According to Kathryn Brown, a professor in NC State’s entrepreneurship in music and the arts (EMA) minor, no one should be doing their own marketing.

Numerous rising artists struggle to garner enough attention to profit from their work. However, the professors that make up NC State’s EMA program seek to give budding musicians the skills needed to change that. Brown, a renowned clarinet player who has performed and studied across the east coast, talked about the journey that led to her becoming a professor in the EMA program, a result she wouldn’t have expected initially.

As a child, Brown’s family relocated often, so she joined the school’s band in fifth grade to make friends more easily. During this time, she chose the clarinet as her instrument of choice, a decision sparked by her mom’s musical history with the instrument. Brown cited it as enjoyable, but she didn’t have her first true aesthetic experience with the clarinet until a year later.

“I remember one day in sixth grade where they put all the different band classes together for mass rehearsal before a concert,” Brown said. “We started playing and I was just like ‘holy crap, this is awesome!’ I remember getting chills and goosebumps.”  

Brown played clarinet in band throughout middle school. Despite this, she wouldn’t discover her true passion for music until she gained a new instructor in the seventh grade.  

“I had a really good middle school band director who came out of military tradition,” Brown said. “He picked real repertoire instead of watered-down [educational] arrangements. Something magical happened when I was playing real music and had a band director who was really passionate and took an interest. I think it was due to having that really inspiring teacher … and from then on I had the support that I needed.”

It was around this same time that Brown’s interest in teaching grew. During middle school, she babysat two North Carolina Symphony players’ children, gaining access to their rehearsals as a result. Brown later went on to offer clarinet lessons in high school. 

Initially, Brown attended East Carolina University to study music education and become a band director, but dropped the major in favor of music performance; the culture of ECU was more partial to performers. She now recognizes this as a mistake.

“Most professional musicians — especially in classical music — are also teachers,” Brown said. “It’s just a really logical revenue strain. You’ve invested so much into your own education you can make good money teaching. I could get an orchestral job, but I might be in my 40s or 50s, so what I am I going to do in the meantime? I also had to think about what I was going to write my dissertation on.”

During her time at the University of South Carolina, Brown thought about writing her dissertation on arts entrepreneurship, which was scarcely explored at the time. However, when researching her topics, everything she planned to report on had already been explored by Gary Beckman, who is currently a teaching professor and head of the EMA department at NC State.

“Gary Beckman kept coming up and had already done all the research I had in mind,” Brown said. “I kept looking and saw that he was a visiting professor at USC in the music department, so I emailed him to introduce myself and tell him I was interested in his research. We spoke and I found out he was developing a music entrepreneurship minor and he shared all his research with me.”

Brown referred to the information she received from Beckman when she later co-taught classes for the USC’s arts entrepreneurship minor with Jonathan Gangi, another graduate student from USC and a professor in NC State’s EMA program. When Beckman left USC for NC State, the two of them followed suit soon after.

“The timing was right here,” Brown said. “This was a place that really wanted to have an arts entrepreneurship program. Dr. Gangi and I ended up here because Dr. Beckman needed grad assistance to help grow the program. Part of where we’re at as a field is trying to cultivate the next generation of teachers and define our learning outcomes, so we need a lot of people.”

Beckman spoke highly of Brown and the way she augmented the EMA minor.

“She develops really good stuff,” Beckman said. “For a field that’s new, we look for and prize innovation in the classroom. We didn’t have EMA 110 before she was here. It’s been her class in many respects and she’s done a fantastic job of [teaching] it; it helps the program, rounds it out and it feels whole. That’s what faculty should be doing for a program.”

Despite not currently planning any concerts or playing her clarinet, Brown’s interactions with music aren’t limited to the classroom. She regularly listens to classical music in her free time.  Among composers, Johannes Brahms remains a personal favorite.

“Once I was aware of how competitive it is, I spent all my time listening to classical music from the time I was 14 through college,” Brown said. “Popular music was something that happened occasionally on the radio, but I’m working on that. I always want to know what the students are into and the genres they’re working with so I listen to their stuff and what they’re influenced by.”

When asked about what she felt rising artists should focus on most, she cited that marketing was a huge issue for many of them. 

“You should always outsource your marketing to someone who is passionate about what you do, but [who also] has those skills and is seeing it more objectively … because the artist is way too close to it,” Brown said. “What you think is being communicated through your marketing is not at all what’s being communicated to your market — if you even know who your markets are. Marketing is communicating value to a targeted group.”

Brown will be teaching EMA 110, EMA 370 and EMA 375 in the fall semester.