Megan Ihnen's Workshops & Masterclasses
Megan Ihnen is an educator dedicated to working beyond the confines of the traditional university, collegiate, or conservatory music department. Her work focuses on teaching 21st century skills and disciplines that augment the current assignments and projects of students.
TESTIMONIALS
What others are saying
"She is uncommonly skilled"
"Megan’s ability to communicate real, effective, and meaningful career advice articulated in a way that reaches and inspires current music students is elite. She is uncommonly skilled to understand where our students currently are while vividly painting where they could be."
- Jeffrey Hepker
Composer, Producer, & Assistant Professor of Commercial Music – University of North Texas
"Enlightening and filled with engaging ideas"
"I greatly enjoy every time I get to hear Megan Ihnen both sing and discuss her process for music making, which I’ve been fortunate to experience on multiple occasions. Her Voice + X: Spatiality, Timbre, and Collaboration Beyond the Keyboard presentation at the Cascade Song Festival was enlightening and filled with engaging ideas regarding the future of song. Expanding on the work of music scholars such as Christopher Small, she thinks beyond the limitations of the piano-voice duo and experiments with new understandings of timbre, gesture, and breath afforded by other instruments."
- Lydia Bangura
Vocalist and Music Theorist, Founder and Host – Her Music Academia
"Her presentation was incredibly well-received"
"Megan presented at our annual Mastermind career development workshop. She contacted us to talk in preparation for her presentation, and she tailored her presentation based on our conversation and the unique participants attending this year. Her presentation was incredibly well-received and sparked many important questions for our participants surrounding the ideas of community building and placemaking. This is our 3rd straight year working with Megan and we will continue to do so!"
- Matt Landry
Saxophonist, Executive Director – Akropolis Reed Quintet
"It was very pertinent to the current music world"
"We were very pleased with Megan Ihnen’s wonderful lecture Music is a Referral Business networking & community building presentation. She spoke to all the Collaborative Piano Institute participants (pianists, singers, string and woodwind players), and they were all engaged and very interested in the material presented. We thought it was very pertinent to the current music world and music business, and it contained lots of practical information for our participants. We highly recommend it!"
- Ana Maria Otamendi
Artistic Director, The Collaborative Piano Institute
Music Entrepreneurship
MAKE IT RAIN
In this session we break down the process for building and growing your work through logical easy-to-follow steps even while living a busy musician’s life. We also discuss how to stand out from the crowd and dramatically increase your odds of getting booked regularly. Make It Rain covers:
Advancing through your career levels
Goal setting and mindset
Creating and pricing your offers
Identifying your audiences, clients, or students
Developing processes and automations
Performance & pedagogy research
Voice + X: Spatiality, Timbre, and Collaboration Beyond the Keyboard
The art song repertoire has long been dominated by voice and piano collaborations, with the piano acting as both harmonic foundation and expressive partner. But what happens when the piano isn’t there? This lecture-recital explores the interpretive, logistical, and collaborative possibilities that emerge when singers perform art song with non-piano instrumentations—voice and bassoon, voice and percussion, voice and viola, and more.
CAREER DEVELOPMENT & VISIBILITY
TRYING IN PUBLIC
Perfectionism and professional pressure can keep us circling the same task: rewriting the bio again, waiting for better recordings, chasing one more credential before we let ourselves be seen. This lecture-workshop treats visibility as a skill you can practice and hone just like technique, so participants get comfortable being seen while they're still becoming. Trying in Public covers:
Procrasti-branding, cringe, and being visible anyway
How your bio, portfolio, pitch, and application each ask for a different kind of show & tell
Writing and testing your one-sentence claim: what you want to be hired for this season
Reading your materials from the other side of the table
Finding one-to-many rooms, in person and online
Planning your next public try: one material, one reader, one date
Marketing & Career Development
STRATEGIC ARTIST BIOS & WEBSITES
Artist websites and bios aren’t usually an artist's first impression... they’re the second. By the time someone lands on your site or reads your bio, they’ve already seen your work, heard your music, or felt your energy in a rehearsal, audition, or performance. They’re there because they’re curious, because they want to make a decision about you, or because they’re trying to figure out how to hire you.
In this session, Megan Ihnen (Executive Director of the Live Music Project, mezzo-soprano, and LAUNCHpad faculty) will guide students through building bios and websites that serve those real-world needs. You’ll learn how to craft a bio that positions you for the work you want next and how to design a website that helps people find your offerings, understand your credibility, and take the next step to connect with you.
Community-building & Networking
MUSIC IS A REFERRAL BUSINESS: NETWORKING & COMMUNITY BUILDING
The goal of increasing your professional network is to make sure you are the first person that people think of when they have a particular issue or need. They need to call you. But if they don’t know to think about you, they’re gonna call someone else. In this workshop we cover:
Understanding how relationships in the music field are created and maintained
Personal branding & PR basics for creative professionals
Community organizing principles and action plans
Marketing, communications, & pr
MARKETING FOR COMPOSERS
Dear Composer,
You might be asking yourself: "What is my message? Who is my audience? How do I reach them?" One of the key aspects of creating a sustainable career as a composer is to build your visibility through marketing. You want your ideal collaborators to know that you exist, commission you, and become real advocates of your work! This workshop focuses on concepts such as branding, building awareness, generating interest in collaborations and projects, promoting your upcoming performances, and more.
Music Entrepreneurship
YOUR MUSIC BUSINESS: SYSTEMS & AUTOMATION
One of the top reasons clients come to me is because they want to “spend more time on the art than on the business to make the art.” Automation simplifies all areas of your professionally creative life by automatically accomplishing tasks that you or a contractor would otherwise have to do manually. In this workshop, you'll:
Create standard operating procedures for your work
Practice systems thinking
Declutter, automate, and delegate
Bonus: How musicians and creative professionals can use AI tools to streamline daily, weekly, & monthly workflows.
Performance & pedagogy
VOWEL SHAPES FOR SINGERS AND INSTRUMENTALISTS
Wish you knew more about sounding authentic across your languages? Feeling unsure about French mixed vowels or German umlauts? This workshop introduces participants to the vowel quadrilateral and works to improve understanding and technical application. Vowel efficiency is linked to better tone quality, resonance, and breath control. This workshop is valuable for performers, choral directors, and more. This workshop is also available in a version for wind instrument performers looking for more information about tongue and vowel shapes.
Marketing & DIGITAL ENGAGEMENT
DIGITAL ENGAGEMENT FOR ARTS ENTREPRENEURS
Originally created for the University of Michigan’s Performing Arts EXCELerator, this workshop focuses on how to engage your audience through communications and marketing. Megan guides participants through an outline of understand, plan, build, test, and refine.
“You work hard to present your concerts, to teach your students, to support your constituents, to make your world a more creative place. Your digital communications should help people find out about the work you do and how they can get involved as a listener, student, partner, donor, or more.”
Performance & pedagogy
Megan Ihnen Masterclass Topics
Extended Vocal Techniques for New Music Singers
Coaching/Performing the NewMusicShelf Anthology of New Music for Mezzo-Soprano, Vol. 1
Stage Presence in Recital Performance
Teaching and Performing Rhythmic Accuracy
Singing American Poetry
Practice Strategies for All Voices
PODCAST + MUSIC ENTREPRENEURSHIP
BE ON THE STUDIO CLASS PODCAST
Megan Ihnen is a professional mezzo-soprano, teacher, writer, and arts entrepreneur who is passionate about helping other musicians and creative professionals live their best lives. Studio Class is an outgrowth of her popular #29DaystoDiva series from The Sybaritic Singer. Let your emerging professionals be part of the podcast! Invite Megan to your studio class for a taping of an episode. Your students ask questions and informative, fun conversation ensues.
