I wrote a blog post on this subject many, many years ago. Rereading it, I still believe in a lot of what I said there. In most of it, really. But I also knew I had more to say on the subject. I’ve had so much experience since then working with composers from all sorts of backgrounds and levels of experience.

Since the video was released last Monday, I’ve had a lot of nice comments from composers, mostly saying “oh it’s nice to know that I’ve been doing a lot of this right”. So I’m glad to also be reassuring with this one.

I’ve also had a lot or requests for a video on how to cold e-mail performers, so I’m working on that, and also recruiting help from performer friends, getting their opinions on how best to go about this. No one has said they don’t want to receive these e-mails, and broadly most people have said they have, on occasion, started a new collaboration based on them, but there are also a lot of cases where the e-mails have pushed buttons in all the wrong ways. So I’m hoping to come out with some really clear and helpful advice on the subject in the next few weeks. Meanwhile I’ll be posting a new video on Monday so please do subscribe to my channel!

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