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Janie

How to better network on TGJN and other 'Ning' sites

Hey, all:

I had a conversation recently with a friend and fellow TGJN member about whether we actually use the power of these 'Ning' networks to our advantage in our respective careers. In my opinion, the answer would be a resounding 'no' and I mean that for myself just as much as anyone else!

We are in a very deep and long-lasting recession. My profession, law, has been struck hard. The music industry has been struck. Jazz has been struck. I just don't think we can afford to conduct ourselves in a business as usual manner. We need to exchange thoughts, ideas, and services in the most efficient way and to the group of people most likely to want or be influenced by our services. I have a marketing degree and in the marketing world they call that "target marketing".

If you, like most of us, come to a 'Ning' site, slap up a profile essentially telling everyone how great you are and never return I would like to ask you: What was the point?

On the other hand, if you would like to network with other musicians, discuss how you handle issues in the music business, find a few fellow 'cats' to collaborate with artistically, consider a new producer, or whatever, have you considered using this as one of your resources? What better way to hear their music, see how they present themselves and get to know them in a relaxed manner.

In my case, I may be adding music law to my area of practice in the future and it occurred to me that these places are a great way to mutually exchange information. And there are other people who do other things that are not directly related to music but I have no doubt they can network as well. So many different kinds of people come here because they share one thing in common: they love Jazz.

So what do you think? Can we better use TGJN? And if so, how?

Tags: networking, ning

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I am new to this network but was drawn to your comments.... Thank you for sharing this! it is the absolute truth. We don't use the different networks to our advantage to help and be helped. As a vocalist, I am interested in collaborating with others to create, educated and learn. Again thank you for your insight.

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You are 100% right! It isn't "business as usual" and this site has been a blessing to me. I've been inspired and energized by the wonderful singers and musicians I've heard (and one poetess too) and I've been given leads to new material to sing, been invited on a radio program, found new places to apply for gigs and I truly feel (in some cases) that I've gained some very interesting life long new friends. I'm keeping in touch with everyone who responds to a Friend request out of respect and appreciation and will soon be collaborating with one of my new friends on a couple of music projects. Networking is important. I'd been joking that I'd gotten a visit from the Synchronicity Fairy and Tamm E's site showed up during that particular very blissed out phase! I like reading your Members Quote words too.

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The thing that is making jazz healthy today is that people are coming out of other backgrounds - from rock, folk, from ethnic music. It's changing the music, and for the better.~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Billy Taylor


Dear Tamm E:

Just a note to tell you that it is nice to read about you!!!

You share so much great info about others and about the music, but nice to know that you are WAILIN' yourself and getting appreciation!!

Global Jazz Network is a really important way for all of us to keep hooked up and informed and to SLOWLY BUT SURELY SPREAD THE MESSAGE AND THE PHILOSOPHY of what Jazz is in its many different forms and what the styles are/is all about.

Just played for Paquito's honoring and received gold medal

John Faddis, save Brubeck, James moody and a bunch of KILLER YOUNG players and we all played and spoke about Paquito and jazz and all fine music

and Roberta Gamborini, who was excellent.

wish you had been there!

Through you, Donald Harrison hooked me up with Pittsburgh Jazz info and I feel like i am living there just reading about all the great happenings.

As Fall is here, I am back to my normal insane schedule, but wanted to write you back BEFORE The STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS goes into effect. I am my own secretary, so I am dedicated but SLOW!

And I can't fire myself as my own secretary or I might get hit with an Age Discrimination Lawsuit (in case I decided to sue myself for clerical incompetence).

As of this moment, a new documentary film is being made about me, to be released a few months after my 80th birthday, which is coming up next year Nov. 17, 2010. (12 months from now).

The film will end with the videoing of the big 80th birthday bash at Symphony Space in NYC and then have snippets of films from the past, with all kinds of fun stuff from the 50's thru today.
It will be called "David Amram: The First 80 Years"

Fortunately, I don't have to edit the hundreds of hours of footage or do new music the score, since the film maker, Larry Kraman is also the founder of Newport Classics recordings and knows all my symphonic as well as operatic, theater, film and jazz and world music work, so I am in good hands!!

The same people at Newport Classics Recordings are also making a Spoken Word series for I-Tunes, with me reading from my three books Vibrations, Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac and Upbeat: Nine Lives of a Musical Cat.

And they are also recording some of my chamber music compositions and a new jazz record,
Next Spring my opera "12th Night", with libretto by Joe Papp (all words of Shakespeare), is having its eighth production and being FILMED!! Even most dead composers aren't that lucky!!!

This last five weeks I have appeared all over the country at concerts of my music, conducting and playing, doing spoken word with music, jazz, folk and world music festivals, film festivals and readings from my books.

Just the first week of October, I played Lowell Celebrates Kerouac festival in Lowell Mass, then the at midnight , following my last concert there , drove all night to Lagaurda Airport to catch the early Sunday mornng flight for the annual Farm Aid Concert in St Louis, where i played with Willie Nelson's band. The next morning (Monday the 5th , I flew bck to NYC in tme for my monthly concert at Cornelia Street in Greenwich Village.

The next night (Tuesday the 6th) the memorial at Symphony Space for Frank Mccourt, and the next day Wednesday the 7th) the celebration of the new authorized biography of Thelonious Monk with members of his family and musicians I have known since I first arrived in NYC in 1955!!

The 11th i flew off to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates,( i got at least get a few hours sleep) and tried to catch up on over 200 e-mails during the 13 hour flight, before arriving there and performing a concert of global music in conjunction with the score I composed for Teri McLuhan's new documentary feature film The Frontier Ghandi.

Then back in the USA in time to do programs centered around a performance of my Saxophone concerto Ode to Lord Buckley, in Loudoun Virginia ..

Then I went off to Toronto Nov 1st for a concert and appearance at the Diaspora Film Festival .

Now i am back at home hiding out composing and writing!

I am starting my fourth book "David Amram: The First 80 Years", (the same name as the new doc film being made about me), which will be finished at the end of next year and will end, like the film, with the monstro birthday bash concert for my Big 80... 12 months from now....(Nov 17 2010) in New York.

And every day, still finding time to continue composing a new orchestral work, having been doing it while on the run, and now every minute when I can hide out at the Farm in between travels.

And performing whenever possible with my three kids, each of whom have their own bands.

So as the BIG 80 approaches twelve months from now, (2010) while I may be still shy, I am not yet the retiring type.

Most of my ever-changing my schedule info. when i can get my elderly secretary (unfortunately myself) to type it up, is posted on my web page www.davidamram.com under Upcoming Events.

And my e-mail amramdavid@aol.com is always the best way to reach me as I carry my laptop with me everywhere, and Facebook, MySpace, etc., is hard to deal with and not always reliable!

You might find it fun to access an old performance of my 1971 Rondo a la Turca on the Internet for FREE!!!

The person who is conducting the Chicago Symphony and playing the middle eastern flute (who looks like my grandson) is actually a much younger looking me in 1977, recording for a PBS network TV show about my music. Pepper Adams and Jerry Dodgion are also playing.

In 1977, most of members of the Chicago Symphony who appear on the recording of this performance had never heard, much less ever played, very much music from the Middle East, and since I write everything out on paper accurately to indicate the way it should be played, that's what they were playing, and they actually began to sound like the Radio Beirut Orchestra, and suddenly as the piece went on, they started feeling something different than they had ever felt before, as they played.

It is really fun to watch their faces as they started getting ingo the old time magical groove that Middle eastern music creates and takes you into.

During the first few minutes of the piece, you can see the musicians all playing up a storm but looking as if they were thinking that I was an alien from another planet in outer space, and had brought some extra terrestrial music with me for them to play.

And then as the piece progresses, you can see, as well as hear, that by the end of the piece, the idiom of this music got them excited enough to be actually enjoying playing it!!

And playing it really well!

That's what music, like film, novels, poetry, painting, dance, language and good HOME COOKING does for all of us.

It takes you to that place from where it comes, and makes you feel that you now have a new home in a new part of the world.

I send cheers from that endless road and wish you joy and energy for all you do

David

Hi Tamm E!

I was just saying that you knocked this out of the park with TGJN. We have needed something like this for so long and I am telling my friends about this. I said that it is sort of like a myspace for jazz but it is actually so much more. This is real. The people here truly love jazz and we know people like that are not your average people.

I have felt for a long time that straight-ahead jazz has been slipping away from us. I have hope now that there will be a resurgence (or shall I say an insurgency:-) to bring this baby back full force!

You just knocked it out of the park. Thanks again.

xoxo,
Janie


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