Presented By
Music Business/Management Department

How to Make a Living in a Post-Pandemic Industry—Music in the Age of COVID: Best Practices from Around the World—Revisited

This event has passed.
Please see the events listing for upcoming events.
Event Dates
David Friend Recital Hall (DFRH)
921 Boylston Street
Boston
MA
02115
United States

With generous support from the Antonia and Vladimir Kulaev (AVK) Cultural Heritage Fund, the Music Business/Management Department will host the conclusion of its series, Music in the Age of COVID: Best Practices from Around the World. At this event, a panel of renowned musicians and industry experts will share the resources, tools, tips, and strategies they used to advance their careers and their music during the pandemic and beyond.

The panelists include Nick DiSpagna, Mark Kates, and Noelle Scaggs. The event is moderated by Christopher Wares, assistant chair of the Music Business/Management Department.

Nick DiSpagna serves as one of the international agents coordinating tours and bookings in Europe for the Kurland Agency, which represents Wynton Marsalis, Pat Metheny, Béla Fleck, Bobby McFerrin, Arturo Sandoval, and many more incredible artists. DiSpagna also serves as the responsible agent for Abdullah Ibrahim, Al Di Meola and Charles Lloyd. Since the start of the pandemic, DiSpagna has executed transcontinental European tours with Charles Lloyd, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Harod López-Nussa, Joey Alexander, and several other artists. 

Mark Kates has been a central figure in the genre of alternative music since before it even had a name. His work has included A&R, promotion, marketing, label head and owner, and now is primarily as an artist manager. Kates grew up in the Boston area where Mission of Burma's music inspired him to work for its label, Ace of Hearts. From there he moved to Big Time Records in Los Angeles and artists like Love and Rockets, Alex Chilton, and the Hoodoo Gurus. His work there led to Geffen/DGC Records where he spent more than 10 years; he created the alternative promotion department and eventually segued to A&R and played a significant role in the development of the alternative radio format. He signed Beck, Jawbreaker, Elastica, Alabama 3, and others. He brought Sonic Youth to Geffen and A&R’d albums by them as well as Nirvana, Hole, Teenage Fanclub, Siouxsie and the Banshees, White Zombie, and many others. He executive produced the soundtracks for Beavis and Butt-Head Do America and Suburbia. Kates left Geffen in 1998 to run Grand Royal Records for the Beastie Boys and worked with them and their roster including Sean Lennon and Luscious Jackson. In 2001 he returned to Boston and established Fenway Recordings, a music management company.

Elektra recording artist Noelle Scaggs may be best known for her larger-than-life vocals and magnetic stage presence as the co-front person for multiplatinum group, Fitz and the Tantrums, but the talented songstress is also an accomplished songwriter, whose credits include cowriting her band’s chart-topping, platinum-certified singles “Out of My League” and “The Walker.” In 2018, Scaggs was placed at no. 12 on Billboard’s list of Top 30 Female Artists in the Alternative Songs Chart’s history​, amongst names like Gwen Stefani and Lorde. Scaggs is currently working on her newly founded initiative, Diversify the Stage that launched the spring of 2020, created to foster more accessible pipelines to careers in concerts, events, and touring for BIPOC, LGBTQ+, female-identifying, and gender nonconforming communities. She started the initiative upon recognizing the lack of diversity she'd encountered while on tour and hopes to bring more awareness to artists and their respective teams to help build more inclusive hiring practices in the future.