On What Pianists Don't Like

Nope, don't like!

1) New Bärenreiter opera scores

The score wants to be closed. It has absolutely no interest in being open for you to see the notes inside, so you'll have to hold the score with one hand and play only with the other. That's a meaningful contribution to music, right? Don Giovanni, the left hand version? Bärenreiter folk, a friendly tip: do start developing new score technology - an EasyToTurn page system and an EasyToKeepOpen pianist edition of all your operas. And if you could deliver them before I get any more gray hairs that would be great. Thanks.

2) Being told how difficult a piece is

The scale starts from somewhere like "It's super easy, you'll sight read it in no time" and continues all the way to "This is very, very hard. It's better that someone else plays this, someone who already knows the stuff". It can put a pianist in a tricky situation - if you're told it's not that hard and for you it is, can you admit it? Or should you just smile and nod and try to hide the panic rising to your throat? And if you're told it's way too hard for you, should you try to prove them wrong or smile and nod and only burst into tears when you get home?

Singers are notoriously bad at estimating what is easy and what is not for a pianist, but this applies to pianists themselves, too. So many times I've been told how difficult a piece is to learn or sight read just to find that for me it's much easier or harder than what I've been led to believe. The truth is, and this should be obvious to everyone, that different things are difficult for different people. I'm really good at sightreading stuff, leaving out whatever I don't have time to deal with and bringing out the harmonies and the basic form of the piece. What I'm not so great at is accompanying with chords. I know how to read a score, but to invent something out of thin air using only my imagination? Let's set something straight here: I don't have an imagination, so please don't expect me to improvise on the spot just because the other pianist had no trouble with it. I'll work on it, ask friends for help and come back later with a tolerable version, but that's that. Also, I hate playing from handwritten scores and French editions with their minuscule print.

This works both ways now: pianists, do not believe any assesments of a piece but rather make your own, and you non-pianists expecting us all to be God knows what kind of monster geniuses - remember we're all individuals with different personalities and skillsets, just like barbies or cats.

3) Conducting and finger snapping

Snap at dogs, not at pianists, and if you're not an actual conductor, don't conduct. Don't wave your arms or try to guide the poor player into the correct tempo with any sort of gesticulating, thank you very much. It is seriously annoying and won't make you any friends. So what is a poor singer to do when the pianist has a wrong tempo? Either sing faster or slower and let them follow you, or just tell the pianist. With words. They'll love you for it.

I was performing once with a teacher turning the pages, and they started to conduct my intro to an aria because they felt my tempo was too slow. We were onstage and there was an actual spotlight on us so the whole audience could see the teacher's displeasure with my choice. Did I change the tempo accordingly? Hell no. Did I seriously contemplate setting their car on fire? Oh yes.

4) Not getting attention

Let's be honest here: pianists working with singers don't get their equal share of the limelight. Singers are interesting to the general public, and pianists - not so. This manifests itself in so many ways it would take a couple of blogposts to do justice to them all, but shortly and simply: it's not nice to hear that your contribution to a concert is irrelevant or uninteresting. Of course we know that a vocal recital with just the singer would in most cases be found wanting, but it's sad that we have to defend ourselves by pointing this out. No picture in the advertisement, no name in the program, requests to work for free or significantly cheaper than the vocal expert because it's "just accompanying" - I've encountered all of these and more. And why did we perform again? Because we're attention-seeking narcissists who want to be in the spotlight in fancy clothing. So you, singer, yes, I'm talking to you! - next time you're working with a pianist, make sure their name is out there and praise them a little. Tell them they are indeed important to you. And look, you've acquired an obedient, adoring piano slave who'll stay with you for life.

5) Badly copied scores and untaped ones

Scores that have the vocal line and plenty of space above but with most of the bass line missing from the lowest staff? Scores with the last bar missing from every line? Yay! How am I supposed to know what The Great Composer was thinking there? As mentioned above, pianists aren't evil monster geniuses that possess a hidden mental vault that includes all music ever written, so they cannot dip into that reserve when notes are missing from the page. Of course one can make an educated guess of what might logically come next, but that kind of exercise was aplenty on my theory lessons back in the days, and personally I'd rather not go back to that sorry time. I completed the courses and now I have zero interest in guessing what Schubert / Strauss / Grand Something had in mind for this particular passage. I'd rather be tempted to believe the composer had a brief Schönbergian period on that particular gap, and fill it with accordingly delightful sounds.

Untaped scores, however - let's see, how many here like taping scores? How many of you can't wait for the next intense session of you, sheets of paper and scotch tape? If there are any people passionate about this, please contact me at once; your passion will not go to waste. The rest of us just have to deal with it the best we can. On singing lessons these flyabout papers are a particular annoyance, because they will fall and they will be in the wrong order at some point and there will be chaos, wasted time, and tears of frustration. This could be avoided, I'm told, by buying an ipad - an expensive digital item that can contain all your scores forevermore. Well I don't trust machines. There has to be something deeply wrong with playing music from a screen instead of paper. I'd much rather tape and rant instead.

6) C sharp major

What can I say. It's a shit key.

On Doing Great

"I. Said. I'm. Fine."

Hi! How are you?

Hi! I'm doing great! Super busy right now, so many interesting projects going on that I hardly have time to sleep! So inspiring!

(...and when I would have time to sleep I just can't because my to-do list keeps spinning around in my head getting longer and longer, I have no clean socks anymore and no time to wash them and every new work request makes me want to vomit the lunch I forgot to eat because it's just all too much and I want to die on a desert island with a book and a bottle of wine and never hear a second of music ever again.)

Hi! How are you?

I'm great, thanks! I'm working less nowadays and it feels awesome. I have so much more time to enjoy life and take care of myself. It's really important for a musician to have other things in their life as well, not just their career.

(I'm having a dry spell. Very little work coming this way, and I lie awake at night worrying about next month's rent and whether I should retrain as a shop assistant. I'm having so much me-time that I'm starting to thoroughly despise myself, and I'd pay to get a gig.)

Hi! How are you?

I'm good! So busy applying for all these grants that are due now - I've got such a cool concert idea I'm looking forward to creating!

(...but I'm pretty sure other people will get all the money I would've deserved. My confidence in the idea sails from high to low - one day I'm booking Carnegie Hall sure that the different foundations are dying to pour money into my brilliant scheme, and the next I'm burning my application papers because the idea is commonplace, outdated, and hopelessly naive.)

Hi! How are you?

Couldn't be better - I'm teaching so much these days, and my students give me so much energy. It's so inspiring to watch them learn!

(I have hand problems but I really don't want to talk about it. I'm afraid I'll never perform again if this doesn't heal, and I feel like I've lost half of my identity. Without my students I'd starve in a ditch. My cheeks hurt from all the encouraging smiling and my head is full of recent pop tunes spiced with some Für Elises and Walking in the airs, and the next time someone tells me they simply forgot to practice I'll retire for good.)

Hi! How are you?

Awesome, just awesome. I have more concerts than I can fit in my calendar, but I'm loving every minute of it.

(I would really love performing if I'd had the time to practice the stuff properly, which I now don't since there are all the other concerts and so many different programs and so much music and so little time. My performing outfit reeks of sweat, I have trouble sleeping and my personal life is falling apart. The apartment is full of dying flowers stuck in random bottles since the landlady refuses to accept grand flower arrangements as rent, and the fridge is empty since shops don't want the damn flowers either.)

Hi! How are you?

I'm great! I'm a freelancer, so my life is a permanent mess of either too much or too little work - I'm trying to keep either a burnout or financial ruin at bay. But as I'm a professional musician I market myself as a thriving, busy artist with heaps of confidence, gigs, plans, hope, and creative potential. A professional musician is not desperate or insecure, and they certainly don't have physical problems, injuries, or any mental issues for that matter.

Hi! How are you?

What if next time I really answered the question instead of responding with marketing talk?

 

On Female Composers

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that the history of classical music is a predominantly white male effort. I find it weird that I never questioned this until a few years ago. It wasn't a good or a bad thing, it was just a fact, like water being wet. A debate about whether female composers should be more present in concert programs has been going on in Finnish media this year, and this question has been circling in my own head for a while, too. A great summary on the different views can be heard - in Finnish - from Yle Areena: Kare Eskola has a radio program Välilevyjä in which he comments on the matter. (The other episodes are awesome, too.) My view is that yes, womens voices should be more present. Why, you might ask. What I'm wondering is - why not.

When I was 19, my vocal teacher wanted me to sing Er, der Herrlichste von Allen by Schumann. I disliked the song from the beginning and found it hard to relate to the poem. The woman seemed like such a submissive idiot, crawling in mud in front of a god-like hero lover. I still don't like the song - now I just have more reasons to find it problematic. For me the main issue is that both the music and the text are written by adult men trying to relate to the feelings of a young girl. The whole cycle, Frauenliebe und -leben, is built on this extremely common foundation: a woman being portrayed through the eyes of men. Whereas Winterreise and other big romantic song cycles deal with the deep and dark stuff going on in the philosophical mind of man, Frauenliebe und -leben is about finding a guy, getting married, and then dealing with his death. Six songs were enough to sum up a womans entire existence, focusing solely on how she feels about men. I do not object to men writing about women (or to women writing about men), but what I thoroughly despise is that this particular song cycle is still being presented as the female view of things. IT'S NOT THE FUCKING FEMALE VIEW - THE CREATORS WERE BOTH MALE. THE FEMALE VIEW IS MISSING FROM ALMOST THE ENTIRE CLASSICAL MUSIC CANON BECAUSE WE WEREN'T INVITED TO THE PARTY UNTIL YESTERDAY.

(Oops, got a bit upset there. It's just really hard to talk about this calmly because I'm so overwhelmingly angry at the entire Western Civilisation.)

My personal anger aside, here are some thoughts on why I think more female composers works should be a bigger part - or at least some kind of part - of our concert repertoire.

The people who think we're fine as we are often use the same argument: if we start adding female composers works to the programs for equality's sake, the quality of the music will diminish. The E in front of quality suddenly makes the latter disappear. The problem with this argument is that most of the music I'd like to perform is extremely hard to find. So how did we know it's shit again? We haven't even heard it. One answer to this is that if the music was good, it would've become famous already. For me this seems like horseshit - becoming famous depends on so many factors. And even Bach himself, the mighty God of Music, was quite unpopular at one time. I wonder what would've happened to the canon we hold so dear if the musicians who rediscovered his stuff had decided that since Bach was forgotten once, he should stay that way. I'm not saying that every unknown female composer is a forgotten genious, but one of them might be. Bach was. 

Got sidetracked, again. What I wanted to say earlier in the midst of my anger was that many Finnish female composers works from the 20th century have not been recorded or even published, so I would argue that these equality critics are not acquainted with even a fraction of the feminine music out there. It is disheartening that these compositions are cast aside as inferior and uninteresting before they're even given a chance.

I'm currently spending a lot of time researching and planning concerts with only female composers music. Why? Because I think it deserves to be heard, and the way to make it heard is to play it, not rant about it. (As satisfying as ranting might be.) I want to perform music created by women and composed to texts written by women because it's a viewpoint I'm interested in. Because it's so rare, unfamiliar and hard to find. Because I've spent most of my career studying the male stuff and I'd like to see what else is out there. The unquestionably great music written by men has always had plenty of attention, and I'm not suggesting it shouldn't. It could, however, make room for others too. In my concerts it will. 

On Becoming an Entrepreneur

​
I had a lot of questions about becoming an entrepreneur, and for many years I was firmly against it. Last week I decided to start a company anyway, and now I'm sharing with you the Q&A that went on inside my head before I made the decision. I must warn you, this is a very boring blog post that contains information instead of funny bits. Sorry. Also the information is only valid in Finland. Sorry again.

Will I lose all unemployment benefits?  (This was perhaps The Question for me.)

The magic word is PART-TIME. If you work through your company only part-time and you can prove it (=if the hours are so few you could realistically accept a full-time job), then you will be considered a PART-TIME ENTREPRENEUR and your unemployment benefits will be just fine. This is not related to money, I'm told - it's literally the hours you work they're interested in. If you earn most of your income as an employee, you can still stay in your old unemployment fund (työttömyyskassa). If, on the other hand, you'll start earning most of your income as an entrepreneur, they have unemployment funds of their own that you can join.

What do I even need it for?? 

I founded the company mainly to be able to work with singers professionally. The other options are not great for me, but they might be great for you - so here they are:

• Use cash and everyone's happy. No hassle. It is, on the other hand, quite illegal. 
• Use a company to do the billing for you. This is not very cost-effective, because they take a certain percentage of your income as a fee for making your life easier. Your life will not be that much easier.
• Use your daddy's company. This might be a fantastic idea, except that I don't have this option available so I had to fly solo.

What should I charge? What about all those taxes and other weird stuff? 

Charge what you want to earn, PLUS your expenses. If you keep the company very small, the expenses will be equally small, so you can also charge less. If you earn less than 7800€ per year through the company, the only thing you need to pay is taxes. Then up to 10.000€ per year you need to pay for a pension as well, and that's 18% of your income. Earning over 10.000€ in this business you'll have to start paying ALV, which is a Finnish something something tax, and that's 24% for teaching, less for some other things. So, earning more, your expenses might suddenly skyrocket, and you'll have to be aware of more stuff. 

My plan: keep it really small and simple for now to have time to learn all the stuff - plus it's less of a bother that way.

Should I make my prices public? 

I did. For me there's too much secrecy going on in our field, so I wanted to be transparent. It's so frustrating to always have to negotiate your salaries in the dark, not knowing if you're grossly underpriced. I still don't know if what I charge is in any way related to what other pianists make, but at least they'll have one point of reference now on my website. I wish I'd had that when I started working.

Will I have to get a corporate account? They're expensive! 

For a company that consists of a single person (toiminimi in Finland) you can just open a normal account that's free. Technically you wouldn't need even that - you could just use your own account - but it's easier for yourself to keep them separate. For tax purposes you'll need to separate the company's expenses from your own anyway, so best to have them in different places altogether. Then you can "pay yourself salary" from the separate account by simply transferring money to your own. No complex calculations needed.

How will I ever learn how to send invoices? 

By reading instructions and by downloading a free example from online. There are hundreds available. What you'll need is all the basic info that you know an invoice has, plus you'll need to number them. As far as reference numbers go, you do not want to get into those. They're a bitch, and they only work on corporate accounts. You can use a message instead - all you need to do is to somehow connect a sum coming to your account to an invoice you've sent.

Bookkeeping is so hard. Should I hire an accountant? 

If it feels impossible, you should. I decided to learn it. The simplest thing of all, if you want minimum hassle, is to just bill your clients and not use the company for buying things. Then your taxes and bookkeeping is really very Marie Kondo. Nothing there. If, however, you buy things for the company, you just need an explanation of each sum that goes out of the account. A receipt and an explanation. Then at the end of the year, you'll send all this stuff to a tax person who wants them. Not higher mathematics, this.
If you want to minimize the amount of taxes you pay, you can of course spend thousands of hours optimizing this and saving in that, but I couldn't care less. The taxes I pay would make you laugh (or cry), so I don't really care if I would save three euros per year in clever tax schemes. Let the state take all the euros they will.

What if I have to hire someone else?
Don't. I don't know anything about it, and I don't want to start reading about it either having read through all this other shit. Less people, less stress.

What does it cost to register a single-person company? 

If you do it online, it's 60€.

Will it be fun at all? 

Not sure yet, but I'll keep you posted. See you on the other side!

How to Be A Succesful Musician (in 10 easy steps)

Succeeding as a musician requires two things: first, you need to be taken seriously, and then people need to remember who you are. I've received plenty of advice on how to succeed, and all of it comes down to these two essentials. Most of this advice I've got completely free of charge from colleagues who want to help a friend out and show the true path to greatness - and now I'll share these nuggets of wisdom with you, spreading the love. All you need to do is follow these 10 simple steps, and you'll succeed in no time.

You're welcome.

1. Wear make-up. Nobody will take you seriously without it. (You'll be surprised to know that a soprano told me this. I assumed it only applies to women, but hey, what do I know - a little mascara never hurt anyone.)

2. If you live in Finland, be in the Sibelius Academy. In the bachelor program, doing your masters or doctoral studies, teaching, as a janitor, just get in. Because if you're not in the Sibelius Academy, your career is as good as over - people will forget you in a flash. (Sorry, majority of Finnish musicians. Apparently everyone forgot about you.)

3. Win competitions. That's the true way towards greatness. If you just can't win, then at least (4.) have CDs to your name. Nobody buys them or listens to them, but you've got to have them to look like a pro.

5. It's easier to win competitions if you look artistic when you're playing, because then everyone will know you're a serious musician. (This nugget comes from a competition jury member.) Looking artistic means waving your arms around a lot, making faces, closing your eyes for emphasis, and keeping it visually interesting in general. The only people allowed to just sit there and play are 60+ male pianists whose CVs are longer than them. Everyone else must keep moving.

6. Build and nurture a strong online presence: facebook, instagram, twitter, youtube, soundcloud, blog, vlog... - update them regularly and curate your content so that it resonates with your target audience. Then make millions from ads and sponsor deals.

7. Have a teaching method, it's the new black. (This is forward-thinking news from Continental Europe - Finland is always years behind, but this is our chance to catch up.) I've launched the Color Star Shiny Pumpkin method that makes every child play like Lang Lang in just six weeks. It's part video game, part coloring book, and I'm selling the material on- and offline for 1.600$ per student.

8. Get your concerts right. A succesful musician only does two types of concerts: conceptual and market-friendly.

Conceptual concerts get shitloads of funding because they're innovative and new. They take classical music out of dusty concert halls and into the real world: to shopping malls, swimming pools, forests, and fire trucks. It's important to add new layers to the musical experience: at least you have to have an app for the audience, preferably an interactive video game, or then just make the audience build their own kites and fly them in an abandoned factory while you play Bach fugues on a guitar made from potatoes.

If you can't get funding, you have to make the audience buy tickets. The audience doesn't like difficult music (I've heard this from a few different singer sources), so stick to the golden hits of opera, throw in some relaxing piano classics and finish off with a musical number or two. You will get rich and then die of brain explosion during the 19.576th performance of Meine Lippen Sie Küssen So Heiss. May you rest in peace.

9. Have a company. (This I've heard from everyone who has one.) Nobody wants to employ a musician these days - they don't want to take care of all that legal hassle. Have a company and just send them the bill, that's how it's done these days. If you don't, they'll never hire you and you'll starve to death in the gutter.

10. Have attractive (and slightly suggestive) PR photos because sex sells and that's what everyone does these days.

...and that's it. Needless to say I've ignored most of this feedback. I want to believe that the work we do speaks for itself, and we will get by if we respect our colleagues, audiences, and the music itself. What more is there than performing and teaching from our hearts sincerely and honestly? Sharing music with others in a way that is true to ourselves, coming from our unique point of view? No matter how you define success, take a moment to appreciate and admire the career you have right now. Whatever it looks like, obscure or brilliant, love it. It's your very own. 

On Saying Yes

It's great when people ask you to a gig, recording, rehearsal, anything. It's nice to be asked. It becomes a problem when you already have quite a lot of work, but you think you can manage just this one thing more. And that other thing. And surely you have time for the third if you skip lunch.

It really is very nice to be asked, so yes.

Yes, I'll play the thing.

Yes, I'll learn this in two days.

Yes, of course I'll travel 18 hours for the gig.

Yes, I'll tap dance while playing. Yes, sure.

You have to say yes, or otherwise they will never ask you again and you will die alone and unhappy. You have to say yes, because musicians are supposed to work all day, every day teaching, practicing, performing, marketing, networking, improving, smiling. This is what it is to be a freelancer, it's hard work. If you stop, if you don't keep pushing, you'll be cast aside, forgotten. You're supposed to be stressed all the time and burn out before you're 30.

How great, guys, being a musician is so cool.

The reason I'm ranting about this yes-business is that I am a person who needs holidays. I need time for other things than music Every Single Week in order to remain a functioning human being. I get tired, both of music and of people, and I want to have a life that includes peace and quiet, and things that are not work. So this year I'm learning to say no.

No, I can't come.

No, I need the time to learn all the other things that I've said yes to.

No, I can't transpose this a tritone down just because the key better suits your mood today.

No, I can't do this for so little money. If I spend all my time working for free or for a pittance, I can't pay my rent or buy food.

No, I can't play for a hundred hours without break because my hands and brain need to rest every once in a while. I have already injured my hand once because I didn't have the courage to say when I wanted a break, everyone else seeming fine with the workload.

When I say that I can't/won't do something, I'm often told about all the other pianists who can and will do the thing I've said no to. They can play twenty three hours without stopping - they play every single note from the piece you think requires five hands (and they can do it with just seven fingers) - they never complain about money because they don't care about material comfort, and they sure as hell can sightread every vocal music piece on the planet. And transpose them to any key they like. While reciting a poem in Latin.

I'd love to meet these people. They sound awesome.

To those of you that aren't superheroes, a word of advice: Work the amount that feels right for you, and don't compare. You have to know how much you can cope with, what you're willing to do and for what price, and once you've set your limits, stick with them no matter what other people say. Then go and have days off. Breathe and notice the life outside music - it's worth seeing, I promise you.

On Better People

Better People^TM can play the piano really well. They know all the quick things and the slow things and the flashy things. But they're not just playing machines - they've soldiered through intense drama with a broken wrist/family/relationship, so now their musical interpretation has depths you can't even begin to grasp. To support these yogic guru -depth emotions, Better People^TM read a lot of serious books and watch serious series. This helps them be better than the people who read and watch the normal shit. The serious stuff has helped them grow as persons, and by now they've reached towering heights.

Better People^TM have their own chamber music festival, a concert series or at least an opera house. They know how to write grant applications in ways that make cultural foundations send truckloads of money to their direction - the projects Better People^TM do are so new, so now, so inspiring that the foundations compete for their support. Press is charmed to write lovely things, and the festival/concert/thing will continue next year with more money and prestige.

Better People^TM also practice regularly and take care of their physical and mental health. They have a balanced diet, but in parties they can be relaxed about food because they're not uptight, just annoyingly Better. Probably they shit rainbows. And because they're balanced, they don't burn out. They have a lot of work, but not too much, and they don't stress and worry and panic because music is really about being in harmony with your soul. Somehow they're in harmony with their wallets as well, and they make a decent living out of music while you starve.

Look around you. They're everywhere, these Better People^TM, taking over the world while you struggle in the dark and envy their things. They're your colleagues, your friends, and oops, it looks like you're one of them. Because there's someone somewhere thinking, oh how can she get all those nice things - her life looks so easy and polished and lovely. I wish I had that.

'I wish I had that' is good because it makes you aspire to things, it makes you work and hope and reach for something new. But it turns toxic when envy gets involved. In the music world - this tiny bubble we all try to work in - it's so easy to see others doing great, and so, so easy to see the jobs other people got and you didn't. And it's easy to forget the jobs you already have. The gigs you got, the projects you did. How proud you could be of this corner you've cleaned for yourself, this career that you've nurtured and fretted over. 'I wish I had that' could be replaced with 'I'm glad I've got this' and the Better People^TM would start looking more like normal ones.

Of course I might be wrong - there might really be people out there who shit rainbows.

Well. I'd pay to see that.

On Things That Never Will Be Music

Emails

There are so many emails. Imagine you're trying to arrange concerts, for example. First you have to email the possible venues to ask if they want you. Most don't. Staring at the negative answers you curse the day people stopped appreciating music and wallow in self-pity - and then send more emails. The venues that do want you require a lot more emailing back and forth. Agreeing on the details takes time, typing, and scanning.

Pro tip: If you don't have a printer/scanner at home, find friends who do, and then ruthlessly abuse their patience and machinery.

Texts, Messenger, Whatsapp...

Booking rehearsals. Booking meetings in which to discuss future projects. Booking rehearsals for aforementioned future projects. Endless group chats in which there's always 1) A person who doesn't use the app in question and has to be informed via smoke signals 2) Another who never answers anything, except to tell they're unavailable at the exact time everyone else has laboriously managed to agree on 3) A member who'll post all sorts of unrelated spam that you have to read every time the phone beeps because the one time you didn't it was real news. 

You send pictures of outfits to match them to others, you send cvs and biographies, promotional pictures, scores, tax cards, id numbers, bank details, drafts for program notes and grant applications and hundreds of thousands of things that are not and never will be music. You just sit in front of your computer and/or phone and click, click away while your life passes you by and all your creativity slowly withers and dies in the corner. Then the phone rings:

Calls

It's a gig! ...not. It is a salesman offering you a magazine subscription, an insurance, or cheaper electricity. Every week someone vomits their sales pitch on your hopes and dreams. You have to answer, because every call from an unknown number is like that lottery ticket you bought in order to win gazillion euros. And who knows? Next time it really could be work. 

Pro tip: Always, always when the electricity guy calls gasp in bewilderment: "Electricity? For me? What on earth would I need that for?"

Facebook

Leaving Facebook is a thing, because Facebook is evil. I'm not disagreeing, but I'm not leaving either. I follow a couple of groups that actively post things about work - people looking for substitutes,  links to new job openings and grants to apply for, events looking for music and students looking for teachers. 97% of the posts are not relevant to me, but it's the 3% that I'm interested in. I've actually got work like that, by reacting to a post, so I know it can happen. You just have to spend some time scrolling through stuff including cute animals and your friends' doings. (Okay, things could be worse.)

Websites

"What if they google me? They won't, but what if they will?" You have a website because of this. There might be other reasons, but this is the real one. When someone somewhere wants to know who you are, they'll find information you yourself have edited and polished, instead of mildly embarrassing ancient facebook history or random concert posts and articles. It takes time to maintain, however - unless you want people to see only the concerts from before 2014, you've got to keep regularly updating the site. You will not want to do this, but you'll force yourself. You will develop whole new ranges of methods of procrastination during the process.

Instagram

You should have Instagram because "everyone's there". As a pianist working with singers the important thing is not to let the singers forget you exist, so you should try to post something every once in a while. You're not really into Instagram, you're just using it as a tool. Only when someone confronts you about the relevance of seagulls or food to your work, you notice the machine is now controlling you - you've already been tagged, you've been caught in the net of arbitrary gratification, and not knowing how it happened you find yourself compulsively checking for likes and scrolling through air in your sleep - walking around seeing not objects and events but a continuous stream of hashtags and filters.

Pro tip: Watch out. It's scary business.

Teaching

A whole new world of more messages. A concert time change? No big deal. Just 22 texts. Then the replies: "What concert? Where? We have a soccer game and jazz ballet and could it be 47,6 minutes later and earlier and at the same time? Maybe on another planet? Could it have subtitles in Sanskrit?" The answers to these questions: 138 more texts. Sick on a Monday? 10 texts. A teachers' meeting? 17 texts. Students playing together with other students? What a lovely idea. 58 texts. Students playing together with other students in a concert? 18.229 texts and possible carpal tunnel syndrome.

Conclusion

Being a freelance person and teacher means you are your own pr manager and secretary, and that is a lot of work. Know it. Accept it. Embrace it. 

Pro tip: Rant about it to colleagues. Always helps.

On CVs (directors cut)

Basic info

Name, age, phone number, email, etc. 

...and all the other communication channels I'll be checking five times a day while waiting to hear from you.

Short introduction

Jenna Ristilä is one of the most important people in the world. This season she performs in all the right places, and teaches future Richters. Ristilä is also working on multi-dimentional cross-over projects that will reinvent music. This job/grant would help her unleash her true potential.

Actually Jenna Ristilä works on enough things to pay most of her rent, but if you would give her this job/grant, she'd pay all of it.

Education

The highest possible grade from all the things. I was in schools, took courses, performed and generally kicked ass. 

Let's skip my music history grades. And the second theory course. And why the graduating took so long. Focus on the positive? Right? 

Attended several summer courses by highly prestigious professors and learned so much about music and technique. 

Yes, attended several summer courses; met awesome people and drank cheap red with them, tried to explain Finnish sauna culture to foreigners, had a teenage crush or two, and sang Der hölle Rache as a drunken karaoke chorus version. Oh yes, and went to some piano lessons. 

Work 

Ristilä has performed around Europe. In Finland she is one of the most sought-after lied pianists of her generation.

Alright, Ristilä has once sung karaoke in Berlin, and sometimes singers need her for things.

She loves teaching, and has developed a variety of experimental methods that include finger yoga, vlogging, continuous self-assessment and holistic personal growth. 

She does love teaching and she tries her best not to traumatize her students. 

Other interests

Raw organic power smoothies, volunteering in a soup kitchen, learning Japanese, and pilates. 

In order of importance: sleeping, eating, books, wine. 

Editing

Choose a font that captures the essence of your identity. Serif or sans serif, that is the question. I'm warning you though - this is one of the hardest parts of making a cv and could take hours. (After trying out tons of cool things, you'll return, exhausted, to Times New Roman. But you have tried.) 

The picture

Do you have folder after folder full of pretty pictures of your face? Great! Just pick one and slap it on the cv, and you're done! If, however, you do not have this get out of jail free card and you're forced to consider a photo shoot instead - then you should definitely read my next blog post. It'll tell you all you need to know.

On Fear

​Dear reader, I'm scared. Worried, stressed, and anxious about The Career Of A Freelance Musician. I live with a man who has a Nice Normal Job, and while he sleeps peacefully, I lie awake thinking about how nobody will ever hire me again.

You know the feeling when you're wide awake, it's way too much o'clock, and you have super constructive thoughts on failing at life? Night is obviously the worst time to think, so I'd strongly recommend you to sleep instead if you can. If you can't, here's two things to do instead: play solitare (there's an app for that, no need for actual playing cards. Very handy if you want to stay in bed while someone next to you is sleeping and would little appreciate lights being switched on) - or read a book. No time to think when doing either. I've tried the Constructive Method of writing my worries down, but that creates an uncomfortable paper trail - read in daylight, all those very serious concerns and fears look more like ramblings of a delusional half-wit.

When there's a quieter period in my calendar, it easily feels like the quiet will last forever. That's when I'm most worried, anyway. Busy is good, even if it sometimes gets close to burnout. (No more of that, now. That's a whole other blog post.) So, ladies and gentlemen. In order for you to feel better about your  saner selves, I'll share some of my delusional ramblings with you. Here are some thoughts that, after midnight, have entered my drama queen of a head:

1. Oh no, I don't have almost anything this ________(insert the current time of year)! I have done my last concerts in life and I'll never get to perform again.

2. They have finally caught me out: I suck at teaching, and I'll soon be fired if all my students won't quit first.

3. People practice and work insane hours and never get tired, and they still go to the gym, only eat beans and have calm, enlightened minds. I'm the only musician who feels worn out after teaching, and who doesn't always (usually) have the energy to excercise and socialize, and who eats popcorn for breakfast.

4. X years ago in that project I  ________________(insert a thing you should've done different), and now everyone that was there hates me and thinks I'm an incompetent nitwit.

5. Next year I can't be a pianist any more because nobody wants to play with me, and I'll probably end up working as a cleaner or cashier except they won't hire me because I'm too lazy and I'll die alone and unemployed. 

6. Everyone else has so many fancy gigs - they all work from morning till night and then party like crazy. I must be the only person in the entire music industry who has days off and watches Netflix.

Don't get me wrong - a lot of the time I'm optimistic about the future, grateful for the projects I've already done, and happy with the stuff I'm currently working on. I know very well that some have more and fancier stuff, and others less. I also know that You Should Not Compare Your Life With Other People's. But seriously, who doesn't? Another wisdom I've heard is Just Work Hard And Things Will Happen. No Need To Worry, Regret, Anything.

Bullshit, I tell you. I exist, therefore I worry. 

Conclusion: A part of being a freelance musician (for me) is being awake on some nights playing solitare on my phone, whilst posting only happy stuff to Instagram. And somehow life just happens to continue, and there just happens to be new mornings, opportunities, and ideas. And new exciting games in Google Play for the sleepless nights to come.

On Critique

“You should have your left foot closer to the pedals.”

“You should have played Liszt instead of Chopin.”

“You’re very musical but you have zero technique.”

“You have a good technique but no personality.”

“Your playing is way too robust for such a delicate piece.”

“You had no dynamic range whatsoever.”

“You’re not together even with yourself.”

“You have to start developing your personality to a different direction.”

“I’m sure you understand why **** deserved to be in the finals instead of you.”

“You play like a schoolgirl.”

“Your final exam was way too easy. It shouldn’t have qualified at all.”

“It’s been so frustrating to teach you, because you don’t seem to be able to learn the simplest things.”

We all have a Library of Hurtful Quotes; these are a random selection from mine. There have been master classes after which I’ve cried in the toilet, and competitions after which I’ve wanted to quit playing. So often I’ve thought I’ll never be good enough. And yet I play. The schoolgirl without personality who can’t learn anything. I play.

As performing musicians we get criticized a lot. Some of it we need, and some hurts like hell. Sometimes these two apply to the same comment. I could give you the context of each of the quotes from my collection – which of them I thought I deserved, and which felt totally uncalled for – but I won’t. Instead I’m asking you to share some quotes from Your Personal Library with me. What kind of sentences do you hear in your head when you’re not sure of yourself? And how do you shut them out?

I’m still learning how not to give a fuck. Taking advice from Nike my goal is to just do it, and take in critique only from those colleagues and friends whom I trust, and who are sincerely trying to help me. And while I’m trying to get there, it would really help if the Whole Classical Music Industry had more warmth and tolerance to it. So please, share a quote or two and remember: a kind word here, an encouraging word there, and who knows, maybe someone will return the favour when you need it the most.