Summer Update: NCKP, AE Summit, and more...

Hi all,

I'm writing today from the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy (just outside Chicago, IL). It's been fun to participate as a poster presenter here for the first time, and I'm happy to report that, finally, the importance of arts entrepreneurship is becoming more recognized in the realm of piano pedagogy: all three keynote addresses were positioned to tackle particular facets of the issue.

Particularly of note was the talk given by Prof. Jose Antonio Bowen, Dean of the Meadows School of the Arts at SMU, who called upon artists to make their art relevant to the community, locally oriented, and innovative in concept. Both his professional experience and message epitomize the issues Arts Enterprise is striving to achieve. I'd highly recommend checking out his website: http://www.josebowen.com/.

I also had the chance to meet Reno Lovison, a true entrepreneur and the author of the fun, easy-to-read, and informative book "Turn Your Business Cards into a Business." He came by to check out my poster presentation, and we got to talking about the necessity of building interpersonal connections to funnel potential clients/partners/collaborators to your Website or network (a major topic of his book). By the way, afterwards I picked up his book and would recommend it any artist who is developing a press kit or Website! Check it out his site here: http://www.businesscardtobusiness.com/. There you can read more about his multi-faceted career, read his online blog, and listen to various podcasts (they are short and, to this ear, present an interesting point-of-view about personal marketing in the 21st Century).

One more note: the AE Summit is close upon us (August 14-16) and it promises to offer AE Madison and the other participating schools an exciting opportunity to develop a more diverse, innovative, and inclusive program offering for the coming year. To read more about that, check out the article at the AE National Website: http://www.artsenterprise.com/ (click on Events).

For now though, I'm off to Montreal tomorrow, and then to the Orford Arts Academy...Summer is flying by and before we know it Fall (and school) will be upon us again. Until then, I hope you all are having a wonderful break...and look for a list of upcoming AE Madison events for 2009-10 coming soon!

Cheers....