PROFESSIONAL GROWTH
Click on the tabs below to advance your career by searching Contests & Awards, Schools, Festivals, Camps, Service Organizations, and our list of Services and Products, Scholarships and Grants and Events and Conferences.
And be sure to browse the excellent career advice offered by legendary Artist Manager Edna Landau in her Ask Edna blog and the entertainment law experts in their Law and Disorder blog.
US/Canada Arts Administration Degree Programs
Music Schools & Departments
Summer Music Camps & Special Programs
Services & Professional Music Orgs (non-profit)
Performing Arts Industry Events and Conferences
AskEdna: Career Advice blog
Scholarships and Grants
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.
Communicating with Your Audience
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.”
Special Reports
MA Top 30 Professional: danah bella
Professor and Chair of Dance
Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University
When Covid hit in 2020, danah bella was in the second school year of leading a new BFA program as chair of dance at the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University. Suddenly, all the students went home and classes were online.
“We had students dancing in their living rooms while the faculty taught over Zoom,” said bella, who worked with colleagues to provide students with portable dance floors with an attachable ballet barre. “The floor was absorbent enough for them to jump on it and not injure themselves. It made the students feel like Peabody wanted to take care of them during a difficult time.”
The virtual studio is far from ideal for dance instruction, but it has one useful asset. “When we were online we were able to have master classes with guest artists in South America, Europe, and Asia,” bella said. “It was really meaningful to connect with somebody that far away. We still do it with some lectures and dance classes.”
Bella describes her modern dance company, danahbella Danceworks (now on hiatus), as being “focused on reclaiming evocative movement as social practice,” and that applies as well to her vision for the new Peabody program, which includes coursework around issues of race, class, and gender as they relate to dance. Enrollment this year comprises 35 dance students, with most hoping to perform professionally.
“Peabody is a great place for someone with a passion for dance but who also wants to become a citizen artist with an interest in areas other than dance,” bella said, noting that students at the conservatory may have dual majors in dance and other disciplines at Johns Hopkins. “In our first cohort of graduates, the class of ‘22, one woman got a dual degree in dance and natural sciences. And now we have more dancers pursuing dual degrees, which in many conservatories is not possible.”