Leah Thomas Photo: Supplied
It's almost two years since Wellington musician, music manager and RNZ Concert host Leah Thomas left New Zealand for New York City.
When she comes back from the USA, she'll be armed with more creative confidence and a mindfulness guide for her fellow musicians.
Thomas has just graduated from New York's The New School with a Masters of Arts Management and Entrepreneurship.
As part of her masters she wrote a book. Meditations for Musicians is a musical guidebook to finding creative confidence and joy in musical practice.
If you can be mindful here, you can be mindful anywhere. Photo: Apple
Speaking with RNZ Concert host Bryan Crump, Thomas says the meditations were inspired by her own struggles with creative roadblocks. They've also sent her down a new road she possibly wasn't expecting to travel when she first moved to New York: composing.
If Thomas is able to get the funding (her Masters at The New School was made possible through a Fulbright Scholarship), she plans to enrol in August for a Professional Studies Diploma in Composition at The New School with the Armenian/American composer Mary Kouyoumdjian.
While Thomas had composed some music before leaving Aotearoa, meeting Kouyoumdjian at The New School and her own self-taught exercises in creative resilience have given her the hunger and confidence to throw more energy into writing her own music.
Photo: Seth Boy
Thomas is planning to spend some time in Wellington between now and then.
Crump asked the organiser of the innovative Poneke Sessions if she'd do anything differently when arranging concerts now she has an arts management and entrepreneur degree gained in one of the world's cultural capitals.
Thomas says if anything, there are aspects of the New Zealand approach she'd like to share with her fellow New York creatives, should she be able to return to the Big Apple later this year.
