From Inner Barriers to Professional Visibility

October at MEC: From Inner Barriers to Professional Visibility

By Zhanar Abay, Founder of MEC

In October, MEC dedicated a series of meetings to a topic that is becoming increasingly relevant for classical musicians: professional visibility, personal branding, and new ways of engaging with today’s music industry.

Classical music education teaches musicians how to play correctly, develop their technique, master repertoire, and meet high professional standards. Yet it rarely addresses another essential question: how can musicians turn their knowledge and skills into a sustainable professional career and a reliable source of income? How can they identify opportunities, shape their own career paths, and make their professional value visible beyond the concert stage?

These questions set the direction for MEC’s October programme.

Limiting Beliefs: Why Is It Difficult for Musicians to Put Themselves Out There?

The first meeting focused on the psychological beliefs that can hold musicians back in their professional lives.

From an early age, musicians become accustomed to a system of external evaluation: examinations, competitions, auditions, teachers’ opinions, and the judgments of the professional community. Over time, an assessment of performance can become an assessment of personal worth. If you are selected, you feel valuable; if you are overlooked, you may begin to believe that you are not good enough.

As a result, musicians risk giving others the authority to determine their professional worth, forgetting that external evaluation is subjective and influenced by many different factors. Some spend years waiting for recognition, approval, or an invitation, treating these as proof of their own professional legitimacy.

Another deeply rooted belief is that a truly successful musical career must be built around performing as a soloist. Yet many soloists combine their concert activities with orchestral positions, teaching, and other professional pursuits. Solo performance often depends on individual projects and does not always provide financial stability.

At MEC, we believe it is important to broaden the way musicians define professional success. A musical career does not have to follow a single model, and its value should not be determined solely by external recognition.

Media Presence and Personal Branding: Why Being a Good Musician Is Not Enough

The second meeting approached the subject from a different perspective, exploring personal branding, name recognition, and how musicians are perceived within today’s music industry.

For established musicians in particular, it is important to understand that technique and repertoire alone may not be enough to distinguish them professionally. When a musician is perceived only in terms of their technical abilities, they risk being seen as a function that can be replaced by another performer with similar skills. Individuality, personal qualities, professional values, and a distinctive perspective on music are what make a musician recognisable.

Particular attention was given to media presence and social media. Today, these platforms have become a new kind of professional stage: a space where first impressions are formed, connections are established, and new opportunities emerge.

The music industry cannot always directly assess the quality of someone’s work, especially when that person is not yet known. This is why professional signals matter: they help others form an impression of a musician’s competence and personality.

The meeting explored four categories of signals: academic achievements and awards, institutional recognition, behavioural signals, and symbolic signals.

The first two categories are primarily associated with external professional recognition, while behavioural and symbolic signals reveal more about the individual behind the professional title. Musicians therefore need to consider not only how they want to be perceived, but also whether the image they communicate genuinely reflects their character and values.

Personal branding should not become an artificial persona. Its purpose is to make a musician’s professional identity clear, authentic, and recognisable.

How to Open a Music School from Scratch: Insights from Aisulu Tani

The third meeting featured guest expert Aisulu Tani, a composer by training and an experienced leader in music education.

Throughout her career, Aisulu has served as the director of a specialised school for gifted children at the Kazakh National University of Arts. Alongside this role, she established and managed her own private centres offering supplementary music education.

Today, she serves as the CEO of the Bibigul Tulegenova Creative School, a new-generation educational institution that combines contemporary approaches to education with opportunities for creative development.

She was entrusted with leading the school through its formative stage, drawing on her management experience and proven results.

The session was highly practical. Participants gained insights not only into the organisational aspects of opening a music school, but also into how to structure and manage such an enterprise in accordance with the legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The discussion addressed the real challenges that arise when establishing an educational project.

The meeting offered a broader perspective on a musician’s professional possibilities. Experience in performance and teaching can become the foundation not only for an individual practice, but also for building an organisation, leading a team, and creating an educational environment of one’s own.

Social Media for Musicians: What Should You Share If You’re Not a Blogger?

The final meeting of the October programme focuses on content creation and building a meaningful professional presence on social media.

One common challenge is the lack of individuality across professional profiles. Concert announcements, performance photographs, holiday greetings, and posts celebrating achievements all have their place. However, on their own, they rarely reveal the person behind the music. As a result, the profiles of different musicians can begin to look remarkably similar, even when their personalities and professional journeys are entirely different.

How can musicians move beyond the usual types of posts? What can they share about their work, experience, perspectives, and professional journey? How can they create a distinctive and engaging online presence without turning their lives into a constant content-production exercise?

The key is to learn how to communicate not only events, but also the person behind them: their approach, ideas, values, working process, and the qualities that distinguish them from other professionals.

MEC’s October programme brings together four interconnected areas: overcoming internal barriers, developing a personal brand, cultivating an entrepreneurial mindset, and building a digital presence. Yet all four meetings revolve around one central idea: professional excellence matters, but so does understanding your own value, recognising the range of opportunities available, and learning how to make your experience visible to the world.

You can spend years refining your performance skills and waiting for the right opportunity to appear. Or you can gradually learn to create those opportunities yourself — through your own projects, professional connections, intentional positioning, and the willingness to communicate what you do.

Being a good musician and being a visible musician are not the same thing. Today, it is important to know how to be both.

At MEC, we continue to explore how classical musicians can move beyond traditional ideas of career success and find their own paths in the professional world.