After I taught my class about branding -- using an Apple-gadget charger and some chocolate -- one of my students gave a branding example: Lang Lang's haircut. You know it's him, as soon as you see his hair. And a few commenters here decried branding as shallow, surface stuff. But remember that the chocolates -- with their varied shapes, and varied-color wrapping -- look different because they're different inside. And that's what branding ought to be about: What you are inside. Which then shows on the outside, and makes people remember … [Read more...]

As I said in my last post, I'm stressing entrepreneurship this semester, in my Juilliard course on the future of classical music. And, of course, entrepreneurship is a major buzzword at music schools right now. But why? What's the purpose of this? Well, here's one useful explanation, which surfaced, very helpfully, in a working group I'm part of, in which we're helping to shape an entrepreneurship curriculum at a particular music school. Entrepreneurship, said one of our members, will help students shape their careers in a variety of … [Read more...]

Spring semester has started, and that means I teach my Juilliard course on the future of classical music. The link takes you to the class schedule for the course, complete with links to most of the assignments. Which means you can read what the students read, and listen to what the students listen to, and watch the videos I've asked the students to watch, if you'd like to do these things. This, amazingly, is the 16th year that I've taught this course. Which among much else means, as I've said, that we've been talking about a classical music … [Read more...]