Text by Keyna Wilkins
As a freelance or independent musician and composer, I’ve always wanted to travel, share my music with wider audiences, and experience the globe-trotting adventure. Over the years, I have lived in six countries (Australia, where I live, the USA, Japan, the UK, Germany, Italy), and my music has been performed in over 20 countries. In 2023, Musicians For Musicians (MFM) assisted me in arranging some gigs and recordings in the USA, which was immensely helpful, and I have stayed in contact with many of those I met.
The first thing I noticed while travelling was that every country has a different way of operating. Some countries are relational, some countries are non-relational. As I have been lucky enough to have English as my native tongue, English-speaking countries have made it relatively easy to arrange gigs as they all operate similarly. Suppose you have a good website, good social media, professional-looking gigs, and good music with high-quality videos and recordings, with the bonus of EPK. In that case, it’s pretty straightforward to get gigs. You can email letting them know what dates you would like a gig with links to all your previous professional works and asking them how it works at their venue (some venues work by giving the musicians a split of the tickets, but others expect you to pay a hire fee but then get 100% of the tickets). Always say that you already have some contacts in the area and a marketing plan (could be a plan for local social media marketing targeting the area). In this way, it’s pretty easy to get gigs in Australia, the UK, and the USA (though, still you have to email 100s of places to get 10 to reply, but that’s music everywhere).
In early 2025, I took my space jazz trio Ephemera (about half of whose music I composed, and the other half ensemble improvisations to space sounds), on tour to Japan. It took about 9 months to organize all aspects, eg, good timing for all the players (2 of us have families), good timing for gigs in Japan, good timing for finances, etc. Japan is that it is an entirely uniquely different society compared to Australia or the USA, as it seems the day-to-day operations are based on relational connections.
From what I gathered from the organization of our tour, the venue managers will book musicians, whether they know them personally or if a friend knows them. We did each of the six concerts because one group member knows the venue manager. Five of the concerts were arranged by our bassist Elsen Price, who had already been to Japan two times before that – the first time was on holiday, where he sought out an open free jam session. Through this experience, he met many venue managers in Tokyo. Arranging further gigs was simple: I stayed in touch with them on social media and email. The sixth concert was arranged by a Japanese musician in Sydney, and I have already worked with them several times. She knew a venue manager in her hometown, Nara, and we booked a concert together through her.
In terms of giving tips about touring, I would suggest going on a reconnaissance holiday/trip to the country you’re intending to tour to see how they work, and attending any live music activities you can to talk to people and connect.
The benefits of touring are immeasurable – the sense of adventure, camaraderie, and excitement amongst your music colleagues is palpable, the widening of your personal and professional music network, your fan base, and the confidence to do it all over again!
