PROFESSIONAL GROWTH

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Musical America routinely updates the list of scholarships and grants in an effort to keep current and ensure opportunities for musicians. If you know of a scholarship or grant not mentioned in our lists, please send us a message.
INDUSTRY EVENTS AND CONFERENCES
Trade shows, seminars, events and conferences about the business of the performing arts
May 19-23, 2025 New Orleans, LA Acoustical Society of America 188th Meeting
May 20-23, 2025 Memphis, TN Opera America
May 22-24, 2025 Warsaw, Poland Audio Engineering Society European Convention
May 22-25, 2025 Waterloo, ON Canadian University Music Society Conference
June 4-7 2025 St. Louis, MO Chorus America Conference
June 10-13 2025 Lugano, Switzerland International Society for the Performing Arts
June 10-14 2025 Indianapolis, IN International Double Reed Society Annual Conference
June 11-13 2025 Salt Lake City, UT League of American Orchestras Annual Conference
June 17-20, 2025 Chicago, IL Dance/USA Annual Conference
June 23-29, 2025 Valencia, Spain International Tuba-Euphonium Conference
June 29 - July 1, 2025 Nashville, TN National Association of Music Merchants NET
July 9-13, 2025 Fort Worth, TX ClarinetFest Conference
July 13-16, 2025 Detroit, MI The Hymn Society Annual Conference
July 14-15, 2025 Virtual American String Teachers Association Virtual String Teachers Summit
July 16-19, 2025 Des Moines, IA Piano Technicians Guild Convention
July 20-23, 2025 Pittsburgh, PA League of Historic American Theaters Annual Conference
July 25-27, 2025 Denver, CO National Council of Acoustical Consultants Conference
July 28-31, 2025 New Orleans, LA International Association of Venue Managers Conference
August 7-10, 2025 Atlanta, GA National Flute Association Conference
August 15-17, 2025 Mexico City, Mexico Audio Engineering Society Latin American Conference
August 17-19, 2025 Costa Mesa, CA Association of California Symphony Orchestras Conference
August 24-27, 2025 São Paulo, Brazil InterNoise Conference
September 2-5, 2025 Los Angeles, CA Western Arts Alliance Conference
October 2-4, 2025 Savannah, GA National Association for Campus Activities Conference
October 13-16, 2025 Beaverton, OR Arts Northwest Annual Conference
October 16-18, 2025 Hartford, CT National Association for Campus Activities Conference
October 23-26, 2025 Long Beach, CA Audio Engineering Society Convention
October 23-26, 2025 Atlanta, GA Society for Ethnomusicology Conference
October 30 - November 1, 2025 Spokane, WA College Music Society National Conference
November 6-9, 2025 Minneapolis, MN American Musicological Society Annual Conference
November 6-9, 2025 Minneapolis, MN Society for Music Theory Annual Meeting
November 20-22, 2025 Riverside, CA National Association for Campus Activities Conference
November 21-25, 2025 Orlando, FL National Association of Schools of Music Annual Meeting
December 1-5, 2025 Ottawa, ON Canadian Arts Presenting Association
January 7-10, 2026 Boston, MA National Opera Association Annual Convention
January 9-13, 2026 New York, NY Arts Presenters Conference
January 13-15, 2026 New York, NY International Society for the Performing Arts
January 16-19, 2026 Dallas, TX International Conductors Guild 50th Anniversary Conference
January 20-24, 2026 New York, NY National Association of Music Merchants Show
January 26-29, 2026 Las Vegas, NV International Ticketing Association Annual Conference
February 25-28, 2026 Providence, RI American Choral Directors Association Eastern Conference
February 25-28, 2026 Milwaukee, WI American Choral Directors Association Midwestern Region Conference
February 25-28, 2026 San Francisco, CA Suzuki Association of the Americas Conference
March 2026 Salt Lake City, UT Music Library Association Annual Meeting
March 4-7, 2026 Tacoma, WA American Choral Directors Association Northwestern Region Conference
March 4-7, 2026 Memphis, TN American Choral Directors Association Southern Region Conference
March 4-7, 2026 Albuquerque, NM American Choral Directors Association Southwestern Region Conference
March 4-7, 2026 San Jose, CA American Choral Directors Association Western Region Conference
March 18-21, 2026 Long Beach, CA US Institute for Theatre Technology Annual Conference
March 21-25, 2026 Chicago, IL Music Teachers National Association National Conference
April 9-11, 2026 Milwaukee, WI National Association for Campus Activities Conference
April 18-22, 2026 Las Vegas, NV National Association of Broadcasters Show
May 19-22, 2026 Singapore International Society for the Performing Arts
July 3-7, 2026 San Antonio, TX National Association of Teachers of Singing Conference
July 6-10, 2026 St. Louis, MO American Guild of Organists
August 20-23, 2026 Chicago, IL Chamber Music America
January 12-14, 2027 New York, NY International Society for the Performing Arts
April 2-6, 2027 St. Louis, MO Music Teachers National Association National Conference

Ask Edna
Edna Landau’s blog
Edna LandauEdna Landau—doyenne of the music business, long-time managing director of IMG Artists and director of career development at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles—writes Ask Edna exclusively for MusicalAmerica.com to provide invaluable advice to music students and young professional artists. Read more about Edna’s impact on the performing arts.

Send your questions to Edna Landau at AskEdna@MusicalAmerica.com and she’ll answer through Ask Edna. Click the links below to read Edna’s recent columns on the critical aspects of launching and managing and professional music career.

Arts Administration

Career Etiquette

Communicating with Your Audience

Finding a Manager

For Chamber Music Ensembles

Listening to Your Inner Voice

Managing Your Own Career

Publicity and Promotion

The Orchestral World

When It Comes to Recording

During Edna’s 23 years as managing director of IMG Artists, she personally looked after the career of violinist, Itzhak Perlman and launched the careers of musicians such as pianists Evgeny Kissin and Lang Lang, violinist Hilary Hahn, and conductors Franz Welser-Mõst and Alan Gilbert.

Edna believes young musicians can grow their own careers, with “hard work, blind faith, passion for the cause, incessant networking and a vision that refuse[s] to be tarnished by naysayers.”

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People in the News

'Renewed' Artist of the Month: Tenor Limmie Pulliam

July 1, 2022 | By Zachary Lewis, Musical America

After stepping away from music entirely for over a decade, disenchanted with the scene, especially for black musicians, tenor Limmie Pulliam is back. With a vengeance.

“That entrance, you have to nail it,” says the Missouri native. “You have to come out with guns blazing.”

In the title role of the Cleveland Orchestra’s concert production of Verdi’s Otello last May, he indeed “nailed it,” commanding the stage, declaring a hero's victory, then later simmering with rage and slowly descending into paranoia. “There’s really no way to describe that initial bombardment of the storm scene, even from backstage. It gives you such a rush…. That will always be a career highlight for me.”

Sharing the limelight with him and Music Director Franz Welser-Möst in Severance Hall were soprano Tamara Wilson as Desdemona and baritone Christopher Maltman as Iago. “I’m still pinching myself that I got to share the stage with the Cleveland Orchestra,” says Pulliam. He considers it his “big break. It’s already opened doors for me.”

And it almost didn’t happen.

Already a replacement for another artist who’d withdrawn from the role months earlier, Pulliam contracted Covid shortly before rehearsals in Cleveland, and had to go into quarantine. Fortunately, his case was mild.  

Once recovered, he faced another hurdle: His father, a pastor who had long nurtured his son’s interest in music, passed away. Pulliam considered backing out.

“It was his wish that I continue,” Pulliam says. “But it was difficult. You want to be at the optimal level, but we as singers, there are very few times when we truly feel 100 percent. We learn to depend on our technique to usher ourselves through difficult times.”

Limmie Pulliam as Canio, with Washington's Vashon Opera

It’s fitting that Pulliam’s big break took place in Cleveland. After attending Oberlin Conservatory, where he studied with Richard Miller, Pulliam made his professional debut in Northeast Ohio, as a member of the Young Artist Program at the former Cleveland Opera. His fondest memory of that time is of a touring performance of Carmen for area schoolchildren. “It was great fun. You never know those things are going to affect a child’s trajectory in life.”

By that point, Pulliam already had been singing for a while, especially in his father’s church (“It was my introduction to how my voice affected people”).

His first exposure to classical music was in middle school choir, where he sang in the choir and was classified as a bass. “I didn’t have the technical know-how to access my upper range, but it was there,” Pulliam says. Confirmed, no doubt, by his popular imitations of Stevie Wonder.

A high school choir director was the first to correctly identify his voice part and to point him to opera, specifically to “Una Furtiva Lagrima,” from Donizetti’s L'elisir d'amore, with which the young singer won a Missouri state singing competition. That was enough to land Pulliam a spot at Oberlin and implant the notion of a career in music.

He could have continued on that trajectory. He wasn’t having trouble finding work. Around 2000, however, the budding professional grew “disenchanted,” he says, and went on hiatus for what he thought would be six months.

It turned out to be 12 years. A stint as a bodyguard (Pulliam is an imposing physical presence) gradually led him to launch a successful security firm in St. Louis, MO. 

Obama opens the door

Then, in 2007, Pulliam took another sharp turn, one that eventually led him back to music. Working for the Obama campaign, he began singing the national anthem at rallies. There he re-discovered both his love for music and the darker, more mature nature of his instrument.

“It was through that process that I began to notice the changes I’d gone through vocally,” Pulliam says. “I could tell that I had missed singing.”

Thus began the climb back to nuture his innate gift. Pulliam began training independently, then with a teacher. He also returned to performing and competing, and again met with success, winning the 2012 Vocal Competition of the National Opera Association. In opera, his “debut 2.0” was as Canio in Pagliacci, with Vashon Opera in Washington state.

Things moved quickly. Through social media, a tool he’d mastered working for Obama’s campaign, he was able to get his name and voice on the radar of far more presenting groups than ever before. Indeed, it was on YouTube that Wesler-Möst and the Clevelanders discovered Pulliam, singing Otello with Livermore Valley Opera.

He also discovered that he wasn’t always the only person of color on stage anymore. Noting that there is still much room for improvement, Pulliam thinks that equity in classical music is markedly better than it was in the mid-1990s. Not only are there more young artists of color, there’s also an older generation of mentors.

“I’m heartened to see the youngest crop, who are just starting out on new careers,” he says, “but it’s [also] priceless to have a support system of people who’ve walked the path before me.”

Pulliam’s own path now is looking particularly bright. His Cleveland performance led swiftly to a call from the Philadelphia Orchestra. Ahead of him now lie appearances with Portland Opera, the San Diego Symphony, and his alma mater, the Oberlin Conservatory.

Limmie Pulliam is not a new artist. But he certainly has a new career ahead of him.

 

Photo above: With Tamara Wilson as Desdemona in Cleveland Orchestra's Otello

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