A Conversation with Dr. Larkin Sanders

On this episode Austin talks with Dr. Larkin Sanders, DMA, a versatile musician and businesswoman based in Kansas City.  From her familial echoes of music that shaped her to the bold strides into the entrepreneurial realm, Larkin's journey speaks to the resilience and determination that it takes to carve a path for yourself in today's 21st century landscape.

In this episode, we delve into the practicalities of making a career shift that fills both our personal passion and the marketplace needs. She eloquently recounts her move from the academic to the entrepreneurial world, navigating through the saturated clarinet market towards the creation of her unique ventures—the Taneycomo Festival Orchestra and the Clever Clarinetist retail shop. Larkin's journey to building her career in music demonstrates just one of the many ways that one can harmonize teaching, performing, and business.

Hear Larkin's journey to where she is today and more on this episode of the Community Stage.

Larkin's Bio:

Dr. Larkin Sanders is a native of Branson, Missouri, and currently lives in Kansas City, Missouri where she is the clarinet instructor at both Washburn University and William Jewell College, owns the Clever Clarinetist (a clarinet specialty store), is the Executive-Artistic Director of the Taneycomo Festival Orchestra, and is an active performer. As a chamber music and entrepreneurship specialist, she manages and performs with Porch Music KC, the Bluestem Faculty Quintet at Washburn University, and more. In addition to a variety of chamber ensembles, she also performs with the Springfield Symphony, Topeka Symphony, and other regional orchestras. Dr. Sanders serves on several nonprofit boards such as the American Single Reed Summit and Charlotte House Series. Dr. Sanders is an Henri Selmer Paris, Behn, D’Addario & Co., Brian Corbin Clarinet Products, and Silverstein Pro Team Artist.

In addition to her activities as a clarinetist, teacher, and administrator, Dr. Sanders is also a composer, author, and digital artist who has a fondness for songs, unique chamber ensembles, and animals. Larkin has had her works performed in a variety of settings. Her works are inspired by the talents of her friends and colleagues, and the genres of her works span from chamber operettas, art songs, children's music, and more. Her artwork has been featured by the International Clarinet Association, in the Clever Clarinetist Shop, and is represented in many musician logos. She is also the author of The Creation of the Taneycomo Festival Orchestra: The Performer’s Field Guide to Music Festival Foundation and The Clever Clarinetist’s Daily Scale Method: Scales and Exercises for Everyday Use, used by The Florida State University and other studios as their official fundamental method.

Dr. Sanders completed her Doctor of Music degree in clarinet performance and a certificate in arts administration at Florida State University in 2015. At FSU, she studied clarinet with Dr. Frank Kowalsky and Dr. Deborah Bish while teaching a course in clarinet fundamentals for first-year undergraduate students. Larkin also holds a master of music degree from Michigan State University where she studied clarinet with Dr. Justin O’Dell and composition with Dr. Ricardo Lorenz. Previously, she earned her bachelor of arts degree from the University of Kansas while studying clarinet with Dr. Stephanie Zelnick and Dr. Larry Maxey.

In addition to her exciting musical activities, Dr. Sanders is an aquatic enthusiast who enjoys sailing and scuba diving, and she is an avid craftswoman who enjoys graphic design, sewing, furniture rehab, and other creative adventures. In her free time, she enjoys creating things, going on adventures, reading, and spending time with her family & friends, her Norwegian forest cat, Miles, an

Outro

Transcript

Austin McFarland: 0:49

All right, I am here with the illustrious Larkin Sanders. So, Larkin, why don't you tell us who you are, what you do and why you do it?

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 0:58

Sure. Thanks for having me, austin. I'm excited to be here. What do I do? So I'm a clarinetist and I live in Kansas City, missouri. In addition to, you know, playing the clarinet and striving to be the best clarinetist I can be, I also run the Taney Como Festival Orchestra in Branson, missouri. This will be our 13th season in 2024. And I own a little retail operation called the Clever Clarinetist. In addition to selling really awesome clarinets and accessories, I also teach private lessons and provide various services for people as they need them, and I feel like Clever Clarinetist does more stuff. I also do my own digital artwork and make clothing designs, stickers, all kinds of fun stuff. I'm really all about bringing joy back into clarinet playing. In addition to running both of these businesses, I also am an adjunct professor at Washburn University and William Jewel College, where I teach applied clarinet to music majors, minors and non-majors alike, and I teach band part-time in the Liberty School District, and I think that might be no, it's not it. It's never it. There can always be more things.

Austin McFarland: 2:22

Right.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 2:23

I also am the Woodwind coach for the Youth Symponies of Kansas City, so I mostly work with their chamber ensembles to help them develop their skills playing in small groups and sometimes I provide support to them within the orchestras if they're playing something really hard, like right now they're playing Tchaikovsky Sports Symphony, which is a no-joke clarinet part. So I've been helping them a lot with that and I think that's really it. I do all kinds of weird clarinet things, administrative things, business things oh duh. I also compose. I also write music, mostly for clarinet and various chamber ensembles and the songs. I'm a good songwriter. I feel good about my songwriting skills. I think that is actually it, though I think I've got it all in that list.

Austin McFarland: 3:15

Yeah, and you might be the only person in the music industry with a longer job list than me.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 3:25

Oh God, yeah, oh, I play in the Topeka Symphony Orchestra as well.

Austin McFarland: 3:29

Oh yeah, those performance things we do those.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 3:33

Performance things. Yeah, I'm the third bass and E-flat clarinetist for the Topeka Symphony and I also sub in various regional orchestras. I'm good.

Austin McFarland: 3:44

No, I swear. So let's circle back then to Tani Como a little bit. Talk a little bit about how that got started. What was your inspiration to start a festival orchestra?

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 4:01

Sure. So the road to Tani Como is actually kind of a long journey. So I grew up in a musical family. My dad is a professional musician and my grandfather was a clarinetist. He I don't think granddaddy made much of a career out of clarinet playing, but he was a great clarinetist and that's how I got started playing clarinet. There wasn't a school orchestra program so even though I grew up playing the violin, I didn't get to play in school music that way, being the gregarious outgoing person I am, had to join band. I couldn't just not do band, so I started playing clarinet and it all kind of clicked into place for me.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 4:40

But growing up as a child of a musician, my dad never hesitated to remind me that the job market as a clarinetist was going to be significantly smaller than that of a violinist. So he was always really encouraging me to like stick with the violin and keep up my violin lessons, because he knew I wanted to be a professional musician and thought my life would be, you know, slightly easier that way. But I guess fate had other ideas, and so did my brain. It was really the clarinet. It just worked for me. It made the most sense, so I ran with it. And so I did my bachelor's degree at the University of Kansas and I started off as a music therapy major because my clarinet teacher was concerned about my ability as a clarinetist. And that's fair, I was a high schooler Like what was? What was he going to know about me as a future clarinet player? But turned out that music therapy wasn't a great fit for me. It's an incredible field and I am extremely supportive of music therapy and I think anyone who's interested should definitely do it. It's an incredible field, turns out, I'm just very nervous and anxious around elderly strangers, so like I had a really hard time with the like hospice rotation. It really scared me, and that's when I realized that it was a bad option for me. So I asked my clarinet professor at the time if I could just switch to clarinet performance and he said Larkin, I don't believe you will ever have enough talent to be a professional performer, which kind of you know, broke my little heart into a million zillion pieces. Yeah, and I remember calling my dad, just sobbing, and telling him the whole story, and he said look like you can either prove him right and just like, keep going about the world the way he tells you to do so, or you can make it work for you and show him that he was wrong. So you know, don't let the bastards get you down Basically what dad was telling me, and so I took his advice and decided to just work my little push off.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 6:48

In the meantime, I also learned that I was really good at and enjoyed managing. My little undergraduate would win quintet this is really cute group of all girls and I was in charge of the my space page because it was like 2006 at the time and that was our equivalent of a website and keeping recordings and doing all of our marketing and being the point person anytime someone was interested in hiring the group. Sorry, my cat is yelling at me. I'm going to put him in the attic, anyway. So I learned that not only was I good at managing, but I liked managing. I also learned that and also knew that it was very unlikely that opportunities were just going to present themselves to me and that I needed to start making them for myself.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 7:38

So fast forward a couple of years to Michigan State University or as a graduate student. I did my master's there and I started auditioning for music festivals and I got consistently placed as the first alternate there are like multiple years for major music festivals and like the second or third time it happened, I was just. I was just so mad About it that I had decided the system was rigged and it wasn't worth getting into anymore. But then a friend of mine from Michigan State who had started her own music festival invited me to attend her festival. As the single clarinet player and as the composer in residence, I just started composing and she and I really bonded when I started putting my stuff out there, and so this group was called Chamber Music Midwest. I don't believe it's still functioning, but they might still have their old website back up and all that things. So if you're interested in looking into it, you can.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 8:36

And it was the first time I was making music on my own, like without any supervision, because, like I said earlier, I've been like taking lessons since before I can remember. So this was truly the first time I was like making artistic decisions with my own little brain and it was like it gave me new life. I you know, I think all students get burnt out at some point, but that was kind of a turning moment. I was like I got this, I can do this and I love doing this. I'm going to keep doing this. And because her festival was in rural Wisconsin, it also inspired me to start a music festival of my own. She was in her hometown inviting her friends from school to play in her festival and I was like, well, I can do that. I'm from Branson, so I have like a million more resources in Branson, missouri.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 9:23

And if you're not familiar with Branson Missouri, I recommend you give it a quick Google search, because it is a very strange little town. Yes, it's in Southwest Missouri and it is kind of a weird place for people going on vacation for like a less expensive vacation. There are amusement parks, there are theaters, there are entertainers, there are shows, there's hiking, there's beautiful scenery. It's got like a little bit of everything. Or, if you're a Simpsons fan, an analogy I really like is that it's Ned Flanders Las Vegas, as Bart describes it when he and his buddies go to Branson in the early series. Uh-huh, yeah, it's a good one. An analogy I know right, it really is Like there's no gambling and there's very little drinkings, but it is like a place where people go to have a vacation in a good time.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 10:17

And so there's a big music scene in Branson, but none of it at the time was classical Zero classical music in Branson and I knew a lot of people who were musicians there had a classical background, so I knew there was the potential for something like this and I also knew that I wasn't the only person in my like immediate circle, friend group etc. That was getting the same result from music festivals every year. So I decided to go for it and Taney Como Festival Orchestra was a working title until it wasn't. I called my mom when I got the idea and she's not a musician actually, but she has a background in marketing and it's just a scrappy savvy lady and so she agreed to help me with this project and at that point I just started trying stuff and learning from trial and error.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 11:10

I I didn't have a solid understanding of Non-profit arts and how all that stuff worked at the time. I assumed it would be nonprofit because 1 of the core things I had envisioned was that all concerts would be free to attend, and I learned later in my doctorate that all arts organizations in the country are nonprofit is just kind of inherently a thing. But I learned how to set up nonprofit status in the state of Missouri is pretty simple. There are 7 questions in the articles of incorporation filing, which I think is consistent across most states, and 1 of the questions is like what is your name? And another question is what is your address, you know? So it's a very like simple application and I got the employee identification number and a bank account. And then I kind of paused at the whole 501 C3 certification thing because that form is like tax rocket science.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 12:08

And then I started building a group and somehow, magically, it all came together in the 1st season of the TFO in 2012, had a 35 piece orchestra. We played full orchestral works. We played like Ravel, tombo de Couparón and Beethoven 7 and the Holberg Suite by Gris and the Soldier's Tale by Stravinsky. It was kind of a big 1st season considering the first time we were playing, and we've definitely come a long way since then. It is a little bit fun to like, nostalgically, listen to those recordings and see how far the orchestra has come since then.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 12:44

So, like I said earlier, this coming season will be the 13th season in 2024. So, and I was able to develop my ideas and improve my skills in my doctorate. So once I graduated from Michigan State, tfo had its 1st season and Florida State, I was able to study arts administration alongside my major degree path, which was clarinet performance, so I learned a lot about fundraising and grant writing and just general arts administration, philosophy, tactics, policy all that good stuff. And my doctoral dissertation ultimately was the creation of the Tatey Como Festival Orchestra, the performer's field guide to music festival foundation, which is a book that you can buy on Amazon if you want and learn all the nitty gritty details of the 1st 5 years of the TFO's life and what it's like to start something like that so kind of a long story, but that I feel like all those details are important to understand the foundations of the TFO and how it got started.

Austin McFarland: 13:47

I love how it's sort of evolved out of your career evolving that's so, it's so cool, and for it to happen so early on. I know there's so many musicians, myself included, that it took all the way through the master's program and then a little bit of stumbling afterwards to figure out like, oh, this is where I want to be, so it is. Yeah, it's cool to hear the perspective of somebody that like came out, that figured it out while they were in school.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 14:16

Yeah, for sure. Like I said, I've always been scrappy and I was lucky that my second undergraduate teacher was really adamant that we pursue our own opportunities, that we don't just wait for them to come along, that we either make them ourselves or seek them out on our own.

Austin McFarland: 14:31

So how did that build to clever clarinetist? Then how do you go from non-profit to now like retail store that's also like your house.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 14:44

Yeah, absolutely. So we can kind of Start that story where we left off with the previous story. So at Florida State I was at the end of my degree program and I was contacted by Kristen McCann, who at the time was the director of Woodward marketing at Dario and company, and she wanted to hire me as a woodwind method clinician for the state of Florida. And at the time I was only familiar with the Dario's reads and I knew they had a line of mouthpieces. I knew that they had all the stuff, but I just wasn't super familiar with it. So I talked to her and it sounded like a great gig. It sounded like a lot of fun, but I wanted to make sure that I believed in the products before I signed on to it. So she sent me a set of mouthpieces and I immediately was blown away. I loved the mouthpieces and switched from whatever mouthpiece I was playing at the time to an Xero mouthpiece. And even my teachers were like pleasantly flabbergasted. I remember showing up in my audition and they're like, yeah, all right, cool. And so I started doing that work while I was writing my dissertation, started traveling all around Florida doing that stuff and then I graduated in the winter of 2015 and I kind of lived out my lease in Tallahassee. But if you've ever, if you're not familiar with the program at Florida State, the really all you need to know is that it's big. I loved my clarinet teachers. I love my experience there, but there was no work really to be had after I graduated, with like approximately 1 million really good clarinet players immediately in this community. I wasn't like getting calls to some in the orchestra, I wasn't getting private students, I was just kind of doing the Dario and praying that something would come my way and nothing really did.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 16:31

So I kind of had to make a decision whether I wanted to move farther south in Florida where there are more people and opportunities, or did I want to go somewhere else. And actually my roommate at the time gave me great advice. She said move to a place where you have 3 things A mentor or some kind of mentorship at a great, a good airport, so preferably an airport that you can go international or at least have an easy time like getting out and about in the world. And then number 3, where you have people like either family, friends or a combination of the 2. So I use those criteria to think of another place to live and Kansas City really fit that bill. So I have people from my undergrad. A lot of friends are still here. I went to the University of Kansas and through the TFO we have a lot of people that live in Kansas City. So my Kansas City network was grown more by TFO. My clarinet teachers are still here and there are more clarinet teachers. There are the guys in the symphony too that make great mentors, and we have an airport. So Kansas City fit the bill very solidly.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 17:38

I didn't want to move back to Michigan Love you Michiganders but I did. I could not do the 6 month winter is not for me. So, like, moving back to Michigan wasn't an option either, and so I moved to Kansas City with my Dario job. They let me keep it. Actually, they gave me a promotion because they were scouting in Kansas City at the time and I was able to hook them up with a new person in Florida.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 17:59

I started, I hit the ground running, I told my friends I was moving, and so a lot of them were very generous and made sure that I like had some gigs lined up before I got to town and I started private teaching and got on some private teacher list in the area of schools and then, a couple of years into living there, I was just kind of feeling tired of the grind and I ended up taking a job as the director of marketing for the Friends of Chamber music, which is a really cool series. Here in Kansas City we have 2. I don't know big chamber music series it seems like an oxymoron to call something a big chamber music series but it's one of the 2. And I really enjoyed the work at the Friends of Chamber music. But I didn't really get along with the executive director and it's a combination of things.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 18:45

Some of it it was just that, like I'm not a good employee, I really just want to do my own thing and I kind I accept this about myself. But also this person was very set in their ways and had been doing it for like 50 years. So even though she hired me to shake things up, there was not much shaking to be had because set in their ways, yeah. And so when I was feeling really miserable about this, I got to a point where I was going to therapy like 2 times a week for 2 hours and I started having this feeling come into my mind which is I would rather live in my car than go to this office which, in my opinion, is like work satisfaction, rock bottom, uh-huh. Yeah. When you decide you'd like you'd be kind of okay with homelessness if it meant you didn't have to go to work anymore, that's when something's gotta change. That's intense.

Austin McFarland: 19:46

It's intense.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 19:48

It was not good. I did not like feeling that way, and so I took a step back and started looking really hard at all the things I did, cause at that point I was still kind of gigging on the clarinet. I had a few private students, I was doing didario clinician work still and I was running TFO. So I was still doing like a lot of things on top of my full-time arts marketing job. And the thing at the time that was making me happiest and like keeping my head above water was the didario clinician work and that it wasn't just the teaching aspect of it that I enjoyed. But I did enjoy making sales and helping people find the right mouthpiece. Even though I wasn't making commission on anything. I just like really thought it was fun to help people like go from having a crummy old stock mouthpiece to something that could actually help them make better sounds on the clarinet. So, okay, I got that idea, but it didn't click into place correctly the first time. The first time I was like, okay, well, maybe I need to go teach school music. So I looked into getting a teacher certification and finally someone came along and was like you, dummy, you have a doctorate, you don't need to get a teaching certification. If you want to go teach in schools, just go teach in schools, okay, fine. And then I also really said rather be like music kids, cool aunt, not like they're a parent, like the director is, like the parental music teacher. I like cool aunt status a little bit better. I only have them one day a week, not everything, yeah. So then I was like, well, it must be the retail thing that is really getting me going. So what if I started a woodwind store?

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 21:34

So my first idea was to start like a professional woodwind store. Kansas City has like smaller, like school music specialized music stores, but nothing really in the way of professional music stores. And I had been like fighting with some of these stores about stocking professional clarinets for my students to play on, and it was like pulling teeth because their money wasn't made in professional instrument sales, it was made in school music rentals. And so I went to my friend who at the time was the regional representative for Con Selmer and told her my idea. Because I'm a Selmer artist, I knew I wanted to start with Selmer clarinets at the very least. And she was really gentle. She was like, okay, larkin, this is a good idea, but I think you should stick with what you know. Do you play any of the other woodwind instruments?

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 22:35

And I was like, no, I play the recorder and she was like she just kind of looked at me like you, sweet thing, you're a sweet creature. And she said start with what you know. She's like I wanna help you, I think you can do this, so I will start you with Selmer clarinets. And she's like what else do you play? And she's like what about the Dario? And at the time Dario was like you can't double dip. You can't be a dealer and a clinician at the same time. That's fair. And she's like aren't there tools that clarinets use? Yeah, regactions, I know.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 23:14

Then I got on regaques so I ended up the first few brands I had were Selmer and Brian Corbin's Barrels, reed, geek. I was still clinicianing for the Dario so even though the sales weren't going directly through me, I was still working for them and I still had their representation behind me. And I also got set up in the Silverstein and I forget what it's called not emerging artists, but something with this like Silverstein ligature and readmakers. So I purchased like a sample set of ligatures for people to try and I have like a code that people use and I still use that program today actually to keep my like risk down. So that's how I started and as the business has grown, I have also expanded what I carry, so now I also have Royal Clarinets, bakun Clarinets and Buffet Clarinets at my disposal. It's pretty cool, and now I am a D'Dario dealer.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 24:15

Started the pandemic. They let a lot of their clinicians go and I was one of them, but it was, you know. The silver lining was that that meant I could be a dealer, so it was not really a sad situation, and then I just had a little transition with them and I'm also. What else do I have? All kinds of good stuff, really. If you're interested in learning more about the offerings, you can check out my website, cleverclarinetistcom. Check out the clothes.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 24:42

And the clothes. Yeah, that's right. I forget about that part. Like it's a little bit of a lesser known side of my history, when I one of my like I don't know a way to make money on the side when I was in graduate school was that I made custom clothing for people. I wasn't designing fabrics, but I was really good at math for like circle skirts. So like geometry was always a strength of mind, so I would make skirts for girls. Yeah, it was like a funny little side hustle that I had. I made custom circle skirts for women, so they'd have to like come over to my house and I would measure them and then, like a week later, I would have their skirt for them and like make adjustments as needed.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 25:25

I liked making skirts. I have this incredible inventory of skirts. I should pull them out because there are like 50 of them that I made for myself, just like out of any fun fabric that I wanted to make, and it was like kind of a stress reliever when I was a graduate student too, like I would just make a skirt when I was overwhelmed or mad or frustrated or had free time at all, and so when I started making designs, I actually like started making custom fabrics and then decided this is crazy. If I want to actually sell clothing, I like I'm not gonna be able to make clothes for people at like an appropriate scale and it's also not that fun. Like sewing is fine, it's fun, but like it's a little painful. Like in the scale that I would make these skirts I would need a surface to work on that was big enough, so that meant the floor. So I'm like crawling around on the floor punching over things and it just made me really tense. It's not like a good, healthy option for me. So I've found a way to have my designs printed. So now I use like an on-demand printer and drop shipper and that's how I'm able to keep making clothing designs but without having to stress myself out. Yeah, I can't imagine I'm like having to still make all that stuff. It would be crazy. No, yeah, insane, it's super insane. Yeah, that's probably where the like other part of Clever Clarinetists came together. So like I did have a side hustle making clothes for a while and while I don't make them now, I still or don't make them with my hands I still design them.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 26:56

One skill that I got while working for the Friends of Chamber Music. That has been invaluable has been learning how to use Adobe Creative Suite. Essentially, that's how I learned to like on the fly learning how to use Photoshop, illustrator and design through that job. One really good thing about that boss was that she sent me to basically any professional development thing I wanted to go to. So I got to go to like Arts Marketing Project Conference and stuff like that. So I did get a lot of really excellent experiences doing that full-time job.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 27:25

That not only helped TFO, also helped Clever Clarinetists and helped me like interweave all the things I do at the same time and that's probably that's a really important point to make as well that, like I don't see any of these projects or like any of the jobs I do as independent. They're all. They all work together and I think that's why it was hard for me to like just rattle off the list of things, cause they're all. They're all just make up like one my career and they all benefit each other. Teaching at the high school helps me recruit students for both of the universities where I teach. It also helps me get clients when students are ready to like upgrade their Clarinets and eventually, like those kids, go on to be great Clarinetists or something or whatever, or not, you know whatever and they do their thing, where they start playing in TFO or show interest in the arts and contributing that way as well. I think that that's pretty much how clever Clarinetists got started and is continuing to go. It's growing and it's good and I like it.

Austin McFarland: 28:28

All the good words to say about running your own business right.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 28:32

If you're in the next way and it's growing, nothing else matters.

Austin McFarland: 28:36

No, I love that you hit on how they all feed together, because I think that's something we don't talk about enough in higher ed music education. Right Is that you can do so many different things and almost use the art form as the vessel to carry the career instead of the career itself.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 29:00

Yep, absolutely. That's a really elegant way to say that too, by the way, I like it.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 29:05

I told you earlier that I tried to get local music stores to carry professional clarinets for a while because I had students that were ready for upgrades and I wanted them to have nice instruments, but it would take months sometimes to get pro instruments in their hands, and so I love making sales and I want like to sell clarinets. But I also am that person now, so when my students are ready for upgrades and stuff, I don't have to send them somewhere else. I have all these tools at my disposal to get them set up with the right mouthpiece, the right horn, better reeds, like. All that stuff is immediately within my grasp, literally and figuratively. I think that makes me a better teacher in a lot of ways, because I'm also like everything is demystified, yep, because of how I work in both industries, mouthpiece specifications do mean something and they can help guide me through the trial process with a client at any stage of their clarinet playing life.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 30:02

Something I've been having to navigate with my students a lot, or help them navigate, is like financing their new instruments, like, especially, the college students. What I do puts me in a unique position to help them successfully get financing for their gear that they need like, especially if they're going to be a professional musician someday. You have helping them apply for, like an additional student loan or like a credit card, like any, whatever they need, and also to do it responsibly and not just like lead them down like some wacky financial scheme. I'm trying to teach them a little bit about like credit and how to work with that as they move into their adult life which is a critical skill that, like you're not going to get in school, at best you're going to get it from your parents, maybe If you're lucky.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 30:48

If you're lucky and I don't consider myself a financial guru At all, but by running the store and having to navigate these things with students and like people are varying demographics and like financial capabilities I've learned a lot.

Austin McFarland: 31:05

Yeah, absolutely, and I think, at least for me. I don't know if you feel the same way. It adds to how I approach a specific student. The more time I've spent helping them figure out what they're playing on you know what equipment they need or anything Then I see their growth skyrocket. And they, you know. They in turn like realize oh my gosh, like this is really cool. And they see how they changed.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 31:36

Absolutely and like playing on the right stuff, like fixes everything from a pedagogical perspective, because then there are so many, so many fewer variables about like what could be going wrong when things are not, they're not playing the way they want to like if they have the right gear, and we can kind of put that out of our minds and like work solely on the embouchure, the hands, like whatever needs to help the most.

Austin McFarland: 32:04

So it makes the teaching actually gets fun.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 32:06

It gets fun.

Austin McFarland: 32:07

So frustrating to be fighting the equipment.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 32:10

Yes, there's nothing quite like it. Very frustrating.

Austin McFarland: 32:13

So how, then? You've talked a lot about your entrepreneurial spirit and how you've used that to shape your career. How do you foster that in the students that you work with?

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 32:25

Sure. So I try to channel my teachers and how adamant they were about encouraging us to seek out our own opportunities and to even make our own opportunities from nothing. So I'm encouraging in that way, but I also and this is part, I think this is, what makes my style difficult in teaching is that I'm also extremely honest with my students. I try to make sure I do the research at least once a year to see like what the job market is like, kind of calculate what their odds are going to be to get like any kind of traditional job that they might be aspiring towards. What I learn every year is pretty much doesn't change is that just as many musicians are being put out into the world so like graduating with a degree as they're currently are in the country that makes sense. So like there's many people graduating with music degrees every year as there are professional musicians in the world so effectively. Like the population doubles every year does not bode well in an already challenging career path. Like just knowing those numbers and I would make anyone feel nervous about the odds of getting a job. But I think that honesty is really critical for students like I'm not going to just tell them like of course you play beautifully like you're going to make it big in this world. That would be incredibly irresponsible. One of the other things I feel like it would be irresponsible of me as a teacher not to foster an entrepreneurial spirit within them. So I try to. I tell, I make sure they're aware of the like, hard facts and numbers about what it's like to be a musician. I try to set a good example for them. I do at least like one instrument party every year, like even if they like most I think all of them right now at least at Washburn, all my students at Washburn have like their pro setups complete, which is great. But even though they have that, I still try to make a day every year to get stuff from the shop and we have like a little gear party and they can play with stuff and try other things and talk about why different pieces of equipment make certain differences in your sound and your ability.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 34:32

And sometimes I take off a day of teaching to go do entrepreneurial things and I let them know like I'm not going to be there today because I'm going to do a clarinet day at University XYZ. I'm also letting them know that like I am out in the world doing the things that I say, that I do. I'm not just telling, I'm just like blowing smoke. What else do I do? I also really encourage them to be involved in the clarinet community because we have a lot of, I think, excellent entrepreneurial clarinetists out there, at least in the country. I encourage them to be members of the ICA, make sure they're getting those feeds on social media. If they're on social media and that they're, they're just savvy to also try to push any gig I get in their community towards the students that I can not taking it myself, even though it might seem fun. Like just showing them that, like the opportunities are there and I can give you one every once in a while, still encouraging them to go out and seek their own.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 35:28

What else do I do to foster the entrepreneurial spirit? Oh, like anytime I'm not able to teach, so I do, like all my teaching at Washburn in one day, for example, if I'm going to be gone for the day and it's preemptive, like I'm not sick, I was, like I knew I'm going to an event or something. The students get alternate assignments instead of making up their lessons, because I don't have time to make up their lessons and they have three options. They can record themselves and do a self evaluation. That's option one. Option two is that they can write a five and 10 year plan which forces them to think really critically about their career paths and what the future is going to look like for them and what they want their future to look like. And third, the last option is that they can work on their press kit, basically encourage them to work on a website, resume, cv and social media content. They almost like you could argue, they learn more when I'm not there as a result of these assignments.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 36:26

So not only do I try to encourage them and foster these kind of things the best I can, just like one-on-one, but I also make them do it in the form of assignments.

Austin McFarland: 36:35

Yeah which is great. Yes, sometimes, sometimes being voluntold to do it is the way to get it done.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 36:44

I like that voluntold.

Austin McFarland: 36:49

So for the young musicians, or even you know, even you know mid-career musicians that feel like they need to make a change, what advice do you have for someone who's thinking, you know, maybe they need to chart their own path? What are some suggestions you have to get them going?

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 37:05

I would impart upon them the same advice I got from my Conselma rep, which is start with what you know. Start small and with something you know really well or that you feel very passionately about. Take a step back and look at not only what you're able to do musically, but what other talents do you have or passions do you have, and how do you make the things work together? Because you know, it's one thing to be a good seamstress and like making designs and also playing clarinet. It's another thing to make the two of those things work together right. That, I think, is how you separate yourself from the masses, finding like not only that you have this gift as a musician or an artist, but also like what else can you contribute? What other special thing do you have? And for me, I would.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 37:53

If I had to narrow down my special thing to just one thing, it would probably be scrappiness, my desire to get things done and also not to be under anyone else's authority. Really, that is what I am most passionate about To be the boss of myself and not for anyone else to be the boss of me. I think it works, though, and of course I have other, smaller passions. But if I had to say, like, what other thing came together for me besides clarinet playing to make me this way? It would be that my second piece of advice is that you still need to be competent, so there is that.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 38:36

There is that. Well, I feel like we don't. We don't say that enough. Like true, you need to be a good musician and you need to be good at something else, but you need to be a good musician. You can't be a mediocre musician and like, have this other thing. You need to be trustworthy, and if people don't trust you musically, then they're probably not going to hire you for anything else, and so that might mean finding a concise and efficient practice routine that you can do every day. I have a one hour routine that, like, as long as I can get through that every day, I will be OK, like I'll. I'll be able to sound the way I want to sound, I'll be able to move my hands the way I want to move them, and I'll be able to read whatever gets put in front of me. And and that's just really like a specific long tones and scales system. I have. It's in a book. If you'd like to learn more, visit cleverclarinetistcom.

Austin McFarland: 39:31

It's a good book. I've seen it.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 39:34

It's a good book.

Austin McFarland: 39:35

It is a good book.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 39:37

No, yeah, so that that would be my second piece of advice. It's like be the best musician you can be and figure out what you need to make that happen. And then my third and final piece of advice is always have on your auditing cap. So when I mean by that, we called any time we would do an analysis of an organization's or artists's like website or materials and grad school we would call it an audit. Whether we were analyzing the entirety of the Aspen Music Festival and its functionality or the budget of the Brevard Music Festival was still like an audit. So whenever you're looking at other people's materials, be in your auditing mode. So think about what works, what doesn't work, what do you like, what don't you like and what can be improved and how can you use some of these ideas for yourself. There's no reason to reinvent the wheel in the cases of like marketing materials, especially if you're not a visual artist or designer. Look at other people's stuff and take examples where you can.

Austin McFarland: 40:42

No ideas are new. We all just beg, borrow and steal.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 40:44

That's right. Yep pretty much.

Austin McFarland: 40:50

Well, larkin, it's been great to have you, and thank you so much for being on this episode, and we'll have to have you back for some more conversations later.

Dr. Larkin Sanders: 41:00

Awesome. Thanks for having me, Austin. It was a great time.