Overview
For many jazz educators and artist development programs, the challenge isn’t teaching musicianship, it’s preparing artists for the realities of sustaining a career.
Beginning in late 2024, Music Works International partnered with New York City’s Jazz Power Initiative (JPI) to pilot a guided cohort version of the Anyone Can Book a Gig (ACBaG) program. Designed for mid-career professional musicians in New York City, the program combined structured curriculum with live instruction to help artists take a more strategic, business-minded approach to their careers.
Now in its third year of collaboration, the partnership continues to evolve as a model for integrating real-world music business training into artist development programs.
The Anyone Can Book a Gig (ACBAG) course is a transformational resource and I highly recommend it for jazz musicians who want to expand their knowledge of the jazz business and advance their career opportunities.
About Jazz Power Initiative
Founded in 2003, Jazz Power Initiative is a non-profit organization in Manhattan with the mission to transform lives through jazz arts education and performance. Over the years, JPI has grown to become a leading community-based arts organization, offering quality youth musical education, community concerts, and artist and teacher training.
A previous partner of ACBaG, this collaboration came out of JPI’s desire to further education programs for mid-career musicians and the potential for ACBaG to be taught in a new, guided format.
Find out more about Jazz Power Initiative and their programming at jazzpower.org.
The Challenge
Like many professional musicians, the artists in JPI’s cohort were actively performing, but almost all participants were working on the side to support themselves. Many were teachers themselves, performing frequently, but lacking the time, structure, and tools to:
JPI identified a gap common across many programs: artists were highly skilled musically, but underprepared for the business realities of their careers.
The Solution: A Guided, Cohort-Based Model
Music Works International worked with JPI to implement a 6-session guided version of ACBaG, combining self-paced learning with live, interactive, and personalized instruction.
Each session focused on a core component of the booking process, with practical application built in:
Between sessions, artists completed targeted assignments, including building or refining their biography, EPK, and tour history to ensure that learning translated into tangible career assets.
Why It Works
The effectiveness of the program lies in its structured, cohort-based design, which ensures that artists don’t just learn concepts in isolation, but understand them within their personal performance context.
Consistent meetings with the same small group of artists creates a level of accountability and openness that’s difficult to replicate in self-paced environments. Artists are encouraged to share their work, challenges, and questions, moments that just as often spark feedback from other cohort members as from the ACBaG team.
The result is a network of mutual support and solidarity, and has created conversations not just about business concepts, but also about the personal struggle to pitch yourself with positivity. Participants benefit not only from direct instruction, but from hearing how peers approach the same challenges, creating a more collaborative and grounded learning environment.
Between sessions, participants receive ongoing, tailored support, allowing them to submit questions to a private community space for feedback from our team and other cohort members. This continuity helps bridge the gap between instruction and implementation, and allows for support even between live sessions.
Underpinning all of this is a clear, structured framework, guiding artists step-by-step through the booking process. This ensures that essential career-building tasks, jobs that are often delayed or avoided, are completed with focus and intention.
Impacts & Outcomes
The pilot program demonstrated strong engagement and clear value for participating artists:
JPI also noted a critical structural benefit: the program created dedicated time and space for business development, something many working musicians struggle to prioritize on their own.
Now running our second cohort with JPI, feedback from organizers and students has been overwhelmingly positive:
Each year I have seen major light bulbs go off for our artists when interacting with the ACBAG course.
A Shared Philosophy
A key factor in the success of the partnership is alignment around a central idea: building the skills to create sustainable careers without compromising artistic identity.
For many artists, engaging with the business side can feel not only overwhelming, but also at odds with the creative process, reducing deeply personal work into a product to be packaged and sold. As independent artists, however, a degree of business knowledge is essential not only to ensure that you can advocate for yourself, but to support yourself as a professional.
This course gives you tools so you can pursue your art with integrity while creating consistent pathways to pay the band and pay yourself.
By breaking the booking process into easily digestible skills in everyday language, ACBaG creates a balance that resonates strongly with artists, educators, and program directors.
Looking Ahead
Following the success of the pilot, Music Works International and Jazz Power Initiative are continuing their collaboration, and are running a follow-up cohort as of early 2026.
As JPI continues to work with emerging and mid-career artists across New York City, the partnership provides a scalable framework for integrating business education into artist training programs.
Bring ACBaG to Your Program
Anyone Can Book a Gig partners with:
to deliver:
If you’re looking to equip your artists with the tools to build sustainable careers:
