Arts Resources

How to Write a Better Bio: Advice for Artists and Musicians

When writing their own biography, some artists remove any trace of individuality from their bios with boring, generic language, while others exaggerate. For example, if you find yourself saying things like you’re “the voice of a generation,” then ...

Learning Across Artistic Disciplines: Improvising at Performance NW’s FANFare

There is so much to learn from working artists from other disciplines. Last Saturday I improvised accompaniments to dance at Performance Works NW with Luke Gutsgell, Ben Kates, Danielle Ross, Noel Plemmons, and Elise Knudsen. Linda Austin, the owner and ...

Grant Writing Basics: Finding Individual Arts Grants that Fit

As I’ve said before, grants shouldn’t be the only way you raise money — think of them as “part of this complete breakfast” of fundraising tools. But, a grant can provide a big chunk of cash that would allow you to undertake projects that would have ...

Reaching Out Through Collaboration: Interview with James Hall and Emily Ruth Hazel

James Hall and Emily Ruth Hazel have worked together on a few spoken-word and jazz compositions in the last two years. I asked these two to do this interview ahead of their next installation of collaborative work that James presents Tuesday, June 25 at ...

Interview with Andrew Munsey: On Building a Life in Music and Audio Production

Since writing my last post about the practice of “community building” in the arts as a more personally sustainable alternative to “self-promotion,” I’ve been thinking about ways to show how some artists have put this ...

Build Your Arts Career By Building Your Community: Promote Your Work In A Healthy Way

We all know intuitively that we couldn’t practice our art alone, but many artists’ approach to “self-promotion” leaves them feeling as if they are. Promoting our work isn’t the problem. We must be passionate advocates for our own work, and we ...

Diary of a Composer – May 6, 2013 – Time to Make a Decision

When I began composing the music that eventually became The Bright and Rushing World for AnyWhen Ensemble, I began a blogging project called the Diary of a Composer to give myself the opportunity think out loud about the piece as it was taking shape. The ...

Bass Solo Web Series: Interview with creators John Sutton and Heather Mingo

John Sutton and Heather Mingo, the creators of the Bass Solo web series, are good friends of mine who are taking a risk and are in the process of doing something amazing. In what will eventually be a 10-episode web tv series, Bass Solo follows the ...

Why “Discoverability” Matters and How to Maximize Yours

Part 2 of a Series by Mary Cummings From Douglas: People are looking, so make sure you’re good looking! When you google yourself or your group, how do you look? If a poorly written entry on an unknown website is all you have online, then you are ...

Industry Perspective: Online Marketing Basics for Musicians

Part 1 of a Series By Mary Cummings From Douglas – Every time I see my good friend Mary Cummings, she tells me about some new online marketing tool and I feel like an old person. She has helped me to improve my game on Twitter and other online ...