Incredible conversations with classical musicians about feelings (YES!), finding their value and career transitions.
Meet professional classical musicians now thriving as entrepreneurs, master craftsmen, counsellors, personal trainers, software developers, lawyers and more more.
We need to NORMALISE the reality of underemployment, unemployment, career pivots and exits for classical musicians. Are you with me?
Think classical musicians only make music?
Think again.
#changeyourtune
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Paul Bruch-Wiens is a Private Wealth Manager at Quadrant Private Wealth, based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, where he lives with his spouse, two children and still has a deep passion for the performing arts.
QUOTES
“Singing in close harmony with my family and church community was a way of life. It was something you just did every Sunday.”
“After I finished a business degree, the only thing I could do to have gainful employment based on the training was to be a bookkeeper. But I’d already done that for 3 years as a part time job. It wasn’t interesting to me. So instead I studied for a Master of Music.”
“There was no job lined up for you coming out of music school, but I adamantly chose not to be a music teacher.”
“I got the job (in a bank) and thought it would solve everything. But it didn’t. It was really difficult to come to terms with making the wholesale change. In my heart of hearts I was still a performer and the reality of the situation had not caught up with me. I just didn’t believe it. I perhaps thought I would go back.”
“I have all of these things to pull experience from. People don’t necessarily want advice from people who haven’t felt that themselves”
“It’s liberating when you find yourself, and let go of who you think you should be.”
A former professional oboe and cor anglais player based in London, Sadah Webster now works as an investigator and intelligence analyst. Investigating whistleblower complaints and misuses of public office.
QUOTES
“I was halfway through a Bachelor of Music degree when I took a year off to study linguistics and live in Thailand.”
“I didn’t know what I was doing, I was petrified all the time and I was burned out.”
“Looking back, emotionally, I think the fact that I was advanced as a player quite early on and I got thrown into a lot of stuff which was great for my playing but emotionally I wasn't ready.”
“Because I had solely focussed on being an Oboist, I didn’t know anything else.”
“I had various attempts at retraining, but a sense of purpose came much later in my emotional journey.”
“As a freelancer, you never know why you don’t get booked.”
“The context in which we learn perpetuates “there’s something wrong with me” and the same toxic productivity runs through the law school as in music school.”
“Assumptions are being made about your work ethic, motivation and ability to use your time. I had been told by various teachers that I was lazy when I couldn't practice more because instead I had to work to earn a living.”
“The only tool the teachers have is “well just practice more”.
“The work was more stressful than enjoyable, the balance had totally shifted and I was just exhausted.”
“The cost benefit analysis of being an oboist doesn’t make sense, but I didn’t know how to make that assessment when I was studying.”
Kate studied music at Manchester University. Whilst at uni she took a part-time job at The Bridgewater Hall, a concert hall in Manchester. There, she fell in love with ticketing, data and technology and is now Strategy Director at Supercool, a digital design agency working in the cultural sector.
QUOTES
I have an overview of a lot of different aspects of the business which is what I find really interesting. I see that big picture, where the problems are and join dots.
I worked at a concert hall in Manchester, it was really interesting to see what audiences were really interested in, what they were passionate about going to.
It was always really exciting to have my pieces performed. But the only people that were really in the room were the friends that I dragged along and other composers.
So when you study classical music, there is this sense that there is high art, there's proper music. And then you have the less good music and I started to question that a bit.
After working in ticketing, I geeked out about the technology and ended up at a tech company called Spectrix that build ticketing platform for the art sector. And I really loved it there.
When I got to university it was a very different environment, there was a lot of pressure. Having grown up in North Wales, there were loads of orchestras. I took part in the small local orchestra, then the regional orchestra and then the National Youth Orchestra of Wales. And I played the double bass and sometimes in those situations, people are just happy for you to turn up because there aren't many double Bassists so they were just happy that I had an instrument and could turn up and play some of the notes. But at university, there was a different level of pressure that was on me.
I've never loved practicing on my own. When I was at university, that's one of the things that made me realize I'm probably never going to be cut out to be an actual full time professional musician, because spending many hours sat in a room on my own all day is not my idea of fun. I really like being around people.
The thing I loved about composing was that you could come up with an idea for something and you could create it from scratch yourself. And I still like doing that, and that relates to the bigger picture problem solving. You have an idea of what you want to convey and what is the best way to do that.
DRAWN ON THE WAY with Sarah Nisbett
Season 3 · Episode 1
Sunday, January 9, 2022 • Duration 53:52
A former opera singer and self-taught live illustrator, Sarah Nisbett loves to draw the people, places and things she encounters “on the way.” Her Drawn On The Way project is helping people find the extraordinary in the everyday and to see themselves and others as works of art. Read the transcript.
QUOTES
“I learned how to draw on the New York subway. It was a strange kind of art school.”
“I was curious about people. Who is this person? And that was an experience I liked.”
“I had a realisation “what if there was no more work or gigs?” I realised that being successful meant travelling a lot and there’s a toll on your mental health. I didn’t know if that was my future.”
“The more successful I was in opera, the high wire got thinner and taller and I thought I don’t know if this (opera) is more important than everything else in life.”
“I was always interested in advertising, in the words, pictures and storytelling. I realised I do that as a performer.”
“What are the things in myself I would like to get paid for?”
“Today I am “playing” the role of competent office worker.”
“Your creativity and music is always a part of you, you just need to find a way to let it out.”
“Drawing in stolen moments was my oasis.”
“I started sharing my work online, to tell a story and to help people have a beautiful experience.”
Ingrid Martin is a highly sought after conductor and music educator. Ingrid trained in Medicine at Monash University and worked as an emergency physician while maintaining a busy musical life as a Conductor, Horn Player and Violinist. A decision to further her conducting training meant relocating to the University of Minnesota where she completed a postgraduate degree with mentor, Craig Kirchhoff.
QUOTES
“Being an empathetic person is what makes a successful doctor and what also makes a successful conductor.”
“ I realised that actually I’ve done this before, and I have a lot of skills in this area already which only happened because I’d done medicine. If I’d studied music, I wouldn’t have had to make all those opportunities.” “Whatever you do when you finish school, in fact whatever you do at all doesn’t actually define you.”
Joel Carnegie is an award winning broadcaster, documentary maker, performer and founder of the international media production house The Space Company. Joel pursued a Performance Degree on Horn from the University of Melbourne and Die Universität für Musik und darstellende Austria, and post graduate study in Communications and Media at RMIT before building his unique career as an entrepreneur, storyteller, performer and musician.
QUOTES
“There was one track for me, that was finishing Year 12, heading off to the Conservatorium and sailing off into the sunset to become an orchestral musician. That was really what I thought life was going to be like.”
“Music needs to speak something of today or needs to connect with someone about something of today. Great music does that and music that doesn’t, perhaps shouldn’t be played.”
“There is life beyond music, there is life beyond study and there is life beyond Mozart.”
Jennika Anthony-Shaw is a Barrister who held the position of Project Manager and Commercial Group Proceedings Coordinator for the Supreme Court of Victoria. Jennika has performance degrees from McGill University and the Manhattan School of Music and built a successful freelance career as a global trotting Cellist before embarking upon the path that would lead her to the law
QUOTES
“I started out in New York where everyone is really good. There’s 3 or 4 top music schools in the city and you do have to compete for work or create your own work.”
“I didn’t want to let myself down. I felt there was a lot of expectation to keep succeeding, keep playing music and to somehow manage to progress my career beyond where it was.”
As musicians we like to think we can work anywhere, it is odd to think sometimes you’re prevented from doing that.”
Katherine Norman is the Senior Account Manager, Presenter Services at Arts Centre Melbourne and is responsible for the logistics of over 3,000 events across their 6 venues each year. Katherine pursued degrees in Biochemistry and Music before embarking on a career in venue management which saw her work as Usher Manager at the Royal Opera House in Convent Garden before returning to Melbourne.
QUOTES
“My main and first degree was a Bachelor of Science majoring in Biochemistry. I’d resisted the temptation to study music from about the age of 15. When I was about 20 I just had to bow to it.”
“I’ve been fortunate to work with virtually every major performing arts company, certainly that's been through Melbourne and across Australiawhich is an amazing opportunity.”
“My music degree, and my science degree, but particularly my music degree has been such an amazing foundation in being willing to try new things.”
Dave Melgaard leads a team of testing experts at Idea Science to find optimum solutions for clients and strengthen testing capabilities. Before that, he studied Trumpet at the VCA, Melbourne University and the Royal College of Music in London. He held the position of Trumpet Master with the Slovenian National Opera and Ballet Orchestra before returning to Australia to build a new career in business.
QUOTES
“So many of the skills you learn in music are so useful in business.”
“In sales, you can sell a big job or something important and this feeds 4 or 5 or 30 people for the next year. I find meaning in that. It’s not just about me playing the trumpet.”
“Now I work in IT and fundamentally, running a band isn’t that dissimilar from running an IT shop.”
“As much as you love Puccini, once you’ve played it 400 times it becomes a bit tedious.”
CONCERTS ARE HARDER THAN SURGERY with Tony Prochazka
Season 2 · Episode 5
Sunday, November 21, 2021 • Duration 40:47
Tony Prochazka pursued a non-conformist training in both medicine and music. He interrupted his medical career to study Jazz Guitar at the VCA, having played Cello with the Australian Youth Orchestra during his schooling. He studied Classical Cello in Germany and London before building a successful career in cosmetic surgery.
QUOTES
“By the end of it I was just sold on music and that was really my awakening I guess at just how fantastic it could be.”
“I just remember we had some conversations, my parents and I. I said I would like to be a musician, they said it’s a hard life there’s no guarantees.”
“The idea of the arc of a musical phrase is very similar to the idea of the construction of the face, or the balance of the face.”
I definitely built up my tech savviness whilst I was at uni, doing electro acoustic and recording. That definitely helped because I was using computers and complex programs at the time.
I don't think anybody who is learning music when they're young, and goes to study a music degree says “actually what I want is to work in ticketing”. But it's a fascinating sector.
In my current role, probably the most exciting bit is when you meet an organization for the first time and you stop and think about what their new website is going to be.
Creating a website is like composing, it’s like when you have that really awkward rehearsal with the musicians where they tell you all the things you've written that aren't possible on their instrument because you read it's possible somewhere. They’re not superhumans.
I think one of the biggest things is listening. I think that I noticed this when I was doing improvisation. Really good improvisers know that they don't have to make sound all the time, it's okay just to listen.
I think those improvisation skills have just been incredibly valuable going forward, especially when dealing with other people in workshop situations and discovery situations, or meetings in general. With people being able to realize that it's okay to just listen, and not always having to contribute something.
There's lots of other things as well, things like being able to see patterns and see what's going on in a bigger picture. I was thinking recently about how when you're learning a piece for the first time, you're constantly shifting between the kind of very small micro moments and the bigger picture of the piece that you're learning.
I might spend an hour of my morning testing one tiny little feature on a website. Understanding how that feature applies to the larger customer journey, how it will improve the end customer and the client in terms of how they communicate with their customers, makes that one hour worthwhile. Even if I'm just frustratingly changing a button for one hour.
Being able to do things like public speaking, being able to walk into a room full of strangers, being able to go to a conference and walk up to somebody and have a chat. That is incredibly hard for a lot of people. Whereas I was sent off to orchestra rehearsals, and it was a whole different social network.
Community music is a great place to learn it's, a great place to experiment, to learn in a way that you might not have the freedom to do in an organization where there's a little bit more scrutiny on what you post on Twitter and things like that.
Theme Music Recorded Lady Marigold Southey Performance Studio, 3MBS Fine Music in Melbourne in October 2016. With thanks to recording engineer Cheryl Scott.
Theme Music Recorded Lady Marigold Southey Performance Studio, 3MBS Fine Music in Melbourne in October 2016. With thanks to recording engineer Cheryl Scott.
FIRST BROADCAST
05 January 2017
Theme Music Recorded Lady Marigold Southey Performance Studio, 3MBS Fine Music in Melbourne in October 2016. With thanks to recording engineer Cheryl Scott.
Theme Music Recorded Lady Marigold Southey Performance Studio, 3MBS Fine Music in Melbourne in October 2016. With thanks to recording engineer Cheryl Scott.
Theme Music Recorded Lady Marigold Southey Performance Studio, 3MBS Fine Music in Melbourne in October 2016. With thanks to recording engineer Cheryl Scott.
Theme Music Recorded Lady Marigold Southey Performance Studio, 3MBS Fine Music in Melbourne in October 2016. With thanks to recording engineer Cheryl Scott.
FIRST BROADCAST
06 December 2016
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14/11/2025
#57
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🇺🇸 USA - musicInterviews
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#47
🇨🇦 Canada - musicInterviews
12/11/2025
#44
🇺🇸 USA - musicInterviews
12/11/2025
#42
🇺🇸 USA - musicInterviews
11/11/2025
#35
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