A Perspective on Arts Leadership from Shaya Lyon of the Live Music Project
By Bronson Foster
Editorial note: This interview was originally part of the author’s research conducted at the University of Southern California in Fall 2019. The content of this interview has been edited for length and formatting for this setting.
Bronson Foster: Give us an introduction to your current role and some background on the Live Music Project.
Shaya Lyon: I am the Founder and Executive Director of the Live Music Project (LMP). We’re an arts service organization based in Seattle, Washington, that aims to leverage community-centric technology in a way that amplifies the resources of local arts organizations. We do this through a few different programs:
1) A comprehensive community-driven calendar that lists every known classical music concert, open rehearsal, festival, master class, etc. within a three-hour radius of Seattle.
2) An audience-building community access program called Spontaneous Free Tickets that distributes tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of tickets to the community each year.
3) A lightweight fundraising tool called Dots that helps ensembles raise money and connects them with potential donors and support communities.
4) An ongoing list of community announcements that helps arts organizations get the word out about opportunities for jobs, grants, special events/services, and so on.
BF: Tell us about yourself — both your personal and professional background. How did you end up where you are right now?
SL: I came to this work in a roundabout way. I didn’t have the intention to run a nonprofit or even be involved in the arts. My background is in philosophy, journalism, then technology, and my most recent work was with small tech companies, designing tools that help people search for and find information for themselves and their communities that wasn’t previously accessible. The idea for LMP itself started when I was living and working in New York City, but I didn’t have the time or resources to develop it until I moved to Seattle. When I moved to the Pacific Northwest, I came across a robust community orchestra scene that didn’t have the resources to amplify their work. I noticed this opportunity and acted on it from that point.
BF: How do you define arts leadership (maybe in comparison to arts administration)?
SL: I believe you can be a leader without being an administrator, and you can be an administrator without being a leader. Leadership can’t be done in silence. It involves having a vision of something you want to accomplish, and then being able to carry that out. With that, you need to bring people along — whether it be volunteers, staff, supporters, and so on. If you can’t bring people along on that journey, then you aren’t leading, you’re just doing.
If you can’t bring people along on that journey, then you aren’t leading, you’re just doing.
BF: What does it mean for you to be an arts leader who isn’t interacting directly with the art itself, but rather being centered around arts information?
SL: Not being intimately connected with the art itself makes me feel like I have a little bit of distance and perspective when designing ways to support audiences. For instance, audiences who don’t have a background in classical music might not have an understanding of the terminology, or have general knowledge on the subject. When I started this work, I shadowed orchestras so that I could observe how they communicate and operate. What a musician might learn on day one of their journey was completely new and mind-blowing to me. It’s my hope that I am able to bring that energy and excitement to my work, while someone who is more deeply connected with the art might not have that sense of energy and enthusiasm about some of the more common aspects of music-making. It’s good to have a voice at the table who isn’t directly connected to the art itself but is passionate about the cause so they maintain interest and curiosity about the work being done.
BF: Your work is focused on classical/contemporary classical music. Do you see a broader need for similar work to yours in other areas of the arts such as dance, theater, etc.?
SL: As general coverage for the arts continues to dwindle, I feel it will be more important for the arts sector to have the ability to share information about the work they’re doing. What would be great to see is this work not being limited to performing arts organizations, and to also include museums. For example, if you want to see works by Picasso, you should be able to look up all the places where you can view them at a given moment.
BF: Dots is one example of how you and the Live Music Project are revolutionizing the way arts organizations expand their resources through technology. What is the future of tech in the arts and what role is LMP going to play in that arena?
SL: I want to break this down into two separate questions: First, what is the role of tech in art-making? And second, what is the role of tech in supporting the arts? There’s a lot of opportunity for tech to support the arts industry. The challenge for tech supporting the arts is that the arts have to be able to consume tech. People building this technology have to do so in a way that arts organizations can use it well, and arts organizations need to dedicate some resources to being able to be trained on the tech itself and learn how to manage it properly. The catch being that there is already lots of tech in the arts (ex: donation platforms, grant submissions, recordings, etc.), but the challenges are first that tech is expensive with little money being available in the arts to use it, and second, there is a lot of turnover in the arts sector, which in turn impacts the ability to have people on staff who are trained on these systems. If the one person in your organization who understood a given technology leaves the org, then you don’t have an expert on the tech in your organization— and even with a proper hand-off, training employees frequently on new systems is a drain on resources. LMP steps in by designing tech that requires little training or expertise and keeps the artists and audiences at the center of the design.
BF: LMP is successful in large part due to its volunteers and the broader community contributing time and effort to the cause. How do you ensure you have a community who is involved in what you do — especially when LMP exists primarily in a digital space?
SL: From the very beginning, when I cold-emailed 200 arts organizations and introduced this project and asked if I could publish their concert schedules, they all said yes. I wanted to do this work because it supported their work. After building a relationship with those organizations, I encouraged them to take some ownership in the process, contributing to the greater whole by putting in some effort on their end. Transparency was also a big part of this process. After identifying the community of people who had information to share, then it was about finding the community who wanted and/or needed that information. It began with making the information accessible to people and also going out of the way to go to performances to have face-to-face interactions and building that trust.
It began with making the information accessible to people and also going out of the way to go to performances to have face-to-face interactions and building that trust.
The focus became showing how real the work and effort were behind LMP. As the project grew, it became clear that more help was needed beyond my one-person editorial operation. When people expressed interest and excitement in the work being done, there was a game of matchmaking between people’s personal interests and volunteering opportunities. A natural evolution occurred from this grassroots standpoint, and now LMP has a community that is invested in the work being done and the relationships that have been built through that work.
BF: What is next for you and for the Live Music Project? What can we expect to see in the near future, and maybe the not-so-near future?
SL: Next for LMP comes growth in our major programs — including a new website and a nationwide launch of the calendar; Spontaneous Free Tickets is growing to reach more people; and understanding Dots as a new product and rolling it out for first users. At an organizational level, LMP is working on expanding development initiatives to bring on a more established staff which we expect to see in the coming months and years. I am excited about new possibilities and I’m also reflecting on how unexpected the growth was from the beginning of this whole process. I had no concept at the beginning of this journey of how large the scope of the work and complexity would be down the road. I can’t help but reflect on this moment in the very beginning when you know you are starting something, but you don’t quite know where it will lead. As for now — I’m using this time to wear many hats, and while that might feel like a lot at times, I consider it an essential part of leadership and knowing how to drive the organization forward.
Bronson Foster is an arts leader, curator/musician, and idea enthusiast aiming to brighten the world through work at the intersection of creative and intellectual pursuits. His current focus is on arts and culture ecosystems and advancing them through the 21st century. Currently, Bronson is attending graduate school at the University of Southern California (USC) in the USC Thornton School of Music where he is earning a Master of Science in Arts Leadership degree. He holds a Bachelor of Music in Performance degree from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). You can find him exploring his home of Los Angeles, California or by saying hello on social media @bronsonfoster.
