49: Five Questions for Jennifer Johnson Cano
1. What can a young musician do to help ensure a repeat engagement?
I think the most important thing that young musicians can do to ensure repeat engagements is to come in prepared and to collaborate enthusiastically. We as musicians, to be prepared that time in the practice room is our time. It's our time to focus on our technique and our ideas. And when you get into the room for a rehearsal with other people, it has to become about the collective and about the group. So coming prepared means that I've done the work that I can do, and now it's time to put my own ego aside and to open my ears and to open my heart to what other people are doing so that we can create this thing together, that we're ultimately going to share with an audience.
2. How do you cultivate a network and keep those relationships going through your career?
Relationships are not only necessary, but they're one of the greatest aspects of joy in making music. So always honoring and learning from people I think is one of the best ways to celebrate those relationships within music, to, again, have open ears to what people are doing and how they're approaching something
and their process and seeing what you can learn from that in your own practice. Keeping relationships going is a challenge when you're busy and traveling and simply carving out the time to do it, whether that's making a phone call or writing a text or an email and you learn what forms of communication work best with different people. And again, when you care about those relationships, you prioritize that effort and whatever medium makes those connections possible.
3. What career lesson do you wish you had understood when you were just beginning to perform professionally?
Something I wish I understood when I was younger was to enjoy the moment and be as present as possible. When you're young and you have these big dreams, you can easily fall into the trap of always thinking ahead. And you want to be very sure that you savor the beautiful thing that's happening in the rehearsal room, or the practice room, or in a performance right then and there. Because each one of those moments and the lessons you learn by being present will help serve you on that journey forward. Don't get so wrapped up in the next thing that you don't celebrate the now.
4. When do you say yes and when do you say no regarding work?
I say yes when I believe in something, and it inspires me, and motivates me, and I have the time and energy to devote to a project what I know it deserves. The rare occasions when I do say no usually have to do with calendar busyness. I know everyone loves to be as, as the young ones say, #bookedandblessed, but every commitment you make as a musician must be treated with the utmost respect. So being busy is only as good as the quality which you bring to each and every individual project. So there are some projects
that I would love to do, but I look at my calendar and I see the commitments that I've already made, and as much as it breaks my heart, I sometimes have to say no because you want to honor those commitments as they come. So really, the only time I say no is because I think that the quality of my work may suffer and that I may fall short of other commitments which I've already made.
5. What's the best professional advice anyone ever gave you?
The best professional advice I ever received was twofold. One item was to always trust my instincts. And the second piece of advice that I still hold very closely to my heart is to live your life. I think especially when you're a young, ambitious musician, it becomes all too easy to lock yourself in a practice room for hours a day, to focus solely on performances and all of these things that you're doing professionally, and that it's very important to have a life outside of that, to see your friends and eat the food and go to movies and concerts and to not allow the music-making part of your life to dictate how you live.