Today on the podcast, I talk with Alecia Lawyer, Founder, Artistic Director, Principal oboist of ROCO. She’s got the most exciting ideas about orchestral possibilities in the 21st century, and I wish more people were as innovative as she. 

Named by Musical America as one of classical music’s Top 30 Influencers for 2015 and a Lorée oboe artist in 2019, Texas native, Alecia Lawyer, is the Founder, Artistic Director, and Principal Oboist of ROCO, a professional music ensemble that flexes from 1 to 40 musicians from around the US and Canada, including guest conductors from around the world. Expanding the repertoire, ROCO has commissioned and world premiered over 100 works from living composers. The group performs dozens of concerts annually in multiple venues throughout Houston, many of which are broadcast nationally and livestreamed to the world. Known as “The Most Fun You Can Have with Serious Music!” ROCO has been called a trailblazer and arts disrupter and is leading the sector in innovation.

Calling her business model “Wildcatting in the Arts”, Ms. Lawyer was named a finalist for Texas Musician of the Year (along with Willie Nelson) and was listed as one of Houston’s Top 50 Most Influential Women. She is a proud senior fellow of American Leadership Forum, a trustee for Episcopal High School, and a member of the Institute for Composer Diversity. She has received numerous awards, including the Gutsy Gal Award from Houston Woman Magazine and Sigma Alpha Iota Musician of the Year.  She regularly presents her entrepreneurial model and dynamic ideas to conservatories, universities, and music festivals around the US, such as Juilliard, Yale, SMU, Round Top, and the Texas Music Festival, using ROCO as a case study for community-specific orchestra building. Business and social groups in the Greater Houston Area engage her to speak on numerous topics related to the creation, innovation, marketing, and development of the arts.

After receiving her Masters from Juilliard and Bachelors from SMU, both in oboe, Alecia’s career has ranged from recording for John Cage and soloing with Rostropovich, to a contemporary chamber music recital at Carnegie Hall, live radio broadcasts in New York, and disc jockeying for KRTS-92.1FM, Houston, TX. Enjoying a year residency in France, she recorded with the Sorbonne Orchestra, performed recitals in Paris, and concertized with various orchestras and chamber groups in France and Germany. Alecia and her husband Larry have two fantastic sons, Jacob and Zachary. Alecia is an F. Lorée artist.

You can catch up with ROCO at its website, or follow on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter @rocohouston

Alecia's previous SUPER INSPIRING interview is HERE.

Roco recently collaborated on a beautiful new children's book: The Nightingale

Thanks for joining me on Crushing Classical! 

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I'm your host, Jennet Ingle. I love you all. Stay safe out there!

I gave a talk a couple of weeks ago that I'll share here - No Limits: How the Portfolio Career Expands Your Possibilities. 

I also want to point out that if you don't know how to do a thing, there's almost certainly someone out there who DOES, and who can HELP you. 

Make sure you SUBSCRIBE to Crushing Classical, and maybe even leave a nice review! 

You can join my email list HERE, so you never miss an episode!

Or you could hop on a short call with me to brainstorm your next plan. 

I'm your host, Jennet Ingle. I love you all. Stay safe out there!

Canadian violinist Mary-Elizabeth Brown enjoys parallel careers as a performer, pedagogue, entrepreneur and researcher. In recent seasons, she has appeared as an invited soloist with orchestra more than forty times in Europe, Asia, North and South America, as well as numerous chamber music festivals. Her recording of the last 3 Mozart Violin Concerti for Mozart Effect recordings released worldwide in 2017.

In addition to a rich career as a soloist and concertmaster, she is a sought-after teacher, clinician, adjudicator and speaker in Canada and abroad.  Since founding the AVIVA Virtual Young Artist Program (the first web-based pre-college music program in the world) she has touched lives around the world, teaching thousands of lessons to students on five continents via webcam, piloting projects aimed at accessibility, and training hundreds of teachers and creative entrepreneurs. 

Mary-Elizabeth is widely recognized as a pioneer in the world of innovation in classical music and technology. She recently made international news from The Hong Kong Economic Times to NPR's Science Friday with her design for low-cost stringed instruments using 3D printers and plastic polymers.

I was wild about this conversation.  I really appreciated Mary-Elizabeth’s  wise take on the portfolio career, on keeping all of your various pots and streams managed, on how to cope with the messy middle parts of projects, and on how to keep growing as an artist and a human as you help others!

I know you will love hearing from her. 

Find Mary-Elizabeth at her website, or at www.avivayoungartists.com, or www.printaviolin.com

Here are her upcoming programs: 

LAUNCH!  Is an 8-week, online streaming course on business basics and financial literacy that begins on March 27th. It’s a general overview of entrepreneurship skills and will give folks some starting points. There’s a private platform for peer feedback and discussion where I’ll certainly pop in and give my 2 cents worth! (But I won’t do any 1:1 coaching) You can find more info here: https://maryelizabethbrown.thinkific.com/courses/launch

To honour those who have expressed an interest in mentorship in recent months, I’ve made room to take on a handful of artist-teachers of any age, stage or location for a year of 1:1 and group mentoring specifically targeted at really developing the spectrum of entrepreneurial skills needed to run an effective and multifaceted creative career. We’ll start in mid-June and I’ll offer a hybrid program where we cover a different skill and topic each week through multimedia resources. In addition to those seminars, I’ll walk each step of the way with every mentee as we cycle through planning, alignment, implementation and assessment through a year of 1:1 coaching. You’ll find that one here: https://maryelizabethbrown.thinkific.com/courses/the-mentorship-year 

Theme music and audio editing by DreamVance.

Or you could hop on a short call with me, Jennet, to brainstorm your next plan. 

You can join my email list HERE, so you never miss an episode!

I'm your host, Jennet Ingle. I love you all. Stay safe out there!

Ashley Killam (she/her) has built a multifaceted career as a passionate entrepreneur, non-profit director, freelancer, trumpet player, advocate, and researcher. Killam is the founder of AK Artist Management and is on a lifelong mission to create a more inclusive artistic space.

A champion for creating change within musical programming, Killam launched the first-ever open-source resource for trumpet and brass music by marginalized composers. Since the fall of 2019, she has presented in-person and virtually over 130 times, on topics ranging from building a library of inclusive repertoire to starting a non-profit, commissioning music, and creating a non-traditional career path.

Having found a love in all things organization, Killam created AK Artist Management as a way to use these outreach and marketing skills to build and promote the professional careers of musicians. Killam has worked with powerhouse soloists like trumpeter Mary Elizabeth Bowden, driven educators like hornist Amanda Collins, and groundbreaking chamber groups like Seraph Brass and Calypsus Brass, understanding the goals and needs of every individual and group. Her expertise ranges from booking performances and leading consortiums to website creation, building a brand, and PR work - Killam can do it all.

What inspired me so much about this conversation is Ashley’s can-do attitude, and her obvious love of the work she’s doing.  She’s found a way she likes to work, things she likes doing, and has created a way to get paid doing them!  This is the very essence of the portfolio career, right?   It’s not giving up on music and defeatedly crawling into an arts admin space, it’s ADDING something she loves to something else she loves and making a career out of it.  I really loved hearing her energy around both the DOING of her job and the LEARNING of her job. Being willing to not know but to try anyway, being able to trust yourself and your smart organized brain to figure it out - this is brilliant stuff and I know you will love this episode.

Find Ashley on her website, or follow her on facebook or instagram- @ashleykillam and @ak.artistmanagement.

Theme music and audio editing by DreamVance.

You can join my email list HERE, so you never miss an episode!

Or you could hop on a short call with me to brainstorm your next plan. 

I'm your host, Jennet Ingle. I love you all. Stay safe out there!