This is a bold book that aims to offer an inspirational and practical resource for musicians embarking on their careers, or perhaps re-evaluating and making changes in their professional portfolio. Its tone is emphatically optimistic, and it is suffused with useful information, practical tips, uplifting quotations and stories. It draws on an intriguingly broad set of reference points from ancient philosophies to spiritual texts, contemporary neuroscience to personal experience.
The book is constructed around the business of making things happen as a musician, taking ownership of and moulding a career, and all the creative thinking, planning and hard graft that goes into this. Essentially the structure follows a standard business planning process from vision to implementation, and finishes by offering interesting examples of success. It is unusual, however, in its artistic perspective on the process, not least in pursuing a spiritual focus right from the beginning of the book. This highlights the fundamental importance of developing a vision that is artistically driven, and underpinned by awareness of the values and aims that are most critical to the individual concerned.
A word about “musicians” here – this is really a book targeted towards western classical musicians. It is a shame that this basic assumption is made without any real acknowledgement of the huge range of professional music-making that is current. Equally many of the central ideas expressed here about entrepreneurship will have wide relevance in music. The examples and personal narrative, however, do come for the most part from a classical music context, and may be less interesting for those outside its immediate field.
The first four chapters carefully set out some of the central features of contemporary professional contexts, the need for musicians to work imaginatively and adaptably and to build muscle as music entrepreneurs: ‘the ability to create and sustain a viable career in the music industry’ (p. 10). Timmons explicitly highlights interconnections between success and working from what really matters to you, and then goes on to underline the practical and rigorous business skills needed to make things happen. This approach should appeal to many artists.
A key quality Timmons considers is openness to change, and Chapter 4 deals specifically with this. She draws on recent research into the neuroplasticity of the brain, and indeed how the musician's brain offers an interesting model for the ways in which humans are able to adapt to changing environmental factors and diverse stimuli. There is plenty of encouragement to be drawn from this: musicians, through the very nature of their expertise, are well prepared in many ways to be flexible and agile in developing their creative and professional practice. Timmons gathers up the insights at the end of the chapter to state her belief that musicians are more than able to live holistic and transformative lives, particularly when connected to their central ‘source’ and ‘desire’. Some readers may find the language of artistic and spiritual motivation alien (for example: ‘By ‘soul loss’ I refer to that experience of living life without a sense of authenticity’ (p. 11)), but with a bit of translation, the ideas should still resonate.
Chapter 5 addresses the specifics of articulating a vision. Admirably it emphasises that this is not something likely to emerge overnight, rather something that requires time and sustained effort. Timmons’ discussion of fear, this being something that almost inevitably arises as musicians work at career development, is compelling, and most musicians will probably recognise something of their own experience. Chapters 6 and 7 get into the nitty-gritty of turning vision into reality, planning and implementing. The final three chapters are dedicated to individual case studies and a brief look at working in particular areas of classical music, notably higher education. The approach here is focused on the US context, but many of the issues are pertinent across the world in countries with developed higher education systems.
The case studies offer a suitably diverse set of success stories. One issue that could be highlighted more clearly is the emergent and iterative nature of creating vision, planning and making things happen, particularly in contemporary situations. The process is so often messy: reality modifies the plans, experience feeds back into and transforms the vision, and changing landscapes create unexpected opportunities and challenges. Managing the flux and uncertainty of this professional experience is integral to success, and traditional concepts of planning need to be responsive to emergent experience and ideas. Elements of this are implicit in this book, but it might nevertheless be possible to come away with a naïve idea that a linear process of creating a vision, planning and implementing is feasible.
Throughout the book there are plenty of references to other publications and resources, a number of them generic rather than specific to music. These are often classic texts (for example, Bolles’ What Colour is Your Parachute) that every musician should access. There are also a number of checklists, particularly in chapters 6 and 7, that will be useful. These are similar to those in other resources on career development and business planning, but will certainly support readers here in grounding their ideas and ensuring they have thought through choices and practical issues.
A couple of small things may be slightly frustrating: right at the start of the book Timmons talks about a ‘life of service’ and of the importance of being ‘called to our own destiny and that of the collective’ (p. 1). It would have been interesting to see these ideas of service and collective endeavour explored in greater depth. Ultimately the focus does seem to be largely on individual career development and success. In addition some of the evidence used to underpin the arguments is relatively old, for example statistics about the number of small businesses in the USA dating from 2009, but this is a small matter – the argument itself remains valid.
Overall, however, the book seems to combine an approach that is personal in style, one that shares the author's own journey as a musician whilst offering a practical guide to building a vision and implementing a plan. As such it is distinctive and may particularly help readers to build their confidence in setting out on a path as a cultural entrepreneur. It is perhaps less detailed than some texts in setting out reflective exercises to follow, or in providing examples of different stages of planning and implementing things. Other texts mentioned in this book, however, will do exactly that, and in this sense there is an extensive resource on offer here.
