John Parr-Culver is a Product Manager at Oracle with a background as a freelance musician and clarinet teacher. John is currently based in Austin, Texas and has performance degrees from the Eastman School of Music and Carnegie Mellon University.

Image Credit Cheyenne Parr

QUOTES

“I got advice on what kinds of adjacent interests to music might be a good way to send my career path down.”

“I had spent 15 years thinking I was going to be a musician, so I had a bit of an identity crisis.”

“I knew some musicians who were working at an Apple store, they encouraged me to apply. It was great to work with people who had done the thing that I wanted to do next.”

“A challenge I had to overcome, as a musician transitioning out of music is that I had this idea that as long as I worked really hard and became best at what I do that I would become successful. That had nothing to do with appreciating the unique talents and skills that others brought into the work that they did.”

“In that inside sales role, I cared a lot about understanding more deeply the problems customers faced and the kinds of solutions we offered to them.”

“Problem evaluation and translating those needs into technical requirements relates to my musical experience, to score analysis and being able to extract what musical interpretive decisions should be made.”

“Dealing with failure. On a small scale, like not winning an audition or something like the fact that I didn’t pursue a career as a clarinetist, failure is an important thing to experience. Failure allows us to understand what went wrong, why it went wrong and take those lessons and apply them to future experiences.  It’s how we deal with failures that shape us in the journeys that we take in our lives.”

“For musicians who have determined what direction they want to take, it’s never been easier to skill up in different areas on Udemy or LinkedIN.”

“For people who have lived the practice room lifestyle, there’s incredible value in all the diverse skills and experiences that others bring to the table. It’s so important to appreciate that as early as possible.”

LINKS

• John Culver
• Udemy
• LinkedIn Learning

IMAGE CREDIT

Cheyenne Parr

PODCAST TEAM

Production Support from Molly Jenkins 

Audio Engineering from Frazer Ruddick

Theme Music Composed by Danna Yun

Theme Music Performed by Jasper Ly

RECORDED

Recorded on 10 May 2021