Kirsten Fehring Classical Music Consultancy

Branding is your Artistic Personality in the Spotlight

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 02:35:20 -0700

A while back, a brilliant musician came to me not merely for a rebrand, but to get clear on something more foundational: their artistic identity.

This artist wasn't short on achievements. They perform with wonderful orchestras and great conductors. The discography, the press attributions, the fantastic projects they have been working on, all of it was there, but none of it added up to a clear articulation of why they programme the way they do or what a listener could expect when walking into one of their concerts. Without that clarity, everything downstream, their website, bio and promo material, their pitch to promoters, was working harder than it needed to.

So we started right at the roots: an artistic identity session, followed by an honest look at where they find themselves relative to other artists in their field, a field with no shortage of exceptional talent, competing for the same stages and attention.

In a market like that, defining your niche isn't really optional; it's what lets presenters place an artist immediately rather than filing them under 'another accomplished performer'. The artist already knew their strengths and focus. What we had to do was name them clearly enough so that these could carry through all their communications.

Only then did we move to the assets built on top of it: taglines, About page, bio, and the communications they would use directly with promoters. And all had to trace back diligently to the same core identity, or these assets would pull in different (and probably confusing) directions.
Artistic identity, branding, and consistency: why consistency isn't the same as sameness

A musician's artistic identity is their approach to their art form. It reflects personal style, values, experience, beliefs, cultural background, and the influences of other artists and wider cultural touchpoints. None of that can be manufactured. It can, however, be explored, developed, and articulated.

The brand is what happens when that identity meets an audience. It is the translation layer: visual language, tone of voice, programming choices, and everything else that lets someone encounter the work and recognise something coherent - or, better still, something personal - behind it. A strong brand does not invent an identity. It reflects one that already exists and makes it legible.

Consistency, in the sense of being recognisable, has an important role to play. It helps audiences recognise a musician, return to their work, and trust that the qualities they valued before will still be present. But consistency should not become a straitjacket. It should sit lightly on top of an artist's branding, not define it.

Establishing an artistic identity is not a one-off exercise that produces a fixed result to maintain indefinitely. It is an ongoing process. The goal is not to stay still; it is to bring audiences along as the work evolves. Some will be lost along the way. Others will arrive,...Read More

From Concept to Concert Series

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:42:06 -0700

Chorwelten - a new series at the Kronberg Academy Foundation is live for season 26/27 and I am super happy about this. What started as a conversation with Kronberg Academy director Raimund Trenkler about the amazing acoustics of the Casals Forum (the chamber music hall in my hometown Kronberg and brainchild of the Academy) turned into the idea of creating a series solely built around voices, and for those acoustics, and I ran with it:

In its first season, the focus is on Great Britain, where a strong choral tradition and a contemporary approach often stunningly intertwine and unfold with particular richness - from luminous transparency to bold new colours.
We have invited three ensembles to exemplify this wide spectrum: Solomon's Knot (Baroque collective, historically informed approach, performing off score), ORA Singers (visionary commissioner of contemporary choral music, often performed alongside Renaissance masterpieces), and the young Echo Vocal Ensemble (fearless, innovative and often immersive).
Realising this series, created for my hometown, for a house and an organisation I hold in great affection, with musicians from my adopted home whom I admire equally, feels for me, in the best possible way, like coming full circle.

The conceptual thread is a shared choral tradition - one that connects these very different sound worlds and their distinct positioning within British musical life. Kronberg audiences are in for something special, and I am pretty certain they will be as moved by these vocal ensembles as I am, every...Read More

In the moment

Fri, 15 May 2026 09:14:30 -0700

Over the last couple of weeks, I went to see two very different but equally ambitious concerts. One was with violist Lawrence Power at the Barbican Centre in collaboration with film director Jessie Rodger (creative studio Âme,) violinist Vilde Frang, vocalist Maddie Ashman and Collegium Orchestra, the other with Julian Azkoul and United Strings of Europe at the Southbank Centre.

At the Barbican, Darkness Visible blended live performance with digital projections, aiming to create an immersive journey through the City of London at night. The programming was excellent, with music by Bach, Dowland, Mozart, and the beautiful Cassandra Miller’s Simone Weill-inspired viola concerto I Cannot Love Without Trembling - an extended lament. Time, place, and sound were being explored - though, the music itself still had the strongest effect.

At the Southbank, United Strings of Europe presented send back the echo, an exploration of sound, deafness, and how we listen. Featuring deaf actress Vilma Jackson, interpreting and performing music and text connected to Ludwig van Beethoven and Evelyn Glennie, the programme included works by Jessie Montgomery, Gareth Farr, and Jasmin Rodgman. Especially Glennie’s words gave shape to the entire experience, reminding the hearing audience that listening extends far beyond...Read More

Not going solo!

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 00:36:44 -0700

You start with an idea. An ensemble. A festival. A choir. And then you bounce it around — friends are enthusiastic, colleagues offer advice, your family (always) believes in you. There is warmth and momentum. But there is also that small, persistent voice: Does the world really need another quartet? Another festival or ensemble?

And yet — we know it does. Because what we need are more tangible, enjoyable creative moments and gatherings in our lives, more music that happens in a room, with other people, that cannot be streamed or scrolled past. We cannot have enough of that.

However, a lot of exciting ideas fail — but not because the music wasn’t extraordinary, or the vision not vivid enough. They fail because of the conditions under which they were meant to emerge and live on.

Funding, grants, institutional frameworks, and other existing structures are not neutral backdrops. They actively determine what becomes possible and shape which ideas survive their first few years, and which quietly disappear.

What we should not do is simply accept these conditions; instead, we should learn to shape them from the get-go. So, don’t ask how this idea can be financed, and start asking how this idea or project can be designed so that it can find its place in a sustainable network - as a piece of a larger puzzle?

This means treating potential partners not as...Read More

Most of the time, I arrive late

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 04:18:28 -0700

Most of the time, I arrive late. Not because I wasn't invited earlier — but because that's simply not how it tends to work. By the time an ensemble calls me for a chat, they have usually been going for five or six years. They have recordings, reviews, a growing reputation, a small but loyal audience. They have also, almost certainly, a website that was built by a friend in 2021, a bio that hasn't been updated properly, and a nagging sense that something in their communication isn't quite hitting the spot — that the outside world's idea of who they are doesn't fully match the inside world's reality.
They know something needs to change. That's why they called. And then, not infrequently, something else happens.
We have the conversation, agree on what the work should be, the scope makes sense, and there is genuine enthusiasm for getting this done properly. And then a tour comes up, or a recording project that needs financing, or a venue deposit that can't wait. And the brand work — which has no hard deadline and no contractual obligation attached to it ... gets pushed.
I've heard every version and I do understand the logic. The tour and invoices are real, and brand strategy feels, at that particular moment, like something that can wait. In an industry, where financial margins are thin and artistic opportunities have to be seized when they appear, deferring the less urgent thing makes sense.
But it's also short-sighted.
Imagine two musicians. Both are extraordinary. Both have built something remarkable — a career as principal violin, a festival running for a decade, an ensemble that has toured internationally. One of them has a website that puts their face front and centre. Their bio reads like a confident manifesto. They post their reviews. They claim their work, loudly and without apology.
The other musician — and you may recognise her — keeps a tidy, modest website. Mostly repertoire and dates, some reviews. The bio reads like a CV. The photos are small, or not quite up to date. The festival she founded? Her name is somewhere buried in the About page.
The second musician is often a woman.
I have worked in and around the classical music world for many years now — in arts sponsorship, project management, touring, branding. And the pattern is so consistent it has stopped surprising me, though it never stops bothering me: talented, high-achieving women in this industry routinely under-represent themselves online and in their professional communications. Not out of laziness or ignorance. I think it is something more complicated than that, and well know to most of us.
The imposter monster rears its ugly head!
And there is one more thing — one that rarely gets named, but that almost every freelance musician will recognise. This is a small world. The same conductors, the same fixers, the same collegues, season after season. Your livelihood depends not just on how well you play, but on being easy to work with, undemanding, grateful. Putting yourself forward — really forward, with confidence and without apology — can feel like a disruption to a very delicate ecosystem. So you don't, because...Read More

Linernotes

Fri, 09 Jan 2026 02:21:26 -0800

I am listening …
I recently discovered the new recording Fortissima by cellist Raphaela Gromes and pianist Julian Riem, all about forgotten women composer. Gromes takes the idea of liner notes to the extreme (in a good way) and has published a book alongside her album Fortissima! Marginalized Women Composers and How They Change My Perspective on the World (together with Susanne Wosnitzka). Album and book form a unique piece of music and text that gives long-forgotten female composers the attention they deserve. Through this project, I’ve been introduced to Luise Adolpha le Beau (1850-1927), who has only recently begun to be performed more widely. She was, in fact, Composer of the Week just over a year ago on the BBC for the first time (downloadable only in the UK https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0k8mhxm). I just listened to her fabulous Cello Sonata in D Major, op 17.
Or consider this fabulous cello concerto by Marie Jaëll (1846-1925), a composer I had never encountered before either.
Born in 1846, Jaëll was a pianist...Read More

Stranger

Tue, 28 Oct 2025 01:44:19 -0700

I had a wonderfully topical week recently. I read a fantastic essay on translation and went to an album launch in London - it turned out that there were many common threads to discover and mull over.
I am reading…
The book is called ‘Fremdsprechen’, by Esther Kinsky. You could translate the title as speaking foreign, or speaking foreign languages, if you like a more direct, no-nonsense approach. You might like to try stranger-tongued, if you are poetically inclined. All I can say is that this conundrum is precisely the topic of the book, written by a German author, poet, and translator.
Drawing from her own experiences as a translator and interpreter, Kinsky examines how the images in our minds change through the constant act of renaming, and how memory influences the ideas, feelings and the power we assign to words and thus affect the countless word choices made during translation.
She explores how we become acquainted with a foreign language, first on a collective level and then on a more personal one, developing an individual relationship with these new words and phrases.
The gap between the familiar and the strange might gradually narrow when learning and living within a foreign...Read More

Zuversicht

Mon, 18 Aug 2025 02:08:13 -0700

I am thinking about
the beautiful German word Zuversicht. It carries a depth that cannot be fully captured by a single English term. It combines optimism, confidence, trust, hope, and faith - and for me, it also implies a good portion of engagement and direct action, something I know I need to practice more to counter both a personal and the seemingly global sense of gloom.
Historically, the word Zuversicht was rooted in trust in God and religious faith. Over time, however, its meaning expanded and shifted toward a more active quality: confidence in oneself and one’s abilities.
An early example of these changes in meaning can be found in the 17th century within the story of Reineke Fox (1) (1650), where Zuversicht is described as a quality of courage and wit. The Brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's dictionary records the following lines (2):
Etymologically, the word itself derives from “sich versehen,” meaning “to rely on someone” or “to trust in,” which naturally points to a positive view of the future. In this sense, Zuversicht is not a passive belief, but an outlook that combines trust with the readiness to act.