For this week’s Career Spotlight, Dear Normal sat down with Emma McClellan to discuss her experience working in the world of live music.
Emma has always loved live music, particularly because of its ability to bring people together and to see the sense of joy that it brings to herself and those around her. She says that for this reason and jokingly because she “likes to tell people what to do,” Emma took a particular interest in the production aspect of live music. In order to explore this interest further, Emma had the opportunity to work as a production assistant in New York on several live shows.
She jokes about her interview process being a little bit untraditional. With a connection she had found through her aunt who works as a Hall manager at Carnegie Hall, she was able to meet her future boss, Tony. She says that in her interview Tony said, “I’ll give you two days and if I don’t like you after two days then I will never talk to you again.” Emma took the challenge, packed her bags, and moved to New York. Spoiler alert: they are now good friends to this day.
With this opportunity Emma got to work several shows at venues including Carnegie Hall, Radio City, UBS Arena in Long Island, and Summer Stage in Central Park (just to name a few).
She gives two different descriptions of what a day in her life might look like. On a day where she isn’t working a show, she and the team are doing what is called “advancing a show.” During this time she would meet with a tour manager and the team on the tour in order to discuss the rules of the venue on her side and what the artist wants on the artist side, and they find a way to make it happen to the likeness of both parties. She brings insight of challenges such as the fact that it is illegal to brings trucks into Central Park. This being said, if there is a lot of equipment, the team will have to recruit quite a bit of man power in order to physically bring the supplies from the street to the middle of Central Park. With roadblocks such as that one as well as New York’s quite hours (preventing an artist from continuing a set for too long) Emma and the production team are dealing with a lot of personalities.
She then walks through what a day of the show looks like. She begins by arriving to the venue very early in the morning in order to make sure that breakfast is set up. She emphasizes the importance of this task as she jokes that if people aren’t fed properly then the day could go a lot differently, so breakfast is a crucial part of the show day routine. After breakfast she also emphasizes the importance of sticking to the schedule. Since New York does have quiet hours, it is imperative the you stick to the schedule according to plan and that everything is on time and smooth. If something is happening on time or smoothly, Emma says that it is the production team’s job to figure out what is going on and to fix it quickly in order to get everything back on track. Challenges such as the derailment of the schedule allow Emma the opportunity to step up to the plate and allow her leadership skills to shine.
Emma loves live production and wants to continue to do it while she is “still young and cool.” She says that it is very exhausting physically and emotionally, preventing one the ability to do it forever, but it is nothing that will hold her back from her dreams. We can’t wait to see what Emma does next!
See you next time,
Dear Normal
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