The Summerglen Files

Greetings, Summerglen friends! Recently, I’ve been playing a bunch of church and theatre gigs around town. It’s been fun performing at different places and meeting new people, but unfortunately, I’ve noticed several of my gigmates indulging in some not-so-good habits, like coming to the dress rehearsal without a pencil, and even worse, without their music [...]

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Not much is going on here in Raleigh, because many of our roads are still icy–so I’ve been using the snow-induced down time to explore some great musical & arts-centered websites. This one, Entrepreneur the Arts is one of the most exciting sites I’ve found for working artists. It’s packed with resources, articles, and business [...]

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Yesterday evening, one of the ensembles I perform with lost a gig–because the gig was booked by a scammer! A couple months back, another group lost a show because they relied on a verbal agreement (and no deposit) to book the gig. Both the scammer and the verbal agreement person backed out at the last [...]

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The Inside919 Community Picnic went well today! We didn’t have throngs of people in attendance, but it ended up being a great chance to just hang out and chat with other business owners (with the occasional pit stops for hot dogs, photography classes, and drumming!) Networking meetings are cool; you get a chance to meet [...]

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The speech for the Wake County Women Business Owners Network went very well! My presentation was designed to teach business owners the skills of performers, to help them promote their businesses more easily. In the presentation, I offered 5 tips to help build the inner confidence needed to perform well and feel comfortable in front [...]

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I’ll type this post quickly, because I need to take my own advice and chill out for the night. I have always been blessed with good health, except for my rotten sinuses. They’ve been hurting all day, so it’s time to have a Benadryl and say good night. So with that, here’s the final post [...]

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This is the third post in this week’s series celebrating the one year anniversary of Summerglen Music. Today’s topic: getting the word out in a way that educates people and gives back to the community. I had absolutely no marketing experience when I started Summerglen, but I knew I needed to get the word out. [...]

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This is the second post in this week’s series celebrating the one year anniversary of Summerglen Music. Today I’ll talk about my wonderful clients, and how I found them easily. Before I started Summerglen, I thought that the best way to find music students, brides who wanted cool ceremony music, and people to host Summerglen [...]

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This is the first post in this week’s series celebrating the one year anniversary of Summerglen Music, Raleigh’s home for beautiful performances and empowering musical learning experiences. In the series, I’ll share things that helped me make the leap from working for someone else to living my dream of being a full-time trombonist. Today, books! [...]

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In yesterday’s post, I described my somewhat clumsy journey into marketing as a musician. However awkward the journey, though, I’ve found several approaches to promoting my musical services that WORK! Here are my top five, in no particular order: 1. Go out and play – Generally, when people read a description of a musical group [...]

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