Rising Stars in...Artist Management

Rika Iino
Founder and Producer, Sozo Media

Rika Iino seems to have made all the right decisions for a successful career as a manager and producer, equipping herself early on with a full array of business and marketing skills to complement her extensive knowledge of music. As she puts it, “I am an and/and person.”

Rika gained valuable industry experience while majoring in music at Columbia University. She garnered her first exposure to fashion and producing fashion events through the school’s Lunar Gala. A summer job with the NHK took her back to her native Japan where, as assistant to the executive producer for the “Super Concert”(Natalie Cole, Kiri Te Kanawa, André Previn, and the NHK Symphony), she was smitten by the excitementof live production. While still at Columbia, Rika began to work part-time for the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, learning the ropes of arts administration, marketing, and finance. Her first fulltime job was with Carl Fischer, where the experience of working with living composers created the foundation for all of her current endeavors.

Fulfilling her desire to work independently with composers who perform their own music, Rika founded Sozo Media in 2001. Sozo (Japanese for imagine and create) identifies and develops artists and projects that challenge convention and cross artistic and cultural boundaries. Her earliest client was avant-garde string quartet ETHEL, which then led her to composer/performer Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR). She refers to her clients as “business partners,” and it is clear that her broad range of skills and uncanny intuition for emerging artistic trends allows for a partnership that is quite different from the traditional manager/artist relationship. Composer/cellist/trombonist Dana Leong told me: “Rika is an extremely thoughtful, supportive, and essential business partner whose early training in classical music allows her to propose creative strategies that are true to my art, while adding valuable experience in promotion and event presentation.” In the case of DBR, Rika collaborates closely with his manager at Opus 3 Artists, Nicole Borelli-Hearn, to bring to fruition the artistic projects that are most meaningful to his career. Ms. Borelli-Hearn praised Rika as a “wonderful partner for managers” and described her as elegant, unruffled, very savvy, and always pragmatic.

After having realized at a recent ISPA Conference in Seoul how beneficial it is for young independent managers and arts producers to share their ideas and dreams, Rika recently founded The Cabin Society, a support network for young arts entrepreneurs. It appears that the road to success for future creative thinkers in the arts will be less lonely and more navigable thanks to Rika and her visionary contemporaries.

Next in this Category
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Edna Landau has become a household name in the world of artist management. After completing a 23-year tenure as managing director of IMG Artists, she has chosen to share her considerable career insight by venturing into institutional and individual consulting and writing a widely read weekly column for MusicalAmerica.com entitled Ask Edna.