Where do I go with … music? Do you hear music in your future? These four successful people did, too

Career World, Nov-Dec, 2004 by Richie Chevat

Some people cry at the opera.

Others never feel more alive than when they're listening to their favorite band and playing air guitar. Then there are people who walk around all day singing or whistling to themselves, just because they like to.

Do you love music, either listening to it or making it yourself? Then maybe a career in the music industry is the right choice for you. People don't have to play instruments or be great singers to get jobs in the music industry. What's most important is a love of music and some imagination.

BROADWAY SINGER

Tracee Beazer had stars in her eyes from an early age.

"Dancing was my first love," she says. "From age 3, even before I knew what Broadway was, I knew that [was] where the good dancers went, and if you're going to be on Broadway, you're going to have to sing."

Today, at the age of 23, Beazer has already accomplished her goal. She's in the Broadway cast of Hairspray. Eight times a week, she sings and dances in a hit show. "I play one of the Dynamites," she says. "They're kind of like the Supremes."

It took a lot of hard work to get there. Beazer began taking voice lessons at age 12. She tried out for parts in her local community theater. Add to that acting and dance classes, auditions in New York City, and endless hours of practicing--even though she's still very young, Beazer has years of experience behind her.

Her first real break came when she was 18 and got a part in a production with Theaterworks-USA, a touring children's theater company, "I thought I was set," she says. "But it only lasted a month and a hale After that, it was back to auditioning."

Auditions can be unnerving. "Sometimes you go in and you're on and really hit it. Then sometimes you go in and you crash and burn. But a lot of times, that's when they call you back, so you never know."

Even though she's made it to Broadway, Beazer plans to keep taking lessons. "Singers who are at the top of their field are still going to coaches," she explains. "You can always learn something new. It's like athletes who have trainers."

After a year playing the same part, it's not always easy to keep up your enthusiasm, she says. Still, she never takes it for granted.

"When you're on the stage, just the curtain raising up, just seeing that audience gives you a thrill," says Beazer. "Sometimes I turn to the other actress in my dressing room before we go on and I say, 'We're on Broadway/' It's really unbelievable sometimes."

RECORD COMPANY EXECUTIVE

How would you like a job going to clubs to hear music almost every night of the week? That's what Jason Olaine did as an executive for Verve Records. Part of his job was to look for new bands for the label. That's where the nightly club hopping came in.

"Going out five or six nights a week is fun at first, but it gets awfully tiring," Olaine says. At the same time, he was learning about producing albums. In addition to finding new talent, a producer works with musicians, sound engineers, and a marketing department to plan, record, and sell new albums.

At Verve, Olaine worked with jazz musicians. A jazz CD that Olaine worked on, Directions in Music, Live at Massey Hall, won a Grammy award in 2003.

In college, Olaine played the trumpet in a jazz combo, but he really didn't plan to go into music as a career.

"I was thinking of going to business school," he remembers, "But I realized that every time I got a paycheck, I went down to the record store and spent it on records. I thought, 'I have a problem here. How do I do something with music for a living?'"

Olaine got not just one but four internships in the music industry--all at the same time! He worked for a music industry magazine, the San Francisco Jazz Festival, a radio station, and a jazz dub. Only the magazine paid him. Still, he was confident that one of these internships would turn into a job.

Olaine was right. He became artistic director at the jazz club, booking their performers. From there, he took the job at Verve Records in New York City. Today, Olaine is an independent record producer. He works with new bands to record demo CDs, hires musicians and engineers for studio recordings, or puts together musicians he thinks would work well together. He has cut back on his overbooked nighdife while still doing the thing he loves most--helping others make music.

AUDIO TECHNICIAN

Like a lot of kids, Jonathan Gold was a drummer and guitarist in a rock band in high school. But he always found himself hanging out at the soundboard. If there was a problem with the sound equipment, he was the one who wound up fixing it. That's when he began to think about becoming an audio technician.

"I had what they call an engineer's attitude," Gold says. "It's sort of laid back. When everyone is running on high emotions in a crisis, the engineer remains levelheaded." After high school, he enrolled in a nine-month recording engineering and studio technology course at the Omega School for Applied Recording Arts and Sciences in Rockville, Md.