Artist Managers: Changing with the times

Video of musicians in action has long been a promotional staple of artist management websites. Of course. However, the monetisation of such content — as with so many classical music online offers — hasn’t exactly made giant strides over the years. It is intriguing, then, to spy the launch of a ‘Digital Catalogue’ of musicians’ material available to a significant degree on a paid-for basis, courtesy of its facilitator, Barbara Scales, founder/president of Montreal-based artist management, Latitude 45 Arts.

‘Covid provided a push towards developing high quality digital content in the absence of concert hall activity,’ says Scales as she takes me through a range of projects featuring artists on her roster — from classical string band Collectif9 and the Tambuco Percussion Ensemble to all-female early music group, Infusion Baroque and Ensemble Kimya, which offers Persian sounds.

The catalogue blurb tells me the digitally available projects range from ‘multi-camera recordings of live concerts to fully produced studio performances, as well as add-on content such as educational capsules, livestream options, interactive educational programmes and Q&As with the artists.’ All packages are accessible via the Latitude 45 website.

One example cited by Scales involves the Tambuco ensemble. ‘Their engagement at the Washington DC Library of Congress in 2020 was called off on account of the pandemic, but the Library authorities provided funds to make videos both of performances and pedagogical work for schools. These have been placed on the Library of Congress website in perpetuity.’

Seedcorn funding from public sources has been an important factor in developing projects. Some material is available without charge, but rental/leasing is a prominent feature — cinema showings and domestic viewing being two options — with the financial benefit accruing to composers as well as performers.

‘Pop music has been doing this sort of thing for decades,’ Scales observes. ‘We’re only just catching up. The limits in the use of digital technology for delivering music is limited only by our imaginations. There’s now a network of international film festivals that cover this type of arts-based material. Artists’ visibility and income are both enhanced.’

In the short period since the launch of the catalogue, take-up has been ‘persistent if not yet rapidly increasing,’ says Scales. For the future, she says, ‘the marriage of fine videographers and excellent performers, plus the flourishing of delivery platforms, are crucial to developing things further. The benefit extends to securing the basic cultural and pedagogical engagement of people whose access to live concerts is limited, for whatever reason.’

Once more the HarrisonParrott office generates an entrepreneurial innovation to confound the mood of the times. This time, a collaboration with the famed Trafalgar Square church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields on a new concert series, HP Futures. This features younger generation talent on the HP roster, kicking off (on March 19th) with ear-catching pianist Yoav Levanon. Over the following months come guitarist Sean Shibe, male soprano Samuel Mariño, pianist Lisa de la Salle and violinist Leia Zhu.

These are concerts with wide appeal, but HP executive chairman Jasper Parrott hopes the accent on younger generation artists with special communication skills will attract an age category ripe for development. ‘Audiences seem now to include a much larger proportion of younger concert goers — perhaps reflecting how they’ve been starved of interaction during the pandemic. They have more open minds, are more willing to take risks. They enjoy the excitement of being in close contact with artists they admire, not wedded to the old musical warhorses.’

Overseeing HP Futures for St. Martin-in-the-Fields Ltd is recently appointed chief executive officer, Chris Denton, a classical music industry veteran with positions at Southbank Centre, the Barbican and the Philharmonia Orchestra under his belt. The church’s concert-giving profile, he says, ‘is being diversified and broadened. We want to develop beyond the idea that our audiences are largely tourist-driven so that we fully exploit this wonderful acoustic, framed by great architecture, in a venue at the heart of London. This new series further develops our history of offering a platform for up-and-coming young musicians. Ultimately, my job here is to generate income that benefits our well-known work with homeless people. But culture can sit well alongside compassion.’

Hard on the heels of last autumn’s Covid-deferred annual conference of the International Artist Managers’ Association in Copenhagen, the event returns to its normal springtime scheduling in early April, with the Tonhalle in Zürich as host venue. No snappy title for the event, but some intriguing subject areas — not least, an intensive focus on ‘psychology’, ‘mindset’, ‘mental training’ and ‘resilience’. Conference chairman Ilona Schmiel, intendantin (executive and artistic director) of the Tonhalle Orchester, confirms that in large part this is a response to the effect on hearts and minds of the Covid crisis. ‘We’ll see, for example, how mental training techniques from the sports world might be tailored to help those working and performing in the musical field.’

The familiar topic of the digital dimension to management activity surfaces again, this time with a close-up on Artificial Intelligence. The conference also seeks to progress the conversation on sustainable, climate-friendly approaches to music-making across international boundaries. Talking of international boundaries, will the conference go off-schedule and turn its attention in some fashion to the war in Ukraine? Almost certainly so, Schmiel suggests, ‘but it’s too early to say how — it will depend on developments.’

As for the attractions of the conference venue? ‘Those attending will enjoy the perfect spaces provided by the beautiful renovation of the Tonhalle, which was completed in 2021,’ says Schmiel. ‘We all need beauty just at the moment.’

The day after the Russian invasion of Ukraine I google ‘artist management’ and ‘Kyiv’. Up pops a company new to me: Ukrainian Classical Artist Management, a boutique singers concern. Whoever knows how long it will be before this is functioning as normal? We can but cast upon the wind our heartfelt hope that all — managers and singers — stay safe and find solace, somehow, in the boundary-defying language of music.