the music marketplace eager to have us offer our art “for exposure” (aka, for free), we must become very savvy about which options are opportunities and which are fruitless wastes of time. My former mentor Jill Timmons’ book The Musician’s Journey: Crafting Your Career Vision and Plan, offers this wise advice—advice that changed my career when I was first building it. When choosing how to spend your professional time, Timmons advises musicians to evaluate all opportunities using these criteria:
A professional opportunity that generates a large sum of money in a short period of time.
A professional opportunity that will open a new door.
Something that is incredibly fun
We must be wise stewards of our time and our careers. If the opportunity being offered doesn’t fit one of these three things, perhaps it’s not the right choice for us. To this sage advice, I’d add one more thing:
Always make time for a “project of the heart.”
I learned a Chopin Ballade during one of the busiest times of my life by working on it just a little bit a day, and I wrote my novel, The Waco Variations, while maintaining a full teaching studio and being on the road most weekends performing or adjudicating. These “heart projects” fed my soul while the rest of my work fed my career and paid the bills.
Ultimately, building a creative and sustainable career in the arts requires us to live in two realities simultaneously—the creative realm and the practical. And, as the successful teacher and composer Simeon Walker stated so eloquently, it’s never easy. Even if we find a sort of balance, we change, or the marketplace changes, and we must work to find our way again within these ever-evolving circumstances. But if we know that our emotional and artistic health requires us to create, the choice is no longer if we’ll make music, but how. And when we balance commercial interests and artistic intent, we create sustainable creative lives worth living.