The all singing, all dancing guide to a career in the performing arts
by Andrew Hammond
Many solo artists characterise their lives as hours of boredom punctuated by moments of terror. On the other hand, they would not do anything else - their passion and their vocation is such that they must do it. And if all goes well, they have a career worthy of their talent and commitment.
Nonetheless, there are more mundane aspects to all this; and this article will comment on some of them briefly. It is aimed at UK-based singers, actors, dancers or musicians, who have an ambition to pursue careers as soloists or members of virtuoso ensembles at a European level.
Natural talent and potential are obviously essential, which may not need saying - except that sometimes people are capable of a level of self-delusion that no amount of kind advice to the contrary will deter. The world will deliver its judgment sooner or later, unless of course a way is found into the epiphenomenon that is celebrity. That is another thing, and not one on which this article has anything helpful to say!
However, natural talent needs and deserves the fullest and best training it can find. For most this has to be fostered relatively early - usually at school-age. There is less urgency for singers and actors than for dancers and musicians, as vocal and acting maturity come later for most.
If you emerge from school with an ambition for a performing arts career you have to make some crucial decisions about the next stage of training. Dancers will probably want and need to go straight into vocational training; many in the classical field will already be at a devoted ballet school. The maturing of the dancer's body and the normally expected length of active career means that time is of the essence.
For musicians, and much more so for actors and singers, time is on your side. There is a strong argument for going to university - and not necessarily for a related degree - if you have the intellectual wherewithal to do so. There is a utilitarian reason: you are better placed, having been to university, to do well in another career if the performing route does not work out. There is also a more qualitative reason: the stretching of your mind and the experience of tertiary-level study can only enhance your artistic depth and integrity. At its best, it will add great richness and breadth to your approach. Intensively acquired technical facility will probably not be enough to have either a career at all (at European level anyway), or the character to be a fully-rounded performer.
Actors and singers who have been to university will usually benefit from going on to an academy of some kind after graduation. This need not be in your own country, and study in another city can be a deeply enriching experience - as long as you are well-advised about where to go. It is an easy mistake to be romantic about studying abroad, and you must take well-informed advice. Sometimes it will make sense to go straight from university to a programme which is actually part of a performing company, often called an young artists programme; dancers and singers have the best opportunities of this kind, and here you can explore opportunities in other countries with more confidence.
An audition is the gateway to many jobs, one-off engagements or longer-term associations with a company or orchestra. Virtually no-one enjoys an audition, including the panels! However, although it is true that some people are at their best in auditions but turn out to disappoint, or are so bad at them that they don't get the breaks, more often than not an audition does allow your talent to be noticed. And it is the whole package which gets noticed. Panels know within seconds, usually, whether they like you; this may because an inner integrity shines through. You can, and should, learn audition skills: basic presentational matters such as dress, carriage, how you speak, how you prepare a CV and photos etc - but these have to look natural, not self-conscious. You need to know how to act if it all goes wrong, as it does for the best people - memory loss, falling over, all those nightmares happen. What matters is how you pick yourself up. If you panic, the chances are you will panic in a performance. If you are too self-confident you will be thought arrogant, and you will have to be spectacularly good for a panel to be prepared to put up with that. And do you need to take a bottle of water into the audition (as a singer or actor)? Many panellists wonder where you would secrete a bottle when performing!
You should also prepare the non-artistic elements: research how the panellists are likely to work. Be prepared for national variations: do you shake the panellists' hands, do you look them in the eye (many British auditioners hate this, many on the continent may like it), how friendly should you be be?... and so on.
Another major issue is getting an agent. There are importance differences between art forms here - it is much more important for an actor to have an agent than a singer; and a dancer will usually make a career within companies, only very rarely as freelance solo artist (and then only at the highest level). Musicians will only need an agent if they are going to make a career as a soloist or in some elite chamber music ensemble.
For a singer or musician at European level, there are not many agencies with sufficient influence and range of contacts: they have to have what is called 'traffic', a flow of communication with those who engage artists internationally. This comes from having a critical mass of international artists on their roster. In all cases it is vital you find an agent who will develop a whole strategy for your career, and not just be a booking agent. The better term is 'artists' manager'. Unless you are fortunate enough to be spotted, you will need to prepare a campaign. Research who there is and who their artists are: what do they seem to like? Make use of any contacts you have: agents are constantly being sent solicitations to go and watch a performance, so any personal connection will help. Make your own material good: eye-catching, easy to read - with reviews, photographs, recorded material (CD for singers and musicians, DVD for actors and dancers). 'Good' includes easy to navigate through, not too busy on the page. Sell yourself with quiet confidence but not bluster: it's the agent's job to know how to market you, not yours. A very brief covering letter can be fine - the longer the letter (and more than one side is fatal) the less likely it is to be taken at all seriously.
If an agent agrees to come to something, make sure all arrangements are smooth: they know where the tickets are, exactly where and when the performance is etc. Judge carefully whether they want to meet afterwards - usually they won't, which is no indication of their decision/opinion. Don't hassle them, as this will usually put them off unless they are very keen already.
Once you get the right agent, there is an art to maintaining a good agent/artist relationship. It is better for both parties to be able to talk to each other or e-mail reasonably often, so that an open line of communication is there. Weeks of silence are not a good sign. But nor should you expect an agent to tell you every lead (s)he is following up or proposal (s)he is making: it would be too time-consuming, and you would be exhausted by the constant suspense. It is also important to know how the agent is working, what strategy is being pursued. Regular overview sessions can then check progress against that agreed strategy. It also saves you hassling the agent daily with 'have you asked Covent Garden to book me as Parsifal?'-type questions. Still, you should always relay through information that you pick up. Wherever you are working you will have conversations that throw up leads and ideas, and you cannot expect the agent to know everything. Often artists discuss new projects between themselves even before managements and agents get to talk about them, so your access to such conversations can help enormously.
Overall the relationship should be as between adults: communicative, positive, mutually understanding and mature. Your agent should not be a surrogate parent, spouse, shrink or masseur.
And throughout you need to hang onto the passion, the hunger. You have to want to do this crazy thing more than anything else in the world. It won't make a career on its own, but there won't be a career without it.
Case Study - Iestyn Davies - Counter tenor
Iestyn is a young British singer (still in his twenties) who is making a career at international level - his first professional opera engagement was at the Zurich opera under Nikolaus Harnoncourt, one of the world's leading conductors; his first solo recordings are out this autumn. He was also a featured artist on the soundtrack of the Ridley Scott epic 'Kingdom of Heaven'.
I asked him just three very basic questions.
Q. Why did you take the training path you did?
A. Hindsight suggests that it would have been easier, quicker and cheaper to plump straight for conservatoire training as I have ended up a singer not an archaeologist. However at the time university was the best option for me and I believe that it was also the correct one. Singing with a college choir in Cambridge, as I did, invites a steep yet negotiable learning curve in musicianship, one that I believe is unmatched by undergraduate music courses at the country's large academies and music colleges. Added to this, the three years at university give ample opportunity for a voice to develop without the spotlight, expectations and competition found at music colleges; furthermore, to undertake a non-music based degree is to effectively "read-round" your personality, adding depth to your understanding of the performing vocation you choose to follow. I chose to continue after Cambridge at the Royal Academy of Music in London for the very reason above, that is to take my singing into an arena where competition and expectation are keener, thus pushing me to improve and develop. I felt that it was not until I had really got to know my own voice at university that I was ready to make the decision to pursue a solo-concert and opera based career. It had given me the time to "suss-out" the options and make a valued judgment on my own abilities, instead of charging headlong into the wilderness.
Q. How do you sum up your approach to auditions in one line?!
A. Churchill sums up my attitude to auditions: "sometimes it is not enough simply to 'do your best', but rather to do what is required". On principle I always attempt to show myself on good-form etc.; yet I appreciate that a director or conductor will have certain strong views which will colour their judgment. Reminding yourself of this means you can focus on the job in hand, and really try to fulfill the purpose of the audition; one's talent and/or personality will hopefully shine through whatever the weather, so I tend to concentrate on the specificity of the audition in question.
Q. How did getting an agent work, and help?
A. I knew that in my line of singing (being a countertenor) it was essential to get an agent early on if I wanted to have the chance of a successful career. I approached one agent and used personal contacts and connections to introduce myself, via email and invite the agent to see me perform live, in the best and most professional setting that was on my calendar at the time. It has helped purely because of the speed at which an agent can bring about auditions and rustle up contacts, without which you have to rely on luck and goodwill, two very scarce commodities today. And also an agent can help you make the right decisions in the crucial early stages of your career.
Andrew Hammond worked in the classical music business for almost twenty years; he is now training to be a priest in the Church of England.
© Andrew Hammond. All views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to the European Commission.