BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
When Dr Diana Tolmie was involved in a terrible accident, one of the first thoughts in her mind was: “The show must go on.” After all, the woodwind instrumentalist was scheduled to perform in an event that night. It couldn’t stop for her broken neck — could it?
It took an incident this extreme for Diana to rethink her approach to her music career, and start to observe parallels between her performance work and the research she was doing into other musicians’ lives — highly skilled professionals who were using their music education and training to work in roles within and beyond the arts industry.
Diana’s research into music careers is having a moment. A few months ago, she gave a TEDx talk about the transferable skills that musicians can bring into other occupations — and those include emotional intelligence to flexibility and communication, as Diana further outlines in this interview. More recently, she wrote an article covering the core skills — and perceptions — of musicians in non-musical workplaces. She’s also undertaking a survey with Griffith University, which is open for participation until 7 May, to explore: “How are musicians’ skills transferable within non-music workplaces, and how can these skills be of use to non-musicians?”
In this interview, Diana tells CutCommon about her accident and the way it helped shift her personal views on dual careers; the extraordinary list of professional skills musicians can bring into any number of workplaces and industries; and her predictions for the future of music in education and practice.
As for her own varied career, Diana is a senior lecturer at Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University, a chair of the Australian Women in Music Awards juror council, and a woodwind professional.
Diana, it’s a pleasure to discuss your work, and I’d like to kick off with your recent TEDx talk Are musicians our best employees?. I was startled to learn something so personal about you — that you broke your neck, and almost lost your ability to play your saxophone?! I’m interested to know what it felt like to you, in that moment, to have to rethink your entire career and the industry that you worked in. Did it have an impact about how you think about transferable skills?
As soon as the accident happened, I was in denial. I remember being in the radiology clinic waiting for the results of a CT scan while on the phone with the musical director of Mary Poppins — I was working in the show at the time — trussed up in a neck brace saying, ‘I think I should be alright for tonight’s show’, and the MD saying, ‘um … no?’. And then me saying, ‘I can probably play when I get out of hospital’, and the MD saying ‘Diana, you’ve broken your neck’. And two things hit me – that ‘the show must go on’ mentality was so ingrained, and that my music career was possibly in some serious trouble.
At the time, I was already investigating musicians’ dual careers and those who had exited the profession – but felt somewhat distanced from their experience. Now, I was facing the possible reality I could be one of them. The irony was not lost on me.
I’m pretty stubborn — a core trait of the resilient musician — and in my mind, getting well again to play professionally once more was the priority. However, knowing how people with dual careers or those that had exited the profession managed their lives so well, and remained happy — I think that got me through the experience.
Absolutely extraordinary. Diana, in your TEDx talk, you also mention the way the pandemic led to a positioning of arts workers as non-essential. As an artist and careers researcher, why do you think artists were considered non-essential, or may be viewed as pursuing a “lifestyle” or interest instead of a career? This is, of course, in the face of the benefits of the arts — from its enormous impact on the Australian economy right down to its positive impact on developing brains.
Unfortunately, anyone can call themselves a musician – there are no hurdles to the profession similar to say law or medicine. We have degrees and accreditation for music performance and instrumental teaching – but these are not barriers to industry activity, and that can influence public opinion that a career in music is a lesser profession.
Other reasons: we make it look fun and easy, but the reality as we know it is often not — it can be terrifying and hard — and the broader public simply does not understand the hours of practice, the injuries, the emotional investment, the work conditions, the sacrifice and persistence we experience.
We also have our high-profile stars with every aspect of their lives on display. Any stereotypical activity — drugs, bad behaviour, brushes with the law — and the whole profession suffers from the same assumption that that is who we are. And it is not.
Yet, the pandemic taught us precisely how we were perceived – non-essential by the government, yet the public was quick to turn to music as a solace in uncertain times.
These inconsistent national values perpetuate a whole raft of problems including how musicians are paid for their work, which in turn sustains a disagreeable professional reputation.
A lot of your research revolves around these transferable skills, and the idea that people of other professions often continue to practice music — and vice versa. What are some of those core skills that you have identified through your research, and that you found could be transferred between such different industries and job roles?
The core transferable skills are what we call ‘soft’ skills, as opposed to the technical discipline-specific ‘hard’ skills. The most prominent I have identified from those working dual careers, those who have exited the profession and now working in other fields, and those who have been musically trained but never pursued music as a career are:
- Professionalism
- Communication
- Team work and collaboration
- Emotional intelligence
- Flexibility and adaptability
- Resilience and perseverance
- Autonomy and self-direction
- Creativity
- Analytical thinking
- Planning and time management
- Critical thinking
Their co-workers recognise their willingness to learn, macro/micro thinking, strong work ethic, and high professional values — and that they are intelligent, creative, open-minded and adaptable. Any employer will tell you that they would like a worker who is professional, punctual, focused, possesses high work standards, takes minimal sick leave — might even want to work with a broken neck — requires minimal instruction, works autonomously, yet is an empathetic team player who can adapt to curve balls and still persist despite introduced road blocks to deadlines, can look at the minutiae while still perceiving the bigger picture, and can creatively problem solve quickly.
Sound familiar?
Because at the end of the day, this economically correlates to productivity. All of this embodies the catch-cries of our profession:
- ‘Early is on time, on time is late, and late is left behind.’
- ‘It takes and orchestra to play a symphony.’
- ‘You are only as good as your last gig.’
- ‘The show must go on.’
One of the things you advocated for in your TEDx talk is to stop thinking about the idea of “professional musician”, and start thinking about what musicians can offer beyond this artform alone. A professional musician may possess each of those essential skills you mentioned — but still may not be considered an essential worker. So where does this leave musicians who would like to pursue music as a standalone career? Do you think it’s necessary for most musicians to diversify their careers, finding stability in other industries while they continue to make music?
I think musicians need to be supported to do what they do – financially and emotionally.
In my PhD and this current study when I asked participants respond to this statement, I think being a musician is a valuable and respectable profession, they would more likely respond ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’. But when I asked them to rate The general public regards a ‘musician’ as a valuable and respectable profession, they were more likely to respond ‘unsure’ and ‘disagree’.
They further wrote how their co-workers didn’t ‘get’ music, and had little idea what it took to do what they do, therefore simply made inaccurate and sometimes disdainful assumptions. Unconscious bias is a killer to career confidence, and that negatively impacts musicians’ career journeys.
I would only suggest musicians should branch out to other professions if they want. I would also suggest that if musicians are making career decisions to include non-music work, based on financial reasoning, to be sure to apply for jobs that allow them to continue their habit of life-long learning and curiosity. Musicians need to keep their brain stimulated — they will not cope otherwise.
How would you like to see all these ideas reflected in industries beyond music? For example, how would you suggest that other industries take a chance on musicians who are looking to diversify — especially in light of those biases or stereotypes, and that some of these transferable skills may not seem immediately obvious to those who have never worked in music?
If the results of studies such as mine are included in the design of the proposed National Skills Passport, that is a good first step as it will acknowledge what musicians bring to any workplace. Organisations such as the Australian HR Institute could likewise offer training for Human Resource and Recruitment managers to include understanding and identifying relevant skills in arts workers.
Many musicians re-accredit to either work in dual careers or enter another profession – but even more learn on the job. Their capacity to adapt so quickly stems from their innate understanding of how they learn, and their drive to persevere. Recruiters need to know this and, just as importantly, musicians need to communicate effectively how their skills translate from one work domain to another.
The current musician stereotype is damaging, untrue and needs to be eradicated.
Beyond the stereotypes, some of the real struggles of artists include internal pressures, such as perfectionism and performance anxiety, which are common in the music industry. How would you encourage musicians to have confidence in their own abilities, and take that first step in recognising they have a wider skillset than they may realise?
The musician self-perception that they can only do one thing well is real but misinformed. Another barrier is that the energy that it took to get to where they got was gargantuan, and this seriously impedes a musician’s willingness to retrain and learn something entirely new to the standards they would like, within an environment that is far from what they know. They just don’t want to start from the beginning and do it all over again.
The good news: my research participants say that the process towards training for and gaining non-music employment is nowhere near as hard. They also say their habit of working with purpose and finding meaning in what they do likewise transfers to any job.
My advice – try something, anything. Whatever happens, music will always be there for you. Plus, you’ll be surprised at the extensive network of musicians who work in multiple non-music employment.
And remember, you have not failed or turned your back on music. Not one person in my 280-respondent survey said they regretted their music education. Rather, they appreciated its value and how it shaped who they are.
Once a musician, always a musician.
Through your own professional experiences, which span performer to educator to researcher, what benefits have you found in looking at your career through this lens of transferable skills?
At a basic level, I get now why I am a woodwind doubler. My thirst for learning new things just couldn’t stop with the clarinet and classical music. I was always highly aware how the skills from clarinet transferred to the saxophone then to the flute, and the piano and the bass guitar.
I am also a genuinely nosy person, and still to this day fascinated by musicians and why they do what they do. I see it clearly how this curiosity naturally lends itself to research, and see the career threads. In trying to rationalise my life as a musician, I sought to rationalise others’.
And likewise, education is very much a natural progression in my efforts to help musicians understand their own careers, be proud of themselves, and really own the label of superhuman — because they truly are!
Diana, thank you for the chat. But I can’t let you go without asking a future-focused question. After all, your previous insights in CutCommon predicted the impact of a pandemic on music careers, and the way AI might embed itself into the music industry — and these were the things on your mind five years ago! What’s on your mind today? Where do you think music careers could land in another five years?
As a standalone career, the music profession is currently at risk if we have more disruptions like the recent pandemic, geopolitical tensions, or climate impact.
With the decline of music education in primary schools and STEM-focused careers rhetoric, we will see an erosion of music education in high school and therefore tertiary education. This in turn will affect our national cultural identity, which will be outsourced to other countries possessing a more long-sighted perspective on the benefits of school music education.
The broader economy will be disadvantaged as these foundational soft skills gained in music education will become less prevalent in our future workers of all types. This is pertinent when considering our AI-impacted future, where soft skills will have more currency than hard skills.
One of the things I suggested to musicians when the pandemic first hit was advocate your worth, and warned against uploading valuable music content online for free. The conversational scope has now broadened beyond advocation for the artform’s contribution to society, to how musicians’ skills impact our future world of work, and our existence on this planet as humans.
Dr Diana Tolmie’s survey Towards 2050: An analysis of musicians’ transferable skill is open until 7 May and can be accessed online. The survey is facilitated through Griffith University.
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