Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
#251: Alon Goldstein (Pianist) (pt. 2 of 2)
This week on the podcast is part two of our interview with acclaimed pianist and chamber musician, Alon Goldstein. His artistic vision and innovative programming have made him a favorite with audiences and critics alike throughout the United States and around the world. He made his orchestral debut at the age of 18 with the Israel Philharmonic under the baton of Zubin Mehta and has performed with renown orchestras and conductors ever since. If you’re interested in what it takes to be concert artist, from practicing, to programing to creating opportunities, you won’t want to miss our interview with Alon Goldstein! https://www.alongoldstein.com/ and https://gpftrio.com/
Alon invites us into his mindset when facing critiques and embarking on recording projects. Learn how he navigates the sea of opinions in the performing arts industry and his unique approach towards collaborating with labels and organizations. Alon underscores the importance of sharing ideas, listening to others, and making art more accessible.
Welcome to the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast. Making Art Work. We highlight how entrepreneurs align their artistry, passion and vision to create and pursue opportunities to capture value in the arts. The views expressed by guests on the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the podcast or its hosts. The appearance of a guest on the podcast, the venture they represent or reference to any product or service does not imply an endorsement or recommendation by the podcast or its hosts. The content provided is for entertainment and informational purposes only and does not constitute business advice. Here are your hosts Andy Heiss and Nick Petrella.
Andy Heise:Welcome podcast listeners. My name is.
Nick Petrella:Andy Heiss and I'm Nick Petrella. With us today is acclaimed pianist and chamber musician Alon Goldstein. His artistic vision and innovative programming have made him a favorite with audiences and critics alike throughout the United States and around the world. He made his orchestral debut at the age of 18 with the Israel Philharmonic under the baton of Zubin Mehta, and has performed with renowned orchestras and conductors ever since. As with all of our interviews, we'll link to his websites so you can read more about Alon and his substantial list of accomplishments and activities. Thanks for being with us, alon.
Alon Goldstein:It's great to be here. Thank you for having me.
Nick Petrella:So what's the most demanding part of being a professional soloist and chamber musician Practice? Is it practicing.
Alon Goldstein:Yeah, it's the self-discipline, it's the constant motivation, finding the motivation, staying focused. The most demanding thing in this is the practicing, of course, because that's I mean I can make some calls and then also you know when you make a call and when you put the program you do A, b and C and then comes up and you get it done and you move on, you practice and then you practice and then you practice, and then it can be sometimes two or three weeks until you see any result and then you might go on stage and it doesn't go as well and then off. The next concert will be only in one month, or the next time I'll play the program will be in three months, but still you have to stay focused and still. So there is all this. The practice is very demanding, and then you should have started a new piece. Until you start a new piece, until you feel comfortable with it, takes a long time. So I mean, definitely the practice is the most difficult.
Alon Goldstein:Talking to people is dice, that's fun. You can also go and have a little coffee together. I mean, yeah, oh, you can see, you enjoy that. Of course, I love it. Yeah, again, being a you said a soloist I was like to say that the career of a soloist is grossly overrated. I mean, it's again. You have to embrace living alone. You have to love it. I love being alone, but because I know I'm going to be with people. I'm not. I don't like being alone, knowing that I will stay alone.
Nick Petrella:Yeah Well, that's an important point, because people when they see you on stage, they think how wonderful, but they don't realize everything that goes into getting you on stage, from the organization to the practicing right.
Alon Goldstein:Yeah, I mean, it is wonderful to be on stage and becoming one with music and this whole magic that we call music, but you have to learn to live with insecurities and with instabilities and with uncertainties and with doubts, and you're only as good as your last concert and if you had a bad concert you might, you know, haunt you for some time. You have a good concert, you feel great, and then the next day you have to practice again. That's right. So again, I always like to say it's the best life, but I don't recommend it. If you can live with insecurities and instabilities and you learn to embrace, you know doubts, and sometimes you play a wonderful concert. You know, I remember playing with an orchestra in France in Salt Le Yel. It was a wonderful concert, prokofiev's third concerto. After the concert, you know, the manager of the orchestra takes me and the conductor to dinner and then he calls my manager. It was Saturday night, so we only left a message that Alon was so spectacular, we started to talk on Monday to make sure we nailed the date for his return. Wonderful, that was about ten years ago. I don't know which Monday he meant, because I'm still going to. No, I mean, there is many, many pieces to the puzzle which we call a performance, and one of them is that you play very well, and another is maybe sheer luck, and another is that you know that you will have the right piece at the right time, or that someone will remind.
Alon Goldstein:Once I did an audition to the conductor of the London Philharmonic. His name is Vladimir Yurovsky. It was a great audition. It went over an hour. You know, if he didn't like it, he probably would be polite after ten, fifteen minutes and so on. And then he started to talk about possible concerti. And you know, since you haven't played yet with a major orchestra in London, we probably would play outside of London for the first time, and so on and so forth. And then I thought, great, I told it to my manager.
Alon Goldstein:After three months, I asked you know, since we have some dates, and he said, no, I'm okay. Okay. After half a year I asked my manager again. Something happened. It's like well, the orchestra, the manager of the orchestra, now he wants to hear you as well. So next time you're in Europe we'll try to organize. Oh God, no, so what?
Alon Goldstein:And then, half a year after that, one of the people who work in my management called me and said oh, you wouldn't believe what happened last night. And what happened? I was at the concert of contemporary music in New York. After the concert I went into the subway and I met Vladimir Yurovsky in the subway and we started to talk and sooner rather than later he asked oh, you're a musician, what are you doing? And she said to him I'm actually working in the management and one of my clients played for you a year ago. His name is Alon Gorshton. And I said oh, of course I remember Alon. So on and so forth. The next day I got a concert with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. I mean, it's like what? So if you didn't meet him in the subway?
Nick Petrella:then I wouldn't have that problem.
Alon Goldstein:Exactly, really. I mean, it's so arbitrary, it's like it doesn't make any sense. Nothing makes sense, which, in a way, should be liberated because nothing makes sense. Just sit down and practice and if you're genuine and if you love people, and things will happen. Maybe not the way you think, maybe not exactly today, maybe tomorrow, but just stay on course. You know, like these horses that have these things on their ear, they cannot look right, they cannot look left. Just look straight and again, it might not be what you thought will happen, but it can be practiced well and you meet people and you make connections and you think of it. Things will happen at some point and my students are shocked, like students who work with me like suddenly things starts to happen to them. It's like I don't, we don't understand this, we don't know how it happens, but you're putting your heart and your soul in your practicing a lot and yeah yeah, but why did not happen before?
Alon Goldstein:I don't know before I know. Now you're on course You're putting in that. You know. I have one of my students last year Again, she studies in Kansas City and during the year she went for concert-related activities to New York twice, to France, to Vienna, to Italy, to Belgium, to Berlin and to Israel. And I told her now you can imagine, if you were in Julia, would you also go to seven different countries?
Alon Goldstein:Like I mean you might, but a lot of it is because of your mindset and the way we think, the way we pursue things and you know you're being forbidden. Another student of mine this year went to Germany, Israel, Switzerland, Italy, Seoul, China, again for concert things. And I tell her I mean, just pursue things, Look at, maybe there's a festival, maybe there is a grant you can ask for, Maybe there's just things of ideas. So she suddenly oh, I will do a project on Chinese art song. And then she suddenly got some concerts in Switzerland, in Italy, I said write to your embassy in Switzerland.
Alon Goldstein:Who knows, maybe they will write to your consulate in Milan.
Nick Petrella:Maybe you can play that.
Alon Goldstein:Maybe here, maybe in France alone? In the Netherlands we were by the city of Piedmont.
Andy Heise:I loved theилось. That's a nice thing. I mean you make Bidinga]. Where do they want to go? What's their vision for what they want to do?
Alon Goldstein:What is the vision of the?
Andy Heise:students. Well, it sounds like you have that conversation with your students, like what are you working on, where do you want to go, what are the possibilities with your pieces you're working on, or whatever they're doing.
Alon Goldstein:I mean many of the students you know they come, and they come to get a degree and go back to their country to teach, right? I'm a little bit puzzled these days when I talk to, sometimes, students who finish their DMA. But if you ask them about St John passion or some Matthew passion, they have never heard of this thing. And I, you know, and I go along asking about the Brandenburg concerti and they, what the Brandenburg concerti? But you don't know them. No, so, so how's it? It's astonishing, it's astonishing, I mean, really, it's shocking to me. I don't know. I have not come to any conclusive thoughts about that, but I'm almost certain that this whole idea of a DMA lacks so much in it. But not, yes, of course. How can it have everything? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I understand, but no, no, no, I'm talking about, if you don't know Brandenburg concerti, if you finish your DMA, what is this DMA? And then you will ask the pianists how many Branden symphonies there are and you will know you don't know how many symphons are brown. You're right, that's not because that's studied in conservatory. You should have known it when you're a teenager.
Alon Goldstein:But if you're actually in music, so why are you in music? It's not to know that it's just this is we are in love with music. Why would you not know? I mean, how can you be a musician and not know this music? This music, it has nothing. I mean, if you don't know this, this degree is really worse, not even the paper that I was signed, and then me being part of a university. I'm sorry we are failing, because we obviously give this degree to people who don't know this. So why are we lying what should be?
Nick Petrella:in there what should be in the degree Right yeah.
Alon Goldstein:And I don't know. I mean I don't have a conclusive thought about that, but you can be part of a conservatory. I'm shaping my teaching where my students, for example I mean I tell always my students that you get a job not because you have a degree, but all the extra things you did. So, for example, my students, they have to do work per years. Because I have this project where I commissioned pieces to write. I did a, for example.
Alon Goldstein:Now I told you about Bartok, where composers were writing pieces to reimagine Bartok into the 21st century. So my students were giving nine performances of pieces by Bartok next to nine work per years. So you give work per years. Then I take my students to Florida to play for schools and all these small communities. Then they have to go to all of the concerts in Kansas City Symphony Channel, music, everything. Then I have another project where we played Bach or Scalati with dancers and we recorded all 32 Beethoven sonatas. I remember that and I thought, okay, if I'm searching someone for a job and I see, okay, this guy got a DMA, this guy got a DMA, oh, he's also doing a recording of Beethoven sonatas and he's also doing a concert at schools and he's also doing commissions of pieces and work per years and he starts a concert series. I did a project for my students Every student who can start a concert series in Kansas City during COVID will get $750.
Nick Petrella:That's great. There's that theme again. It's that engagement. You're engaging those students as a mentor and you have an apprentice approach. You're modeling for them, you're having them do it under your guidance and I think that's going to continue to pay dividends.
Alon Goldstein:The project I had with Bartok this was just two or three weeks ago One of my students I wanted to do it all at school and also outside of school, and I thought the Museum of Modern Art in Kansas City can be a good place. So I asked one of my students to go to the museum and get the venue. How I don't know. Go get the venue, figure it out. Yeah, yeah, figure it out. I wanted to figure out how to bring a piano and they both succeeded. Do you have?
Nick Petrella:a clavinowa.
Alon Goldstein:No no.
Nick Petrella:No.
Alon Goldstein:I don't know how to make music on electronic.
Nick Petrella:I was kidding. Yeah, no, I understand, but you'll be surprised.
Alon Goldstein:I mean, sometimes people ask you, especially in these outreach in the schools. You know that we have a clavinowa and I don't. You know the fact that he has a keyboard is misleading. If the sound is made out of electricity rather than you know acoustically, then I don't know how to control that sounds and just to play louder or softer. I mean it's again, it's cheating, yeah.
Nick Petrella:Touch and things. Unlike other jobs, performing artists are reviewed by critics. What's your approach to dealing with their critiques, especially when they're different from what you're expecting based on how you performed?
Alon Goldstein:I mean my approach is I do my job and the critic needs to do his job. I'm not I'm not like disqualifying a critique and at the same time, not necessarily embracing it. I mean he's doing his job. I must admit, when I go to see a play, I love theater. So when I go to see play in New York I there's a good chance I will read the critic before. Or if I'm going to see a Met Opera, I might want to read the critic. I mean, unless there is an actor I know or a singer, I know that I don't need someone. But if I don't, I mean if in terms of the musical performance. Musical performance usually is a one time thing. So sometimes it feels that people are going to concerts and then they read the review the next day to see if they enjoyed it or not.
Nick Petrella:No, no, I meant, I meant you like. How do you feel? I know.
Alon Goldstein:How do I feel? I mean, if it's a good critic, I feel wonderful. If it's not wonderful, don't feel so good. But I mean I have a small circle of friends who I trust and I will try to play for them. And it's not that I don't trust the critic, but I think the critic would also agree with me that you know, you have the people that you are around with and then I pay for them.
Alon Goldstein:And if the idea is, oh, if I read the critic and suddenly I will change something in my approach, I don't think the critic would like would be the. I mean, he's doing his job and I'm doing my job. So I don't think you know, and he, I hope he probably heard lots of music before and lots of concerts and you know, and then that's his opinion. It's wonderful that you know. And then, but I, it's not necessarily something that will it would influence me. There's some times that I don't read in something that I do read and of course if it's something critical it can kind of ruin your mood and then you will turn the page and you move on and then you continue. So but I mean it's wonderful if there's a critique, because that means we are alive. You know, if we don't, if there's no nothing, then it's like a circle there's a critique, there is an audience, there is a PR, there is a social media. It's wonderful, so it's you know. Yeah, so that's, that's kind of my approach in there.
Andy Heise:Sure. So you have a number of recordings going back nearly 20 years, some as a soloist, some as with an ensemble, chamber, ensemble. How do you, how do those recording projects, come about? Is it again? Is it you saying I want to do this? Or do the labels? Or you know, other companies come to you and say we'd like to make a recording of this piece.
Alon Goldstein:And every recording is different. Let's see. So my first recording was from the Phillips collection in Washington DC. I played a soloist and the presenter, who was a very close friend, he said, oh, I would love to start like a series of CDs from the collection and would you mind if I take your recital and that would be our first CD. So yeah, so he took my soloist there and it was like a solo CD and I was going to the first one and then the second one was like a collection of pieces by Israeli composers, and the Israeli Music Institute came to me and said I always include an Israeli piece in my program. They said would you consider doing a CD of Israeli pieces? But that was kind of the second CD. And then I had.
Alon Goldstein:I mean, I have a CD of Scarlatti Sonatas for Naxos. So, for example, they have a series of I think altogether will be 30 plus CDs and they ask me if I can be a part of the series and record a CD of Scarlatti Sonatas. Then I have a collection, a series that I'm working on, a Mozart concerti arranged for Quintet and this. I came to Naxos said they usually will not do repertoire that is recorded often. So but this is an arrangement of this Mozart concerti in a German music arrangement where it's like piano and a string quintet. So I came and they like it, and we did one CD and we came best seller, best seller on Amazon, number one in both categories of concerti and German music. And then they say, oh, can you do another CD and in another CD? And now they asked me to do the whole concerti of Mozart in this version. So I finished four CDs already. The fourth CD would be coming out in the fall and then I would record the fifth CD. So every CD had a different kind of burst.
Andy Heise:If more quartets would add a bass to their quartets, they'd sell more albums Of course.
Alon Goldstein:But again you have an interesting idea of some repertoire or interesting thoughts, so you just write and you ask, and the worst thing that can happen is that they will say no.
Andy Heise:Alan, we've reached the part of the interview where we ask all of our interviewees the same three questions, and the first question is what advice would you give to someone wanting to become an art entrepreneur? Pretty much everything we've just talked about in this entire interview, but if you could maybe summarize it in a couple sentences?
Alon Goldstein:I mean, just talk to people to come up with ideas, and listen to people. You know, maybe have a little notebook where you can write ideas, because you never know where they will come up. And you know, just share, share with people and but do something that you really believe in. And if you do it, then do it with all of your heart. And again, the worst thing I can happen is that it will be difficult. But I tell my students that no, is it delayed? Yes, not yet. Yes, and I prove it to them again and again and again. So many notes that we get and half a year later, or two weeks later, or two years later, it becomes a yes. So, yeah, you know, and always, always stay optimistic.
Nick Petrella:What can we do to ensure the arts are more accessible and reaching the widest possible audience?
Alon Goldstein:What can we do? I mean I try to do, just go and play in different venues and you know just, it's very interesting. You know we talk about, you know, shrinking audience. I had a very good friend who passed away some years ago. He was a wonderful kind of thinker, philosopher, and he said that you know, things goes in circles. Maybe in some years we're gonna go back to playing music in salons and the music most of the music that I am playing 18, 19th century, even 20th century I mean it was not conceived with Carnegie Hall in mind.
Alon Goldstein:It was conceived in a beautiful salon or church. And so you know, when I asked my students to start concerts here in the city, three of them started in different churches and I told them just put mask it was during the COVID put masks sit 50 feet from each other, just play, play, play, play. So what can we do is just play. Just think of my parents. They're for the last 25 years they are doing a concert series in their house. They open their house once a month. You know, invite.
Alon Goldstein:I told them just open the. I told my mom just open the concert series of the Tel Aviv Museum and call the people who play in Tel Aviv Museum and ask them if they want to come and play through the program two days before in your house and invite 50 people and make music. And the people who come to this houses, they would not replace it by anything, they just love it. It's so intense and they get to talk to the artist, and you know. So I mean again, making music happens on so many levels and one of the levels is in a wonderful concert hall and another level is in a school and another level is in a house and another level is in a church. You know, and it's wonderful to see how music will adapt itself as well.
Andy Heise:So you know, Lastly, what's the best artistic or entrepreneurial advice you've ever been given?
Alon Goldstein:I'm thinking. First, I was ever given an entrepreneurial advice. I don't know. I when you asked me the question, when I saw the question, I thought I don't know if someone gave me an entrepreneurial advice and if I think of idea or, you know, put your eyes in the target or really believe in what you. I don't know if someone told me that maybe it's just the people that I spend my time with, that I see that what they do they really believe in it strongly, and just education you get from home and from your friends and how they pursue things, kind of thing. If someone gave me a specific advice.
Andy Heise:Career advice.
Alon Goldstein:I mean probably did, but doesn't come to my mind, right now no worries, that's fair yeah.
Nick Petrella:Well, alon, it's always great to speak with you and I'm sure the audience they're gonna feel your passion for music, because it surely came across.
Alon Goldstein:Thank you very much. I really was wonderful to talk with you both. Thank you you.
