BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
It’s safe to say that most makers and listeners of Australian art music will have heard of Cameron Lam.
They’re curator of the Australian Art Music playlist, a monthly listening journey through improvised, experimental, classical, and other styles of music composed by local talent.
Cameron is a Melbourne composer too — and the artistic director of production company Kammerklang, which this year celebrates its 15th birthday.
If that weren’t enough to sustain their busy schedule, Cameron also enjoys visual art. And this month, they’re running an Australian Cultural Fund campaign to support new chamber music recording project Palette Pieces: Musical Watercolours.
All that and we’re only beginning to scratch the surface of Cameron’s career in the Australian arts industry. It’s through experiences like these that they’ve learnt how to choose their projects wisely, how to outsource when things get too busy, how to work with a budget, and — perhaps most importantly — how to know their own worth.
These are skills they share with other artists as a consultant, but they’re also skills we thought sounded valuable enough to sit down and have an in-depth and insightful conversation about.
Cameron tells CutCommon readers what they’ve been up to in their music career, how they’re making it come together, and how you might make your own projects work in a sustainable way, too.
Cameron, thank you so much for the chat! It’s not your first time here at CutCommon; you’ve spoken to us quite a bit in the past, especially through your role with APRA AMCOS where you gave some advice on how to apply for funding. But last year, you took a big leap and decided to make a career change. Tell us what you’ve been up to so far in 2024.
Thank you, Steph! It’s always a pleasure. The past six months has been an utter whirlwind, reprioritising and calibrating things after eight years as Art Music Lead at APRA AMCOS. While that role no longer exists, I’m still passionate about supporting and advocating for our art music community however I can.
To that end, I’ve added another playlist project to my ongoing Australian Art Music playlist, which just celebrated five years! 1,000 Curious Ears is a community listening project that aims to support Australian art music composers, improvisers, performers, and sound artists get the required 1,000 listens needed to begin receiving royalties from Spotify, as of 1 April 2024. They’re longer monthly lists, often entire albums, intended for long plays and ambient listening.
Secondly, this has allowed me time to come back to my own production company Kammerklang in full force! Along with our artistic associate Alicia Crossley (below), we’ve got some exciting plans for our 15th birthday season, starting off with the return of our Hidden Curiosities series, championing existing under-performed Australian repertoire.
In November last year, I finished my Masters degree at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, studying under this incredible team of Dr Katy Abbott, Dr Melody Eotvos, and Dr Christine McCombe. Since finishing, I’ve been taking the opportunity to update my catalogue of works, and make sure they’re all available for sale. I’m very proud of my portfolio, and the works I created for my Masters, but after four years, it’s also been exciting to kick off a wave of new projects as a freelance composer.
I was so chuffed to be asked by artistic director Miranda Hill to write for Homophonic! And The Consort of Melbourne for their RESPECT commissioning project: new music by LGBTQ+ composers, inspired by the lives, loves, and adventures experienced by senior members of our community. Melbourne for the Weekend was premiered in four Homophonic! shows back in February; this piece is a fun ridiculous musical pub crawl across some of Melbourne’s various gay bars – complete with a stage prop bar built for the show. Never let it be said that Miranda and I don’t commit to the bit!
Finally, I’ve had the chance to project manage, advise, and consult more broadly, for companies, small organisations and for independent artists. Whether reviewing documents, being a subject matter expert, sharing industry information or teaching processes, it’s been exciting to spread my wings and bring the work I used to do for APRA AMCOS to broader community.
What do you enjoy about consulting, and about finding ways to help support or boost the confidence in the musical lives of your clients?
Don’t get me wrong, I really getting to chip away at a big project, which possibly explains some Kammerklang events. But nothing is as meaningful as getting to connect with an artist on what excites them…For me, problem solving is at the heart of composition. And consulting scratches that itch too.
I love getting to meet new people and hear about what they’ve already achieved, what they love, and where they dream about going. And having someone else to help address roadblocks can make all the difference!
For some people, my role is filling in knowledge gaps. For others, it’s an objective eye to help with prioritising. For some people, I can help by making connections or drawing parallels within the industry to explore, and others need someone to ask questions, to draw out the explanations and reasons for what truly matters – in their own words.
Being a part of a community is a cherished responsibility, but I think what really bring me joy in these consults, is hopefully bringing value to someone else’s life and practice – the eureka moment, the glimmer of inspiration, and determination to achieve what they want.
What are some of the most common questions you get asked when it comes to careers in music?
I think the most common question I get, and one we should all talk about more, is ‘How on Earth do I do everything?’. Everyone is stretched thin, both in terms of resources — time, money, energy — but also the breadth of knowledge and skills ‘required’ or expected to be a freelance musician. At the end of the day, we’re all self-taught to some degree, and have picked up just enough experience or knowledge on the fly, as needed, to make things work.
One of the great privileges I’ve had working at APRA AMCOS was a bird’s eye view of the sector at large, the music industry more broadly, and our own community. I’m not an expert at everything, but I know the basics in a lot of areas, I have the lay of the land and know who to connect you with for more in-depth explanations.
However, I will say the answer is always going to be some variation of: prioritise, delegate, and set limits and boundaries. Because despite appearances, no one without a team is doing everything.
Why do you think these are such big topics that many musicians are still figuring out, or haven’t always been trained to manage in their music careers?
Because it’s bloody hard! And the expectations of ‘is’ or ‘looks’ professional or polished just keep rising.
The reality is that a lot of what we see as polish is the work of teams, or outsourced work to specialists. Or alternatively, what you’re looking at the one thing an artist has chosen to polish, and has sacrificed other things in the process.
We all have limitations in terms of what we can put into our art and business, either in terms of resources available or important and healthy boundaries set to maintain the rest of your life. What is important is having clear and realistic goals, and understanding what pathway is going to get you there intact. There’s no point achieving your goal if you must sacrifice your stability — financial or otherwise, nor your health and wellbeing — mental and physical.
It’s not all doom and gloom, however! Some general strategies to consider:
- Budget your resources. Think about how you can get the most out of your time, money, and energy without going over your budget.
- Outsource. Convert money into time and get someone who’s an expert in the field of social media and website design and concert management to cover some tasks for you.
- Training. Convert time and energy to save money. If there’s a field that’s useful that excites you, invest some of your budget into training in that field. Learn to build website, do a project management short course, add a specialisation if you can, and it excites you.
- Slow down! De-scope! Collaborate! If your project doesn’t fit inside your budget — whether time, money, or energy — look at what you can do to extend those things. Take longer to prepare a gig, add a fundraising arc to your recording project, start with a smaller project, or find people to share the load with you.
Obviously, these will apply differently to each person and situation, and I’m always happy to chat through specifics. But, the main takeaway for me is: there are solutions, and we’re all playing the long game. Small sustainable action creates big waves, given time.
Your career has been so varied. What do you think are some of the unique joys of pursuing all the creative projects you feel moved to work on? And on the flip side, how do you know when a project is not going to be worthy of investing your time?
Most of my friends and colleagues will tell you it’s been long process to learn that last point.
I’m passionate and excited, but my eyes are so much bigger than my stomach. But I’m not just an artist, I’m also a human with friends and hobbies and life to live. So it does come down to boundaries, preserving my own sense of peace and reality.
I am slowly learning some things can wait. Some things can just remain wonderful dreams and have value enough in that way.
Slowing down and delaying are my go to tactics lately. My internal dialogue is often, ‘You have too many ideas, put some back, still too many, okay yes, fine’. Projects take time, and without a whole collection of teams and resources, I can’t keep up with the internet and social media’s breakneck speeds to feed the almighty algorithm. Some of my pieces have taken years to write, much less record or take to the stage.
That is okay!
We are not content machines. And realistically trying to compete with entertainment media on their terms feels foolhardy. I’d rather slowly build audience through community, meaningful deep connections over time. Deep investment is the axis I can excel on.
In terms of weeding out the particular projects I can’t invest in, there’s a few filters.
- First, is it outside the scope of my current resources? If so, back-burner. No discussions, it can wait until I have access to enough time/money/flying monkeys to realise it.
- Second, is it something I can test out first in small format, or am I happy to take the plunge and commit a large amount of time to it – is the passion enough to last a few years? If I’m still excited to write something after a few months, that’s a good sign.
- Finally, is there a place for this, or are others around me excited for it? It is so much easier to push through the hard moments when you know you have an excited performer, audience, or supporters on the other end.
One of the more surprising activities of yours is painting, which I understand began as a lockdown hobby for you? Now, you’re using your skills in a project called Palette Pieces, and an Australian Cultural Fund campaign is supporting it. How have you combined colour with sound in this project?
I love Palette Pieces so much. I was talking to a composer friend recently, and she mentioned as soon as she saw me pick up watercolour she was excitedly waiting to see how it would end up in my music! And this project is so incredibly me: nerdy, playful, and delighting in wonder, permutations and possibilities.
Watercolour was the playful fixation that got me through two years of lockdowns in a new city — I moved to Melbourne to study in November 2019, it’s home now! — and was a chance to be a joyous amateur. I wasn’t worried about being good. It was about process, not the product, and a great way to stay connected to friends all over the world. I painted people’s portraits, pets, favourite Pokemon, and cartoon characters – you can still see them on my Instagram page! […] So, Palette Pieces takes each of my first 24 watercolour paints, the first palette I ever made for myself, as the basis for a mix-and-match musical collection. Each colour becomes a 1-minute solo piece, motivicly based on its component pigments.
But paint alone doesn’t make an artwork. So, any three colours can be combined to commission a unique ‘painting’, a 5-minute work for instrumental duo, or instrument and electronics, based on the musical material in the three selected colour solos. Each colour combination will only be commissioned and composed once.
Early in 2021, I reached out to a bunch of performers about this project, as a way to stay connected with community and build relationships with musicians in Melbourne as well as back in NSW. I’m very grateful that Alicia Crossley (recorder), Laila Engle (flute), Ben Opie (oboe), Jason Noble (clarinet), Jay Byrnes (saxophone), Amy McCarthy (trombone), Joshua Hill (percussion), and Jane Aubourg (violin) decided to come on board as collaborators.
Between the eight of them, you’ll hear the full 24 colours as well as eight unique paintings based on their favourite three colours.
All this is happening around the same time as your 15-year Kammerklang anniversary! From your lens as a consultant who specialises in music business and careers, when you look back at your own career, what are you most proud of — and where do you see that you could have done things differently?
A great question! I’m so proud of what Kammerklang’s achieved with so little. It received government funding once in our first couple of years, and since then everything has been achieved by in-kind sponsorship, crowdfunding, donations, or self-funding.
I think if I was coming to past-Cameron as a consultant, I’d be pushing them to invest in and utilise the incredible people associated with Kammerklang, and to delegate more. The richest resource we’ve had access to has always been talented and passionate people – performers, composers, visual artists, and other collaborators. Kammerklang’s striking visual language has always been thanks to our in-house graphic designers, a role that has been filled by dear friend and colleague Luke Moseley for the past 10 years or so. Likewise, having experts you can trust with their own rich artistic insight. When I moved to Melbourne, I couldn’t have left Sydney’s operations with anyone other than recorder virtuoso and art music curator and commissioner Alicia Crossley. Very proud of our little team punching well above our weight.
In terms of 20/20 hindsight, I’ve definitely evolved over the past 15 years. While I think Kammerklang made some huge early splashes — our first two concerts commissioned 2 hours of music for chamber orchestra and entire gallery showing taking over the foyer of the Sydney Conservatorium — I feel like I could’ve taken so much better care of my and team’s wellbeing.
The temptation to ‘keep up and maintain momentum’ is just unhelpful. My mantra now is ‘small, steady, and sustainable’. Doing something manageable that you can repeat for a longer time just creates more impact, even if you don’t see it immediately.
I think our upcoming series Hidden Curiosities is a testament to that change — calling for and championing existing underperformed work, utilising what is already present, and giving it new life. Bigger lead times: we’re calling now for concerts later in our 2024-25 season. Bringing on our incredible performer-curators early where possible, I’ve been having conversation about this project since 2022.
All of these factors make it so much easier for me and my team to hit all of our goals while being flexible to all of our other needs and engagements. This is a sustainable way of working for the team, which means we can keep creating great art, and connecting with artists and audiences for a very long time.
Thanks for the chat, Cameron. Before we go, what advice do you have for artists who, like you, are balancing a million projects in their music career?
- You, yourself are your greatest treasure, and your greatest non-renewable resource. Take care of yourself.
- No amount of burnout is worth ‘getting ahead’. If you can’t maintain the speed, you won’t stay ahead.
- Know your worth, and say no when you can afford to.
- Invest in people and relationships. Be honest and compassionate. We all need support and community. Help when you can, make your gratitude known, keep everyone in the loop.
- Put one project back, you have too many. And another one, you still have too many. Trust me, even one less commitment will give you the breathing space to be your incredible self at home, at work, and with your community.
Learn more about Hidden Curiosities on the Kammerklang website. Palette Pieces (pictured below) is now open for funding donations through the Australian Cultural Fund. Explore the Australian Art Music playlist here.
Keep up to date with Cameron and their services as a composer, playlist curator, and in music business on their website.
Images supplied. Featured image credit Kierra Thorn.
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