• Bio
  • Contact Ian

Ian Sidden

Subscribe

  • Email
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • Craft
  • My News
  • About the Music
  • The Rest of Life

Defining Success Without a Scoreboard

November 10, 2017 By Ian Sidden

Business leaders have an actual score they can point to as justifying their choices and actions. Profits go up, the stock rises, customer sat has risen, and therefore the previous choices have paid off. Warren Buffett makes a stock pick, and at some point it pays off or it doesn’t. Jony Ive and Tim Cook remove the headphone jack from the iPhone, and either they sell more or they sell fewer. The numbers don’t lie and all that.

For a singer or director, there’s nothing like that. There’s no score afterwards. One person will tell you what you did was great, and another will tell you it was garbage. Who are you going to believe? There are no hard numbers there. It’s dependent on their respective tastes.

You probably don’t want to go by the businesses numbers either, especially if you consider what you’re doing to be art. Summer blockbusters make a lot of money. Is that artistic success? One opera draws larger crowds than another. Is that success? Maybe/maybe not.

You’ll have to define it for yourself. The alternative is not knowing what you stand for and an emotional dependance on other’s flitting tastes.

Related posts:

Spotify Ambivalence Default ThumbnailHomeward Bound Update Default ThumbnailOutliers: The Story of Success

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Success

« A Corner for Gratitude
Open Jug Breath Holding »

Comments

  1. jean says

    November 10, 2017 at 5:16 pm

    A lot of good posts lately. Success in the arts has to come from within because of the fickleness of the commercial gauge of success, which is so often about your resume and how much money you can generate. As a playwright whose plays don’t get produced or ‘done’ I struggle with this question perpetually.

About Ian

Ian Sidden is currently a bass member of the Theater Dortmund Opera chorus. Read More…

Latest Posts

Training Singing, Practicing Strength

In the past few years, I’ve begun viewing my singing work in a similar manner to my weight training. And vice versa. The two share obvious similarities. We use time and effort to get better: We want more power. We want more endurance. We want more agility. We want to be more durable. We want […]

Premiere: Fernand Cortez

Tonight we premiere our production of Gaspare Spontini’s Fernand Cortez, ou La conquête du Mexique at Opernhaus Dortmund. This is after a two year delay; originally we were to have premiered this in 2020, but history intervened. There are many versions of this opera floating around, and we are doing a version that has – […]

Premiere: Frédégonde

Here’s one I’ve been looking forward to for awhile. Tonight at Opernhaus Dortmund, we’re premiering Frédegonde for the first time in Germany. It’s a work inspired from the early history of the Merovingians in what is now France and the ongoing feud between two of the queens, Brunhild and Frédegonde. The work was composed by […]

“Ständchen” by Schubert, Guitar and Voice Arrangement

Here is a performance of my self accompanied guitar arrangement of Franz Schubert’s “Ständchen”.

PREMIERE: Tosca

Tonight at Opernhaus Dortmund, we’re premiering our “Tosca”, which is the first premiere including the chorus since March 13, 2020.

Copyright © 2023 · WordPress