We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kate Burns a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Kate thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

I am very lucky to have built a professional life as a full-time musician and choral specialist. For the first part of my musical career, I worked in public and private schools as choral director. I was able to use my undergraduate and graduate training to build programs at the middle and high school levels and teach thousands of students across the country. I wanted to be a music teacher from a young age and felt at home in the classroom. Once the pandemic hit, the day-to-day reality for a choir director changed dramatically. I was no longer singing in a room with a group of people, and the choral world was in great need of electronic resources like practice tracks for students to hear the music they were expected to sing at home. I began recording practice tracks at home for my own students and for choral arrangers/composers. My intent at that time was not to make a career out of this work, but rather to help students and teachers navigate a difficult time to be an artist. Over time, my work recording tracks picked up. It reached a point where I needed to make a change in my teaching career to accommodate the show choir work and decided to leave the classroom. Since then, I have continued recording tracks, while also adding composing and arranging for choirs, traveling to work with choirs as a clinician, and judging show choir contests. Coupling this choral work with professional singing gigs of my own has blossomed into a full-time profession which satisfies my love of working with students as well as creating my own music.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I pride myself on being a multi-faceted artist who can offer a variety of services in the choral world, the theater world, and as a singer/performer.

In the choral world, I specialize in helping students and directors succeed in their artistic endeavors throughout the school year. During the late spring and summer season, I write music that groups use in their competition “set.” I work in tandem with directors, choreographers, and other members of the show design team to create a cohesive set list around a central theme or idea. We select songs, create a plot line and characters, and plan how and when different members of the choir will sing. I also create all of the music for the show band that accompanies the choir during their performance. I work with a producer who creates an accompaniment track with live instruments and sings the tenor and bass parts on the vocal tracks. I record the soprano and alto parts and we deliver the package to the choreographers, who create the movement for the show. In the fall and early winter, I consult with directors and work in person with choirs as they learn the music for their show. Competitions begin in January and run through early April. I am on the road every weekend at a different competition.

I am also a vocal coach for a local high school musical each year. In this role, I teach music and help students create healthy habits while singing demanding roles on stage. This work differs from the show choir world as the productions are often shorter in duration and more specifically focused on musical theater voice technique as opposed to choral singing.

Lastly, I perform as a singer and piano entertainer at cabarets and bars. In many ways, these gigs mirror the work I do with casts of musicals and choirs. I bring together a room of people who don’t know each other well by encouraging them to sing together. The nights that I sing at the piano bar are filled with smiles, laughter, and lots of dancing. I love to connect with a variety of people, hype up the crowd, and make sure everyone has a great time.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I often have a hard time explaining my work to people. It is multi-faceted, perhaps unfamiliar to non-artists, and not easy to distill into a sentence or two. “I’m a musician” doesn’t quite seem to tell enough of my story. My line of work is not linear and does not move from promotion to pay raise to management, etc. There is a respect built into our society for “ladder climbers” and money-makers. My joy and sense of worth in my job does not come from those same milestones. Even if someone doesn’t understand what, or how, I do my job, I always appreciate genuine curiosity around where I am right now, and not where I am headed.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

I am so grateful that I have created a work life where I am connected with a variety of people. While my performing and consulting work is almost exclusively in person, my remote work is thankfully quite collaborative. I am in touch daily with choreographers, producers, singers, arrangers, and directors of choirs. As an extrovert, I thrive on sharing my thoughts and hearing those of other creatives. I feel so grateful that when I left the very collaborative world of education, that I did not have to give up working as part of team.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kateburnsonstage.com
• Instagram: katebsings
• Youtube: @KateBurnsOnStage

Image Credits

Nile Scott Studios