New agency lures defecting HP artists
NewsFive months ago, the vivacious agent Tugce Tez quit the HarrisonParrott abruptly after ten years. Tez was an associate director of the company, working with a new generation of artists.
Slippedisc.com reported at the time: Her artists include Alice Sara Ott, Víkingur Ólafsson and Ksenija Sidorova. She won’t be out of the business for long.
We understand today that those three have signed up with a new agency, Tezarts.com, which will open its website next week.
The shock is that they have been led out of HP by the Canadian soprano-conductor Barbara Hannigan, who is Parrott’s pride and joy.
No further details are currently known about Tezarts, except that it will operate from the UK and Turkey.
As loss leaders, Tez will require less % from these artists than HP did.She can then build her empire with less well-known performers (at higher commissions.)
Why the downvotes? That’s exactly how this business has always worked. Nothing wrong with it: it’s the equivalent of a volume discount.
Or maybe it’s just that artists most value their personal manager, and not so much the management company for whom that manager works.
The difference in paying (say) 10% commission rather than 15% commission on big-earning artists will perhaps be less of a deal breaker – what’s really important to busy international artists is the relationship and trust that they build with the person with whom they deal, day-in, day-out. And it looks as if these artists believe that Ms Tez will deliver them that level of personal service. Should we also expect a few more interesting names to appear on the new website over the next weeks?
It’s a recurring trend across industries. Young, passionate and visionary people breaking away from dinosaurs set in traditional ways who are reluctant to innovate. It’s called evolution. Big loss for HP.