Yesterday Ausra and I received an invitation to play a couple of organ recitals in Italy in 2018.
This invitation came through my friend Italian organist Enrico Presti who appeared as guest on my podcast around Christmas last year. This got me thinking what does it take to get invited to play an organ recital abroad? In short - trust and generosity of the person in charge. Enrico is a very generous individual and when I asked him if he wanted to share his journey as an organist with the Secrets of Organ Playing community in 89 countries without hesitation he said yes. Not everybody I approach agree to this. Not everybody even writes back. But those who do, all of them are generous enough to care about spreading ideas to the world. And then there is trust. If I had asked Enrico for a chance to play a recital (just like a lot of people ask me) BEFORE I did something nice to him (help spread the word about his work through the podcast conversation), I don't think this invitation to come to Italy would have become a reality. But since I proved I cared about his work and earned the trust, we have yet another opportunity to play in this part of the world. So I was thinking that you too could help another organist in a similar way. Invite them for an interview, write a post or two about their organ videos and share their work. Basically help them achieve what they want before earning the privilege to ask. Maybe you won't have to ask after all that. Maybe they will want to reciprocate themselves. I challenge you to try this strategy for 30 days and see if you'll get more opportunities to play organ recitals.
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