Self Promotion for Performing Artists

Self-Promotion for Performing Artists is a presentation designed to give composers and performing artists (musicians, actors, dancers) simple but powerful tools and strategies for marketing and publicising their careers, creations and performances.

Areas covered include:
• overview of web site options
• web site content basics
• creating promotional PDFs such as one-sheets
• writing a bio and a press release
• promoting live performances to critics, reviewers, bloggers, and fans
• getting events listed
• promoting a recording/CD on the web, to radio stations, and to critics/reviewers
• social media strategies

There will be time for networking and for a question and answer session. Participants are asked to bring any self-promotional materials that they have created.

Performing Arts Consultant Peter McDowell (PeterMcDowell.com), a former Program Director for the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, has lived in New York City, San Francisco, and Chicago over the past 20 years and brings his wealth of knowledge of the performing arts scene in each of these cities to the workshop. He has built a solid career on high-level, strategic, creative, efficient and effective service to performing arts organizations and performing artists. He is also Co-Founder of PerformSites.com — a company that creates WordPress web sites for artists and arts organizations.

Mia Park (MiaPark.com) communicates the highest good as an actress, producer, musician and yoga instructor. Mia has seventeen years of experience performing and marketing in Chicago’s rock music scene and has produced dozens of music and theatrical shows. She’s led a successful acting career for twelve years and a yoga career for seven. With strong communication skills and sincere networking, Mia teaches that honesty, excitement and intuition are powerful marketing tools.

Peter McDowell and Mia Park will also share a booth in the vendor area at the Creative Chicago Expo for both Friday and Saturday, March 23 and 24 from 10am – 4pm.

IHOS Music Theatre & Opera, based in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, recently celebrated its 20th anniversary season. Ready for a higher functioning site that really showcased the company’s striking visual style, IHOS sought to feature audio and video tracks, highlighting individual works from their repertoire. IHOS received pro bono branding and site graphic design from Envelope Group (Australia) and chose PerformSites to implement Envelope’s striking designs and create a strong foundation through a WordPress site with newly edited content. Their old site didn’t showcase their most well known works in a way they were happy with — the new site really shines light on the visuals, audio/video, and descriptive text related to these works.

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PerformSites recently launched a unique new web site for the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus, providing innovative solutions to bring this organization’s site into the 21st century. The organization needed a clean, hip and streamlined new look and had recently begun a branding process including a great new logo. Critical business issues that they face include maximizing ticket sales and marketing upcoming shows – both of which were boosted by the new site’s dynamic interface. They also chose PerformSites because they liked the easy-to-use WordPress CMS (content management system). This allows any authorized member of the staff to add, modify and update nearly all sections of the site at any time they choose.

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Lisa Pegher is an American solo percussionist who has been described by the Boston Globe as “forcefully balletic” and by critic Marty Lash of the Door County Advocate as “a gifted passionate artist, with a rock-star aura.” She has been featured in Symphony Magazine as one of the top six performers of her generation and continues to carve a new path for percussion as a solo instrument.

 
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A passionate proponent of new American and Japanese solo piano repertoire, Chie Sato Roden “pushes contemporary music beyond the confines of a restricted genre” (Yuji Numata). She has issued three CDs, the first two featuring the works of contemporary Japanese and American composers. Her most recent, Streetcar Journey, features the magnificent, jazz-inflected score to the 1951 classic “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

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Richard Hollander’s sculptures represent a fusion of visual and acoustic rhythm animated by digital and mechanical control mechanisms. www.articulatedmovement.com

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Felicia Hoshino (www.felishino.com)  is an illustrator and designer in San Francisco. Her focus includes children’s book illustration, editorial illustration assignment, and commissioned portraits.

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Composer and musician John McDowell (www.johnmcdowell.net) has been heard at Lincoln Center, the UN, the Montreal Jazz Festival, and throughout Europe and North America.

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Ukrainian-born pianist Inna Faliks (www.innafaliks.com) has established herself as one of the most passionately committed, exciting and poetic artists of her generation. After her acclaimed debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at age 15, she has performed on many of the world’s great stages, with numerous orchestras, in solo appearances, and with conductors such as Leonard Slatkin and Keith Lockhart.

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A San Francisco-based architecture firm specializing in residential design. After working in the offices of Fernau+Hartman, William Dutcher, Webb Construction, Phil Mathews, and Rupel Geiszler McLeod, Geoffrey Scott Gainer  started his own practice, Actual-Size Architecture, in 1999.

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