April 10, 2017

Meet Marc Bosserman, Pianist and Vocalist in Los Angeles

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Marc Bosserman.

Marc, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
My dad was a college professor. He went and bought a piano for the family living room when I was 6 or 7 and asked my sisters and I “who wants to take lessons?” I thought I’d have to fight it out with my sisters but I think I won the toss on my sheer enthusiasm for learning and started taking lessons at 7 or so. But I knew within about 5 minutes of playing that I had found something amazing and something that really felt like something I could and would do in my life! People would sit down and play whatever they liked to play and I’d ask them to show me what they were doing and so started playing all kinds of things.

About 1 billion hours of “Heart and Soul” and “Hit the Road Jack”…

And I basically never really stopped playing and learning and enjoying playing for people.

At our house, we sang a lot as a family and my dad had parties with cool cultured people who brought guitars and lots of times – the best times- people would congregate around the piano with or without other instruments and sing and it was just joyous.

I loved that…

I still do.

It just does not get old and is probably the basis of what I do over 400 times a year now.

I go out and play music for people and bring the magic.

I started gigging playing for luncheons and weddings for my Dad and his colleagues when I was about 14 or 15 and to this day it’s a pretty simple business model. Find venues. Play amazing music for people. Find more venues…play more amazing! Etc.

Of course, living in the dream capitol of the world makes it even more amazing.

My basic mission statement is to make amazing music for cool people.

And Los Angeles is full of all kinds of cool and my job is just to add the most amazing possible!

Has it been a smooth road?
Smooth? …haha not at all!! Fun? Yes!

Life is nothing if not challenging and dramatic and exciting!

I think that having your own “business” — steering your own ship– just makes it even full or more of the above… (Challenge, excitement, drama).

Part of the challenge of being a musician singer etc. is that it’s not really a legitimate ‘job’. But it is…but…in my upbringing and in the society where I grew up being a musician was not really a “real job”. So, from the get go there I was doing something that I didn’t even consider was legit.

This may be true of all artists…but I digress…

I really thought that I was cheating or playing hookey from life by playing gigs for income.

And the other factor is that I don’t think that there is any school that teaches you how to be a musician. Successful Musician 101…it’s missing in the curriculum.

And it’s a lot more about marketing and PR and budgets and planning and… Etc…

The other thing I realized I wasn’t really happy if I wasn’t playing music.

And I was also starting to see that if I did not play music for a living then I would not really play music at all. A lot of my musician buddies and I would sit around pining for chances to play music and dreaming of playing music for a living.

Then I met my beautiful wife and I got married young…23…and had kids at 24… And so I needed to support my family doing of all things… playing music or probably have no real fulfillment in life at all.

Luckily and maybe surprisingly. I found a lot of valuable information in the writings of the materials of the Religion of Scientology. This is something that I never expected.

But I found some of the basic concepts of generally how to be more successful in anything were super helpful in helping me go from no gigs to playing up to 14 gigs a week in Hawaii about the time my son Tyler was born and my wife became pregnant with our other son Paris!

And really that’s when I realized I could play music and at least make some sort of a living!

There are many other barriers to being successful as an artist/musician.

I’ve found that there is a sort of pessimism that can creep into “musician think.” For instance, “There are not too many gigs in LA” or “there were more at some other time in the past etc.”…It is fairly common to hear this sort of thing. This has nothing to do with the actual reality!

For instance, if you step back and think about it there are 1000s of gigs in Los Angeles. Think about how many people live in the general area. 15 million?

How many of them are getting married? Having Birthdays? Parties? Going out on the weekend or out to diner etc…And would love to hear amazing music?

I mean how many of them like music? All of them…

And people will tell me that there are not very many gigs in Los Angeles??! What?!

Anyway, there are all kinds of situations that I’ve had to deal with. How do I know every song ever written? Because when you do what I do you have to know almost every song ever written…How is that possible?

Can I play 3 hours of Elton John music? Etc… Can I play an electric keyboard with no electricity available? There are all kinds of crazy things that come up. Daily…

And that’s part of what makes it so fun!

Anyway…there are some of the exciting things in the life of this musician.

So, let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Marc Bosserman Los Angeles Pianist Vocalist story. Tell us more about the business.
My business is simple. I make amazing music for cool people.

Most of my production is a “gig” where I’m there in the room playing for people. I play the piano and sing.

I can play standards-American Songbook, Frank Sinatra, Ella Eitzgerald, etc. Cole Porter George Gershwin songs.

I can play Neil Young, Beatles, Billy Joel, Elton John, etc.

I also do contemporary- Adele, Bruno Mars, Coldplay, Maroon 5 etc.

What I’m known for is my excellence in playing the piano and singing and entertaining.

But I’m also known for my attitude and “energy”. I am a very upbeat and positive person. I am committed to making amazing music in every playing experience.

It’s not a job. It’s a mission. I want to make people’s day. I want to go beyond their expectations.

I also have a huge repertoire. I also “play the room”. In other words, I don’t have a set list and just go down it. I talk to the people around me and find out and read reactions and what works and do more of it. I am always trying to create an amazing evening for anyone around me.

I love what I do and I think it’s infectious.

I know as a “business person” I have some very fundamental basic policies. I always try to be in very good communication with my clientele. Fast and friendly. Helpful.

I am always tailoring what I’m doing to be exactly what is needed and wanted and more!

I try to deliver better than is expected and have a blast while doing it : )

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
I see more and more music production coming into play. I think I try to interest all my piano students in learning how to produce music. All the biggest artists today are very heavily into not just writing music but its production. And more and more music is needed to for TV and film and even performance.

There is more and more technology. Better ways of making music sound great live and producing it.

That being said I don’t think anything will really replace being about to play a piano or guitar or whatever and sing…in addition to whatever else you might do with those basic skills.

I think weddings and parties etc. will always be able to benefit from the live music aspect and people never get too much art.

So, whatever anyone does with their art it needs to be beautiful.

There is always a need for a more beautiful world. And it will always take cool people to create it using whatever tools are available.

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