Our Story
From Songwriter to Muzi Creator
In her last months at Harvard University, while her classmates announced job recruitments and masters program acceptances, Rachel Efron realized she wanted to be a songwriter.
She had been songwriting for only a year so this was a fairly bold choice.
But the truth is, she knew she wanted to devote her life to songwriting the moment she wrote her first song.
It was like a bell rang, her head turned, and she hadn’t found a way to turn it back.
Without guidance, let alone support, Rachel relied on those she trusted most: her favorite artists. If she liked a songwriter she watched every interview. If she liked a novelist she read every biography. Yes, she practiced piano and took voice lessons. But Rachel recognized immediately: the biggest challenge to her success wasn’t musical, it was accessing her creativity.
Rachel spent the next years writing countless songs, recording a handful of albums, touring both coasts, and most critically, tending to her creative health. And then something unexpected happened — she began supporting other artists. She taught Songwriting at the Berkeley Jazzschool. She held
an ongoing Songwriting Salon, serving songwriters across the US. She gave talks and held workshops. She became a songwriting coach for songwriters around the world.
And while certainly she talked her head off about song form and melody composition, more and more she found herself focusing on creativity, itself. How to access it. How to sustain it.
How to give our creativity exactly what it needs to thrive.
Rachel's clients often said she should write a book. But Rachel was hesitant to give people two hundred pages of her experiences — what she really wanted was to give people an experience of themselves.
Rachel's Creativity Observations
The Muzi methodology is a comprehensive library of missions, reflections, and meditations. But before all that, it is a conviction: that society's relationship to creativity is deeply unhealthy, and that if we're going to claim the joyful, sustainable, and successful creative lives that are ours to live, it's going to need some reconsideration.
The following are not so much principles as observations that emerged from Rachel Efron's fifteen years coaching artists, leaders, and teams around the world.
Let them remind you of what you intuitively know to be true.
Creativity is our natural state.
When we aren't creating, it isn't because we are 'ungifted' or 'blocked' or 'not creative.' It means only that our creativity needs something from us."
Creativity thrives when we are resourced.
There are five essential resources for creativity: Inspiration, Courage, Discipline, Rest, and Connection. When we are under-resourced in even one area, we struggle to create. When we are resourced in all five, we can't help but create.
Every one of us has something unique and vital to offer this world.
There are things that are ours and only ours to make. Creativity is just this: recognizing that what is ours to make is precisely what the world needs from us.
Many of our most debilitating issues are the result of poor creative health.
We can try for years to cure our depression or ease our loneliness without realizing: we are simply out of sync with our creative imperative. Everything changes when we ask: What is going on in my creative life? What creativity resource is depleted in me?
Creativity is not just for artists.
Or rather, all of us are artists. Leaders, executives, therapists, educators, scientists, parents — anyone whose work or life requires original thinking, problem-solving, or self-expression benefits from creative health.
Rachel Efron
Co-Founder and CEORachel is an artist, producer, and songwriter. She's released four full-length albums and an EP of original songs, toured extensively on both coasts, and produced albums from pop to jazz to folk to rock. She's written songs for R&B legend Narada Michael Walden and stadium rock band Journey.
In 2011 Rachel became devoted to helping other artists write songs. She taught Songwriting at The Berkeley Jazzschool for ten years, founded Songwriting Salon — an incubator for committed songwriters — and became a premier songwriting coach for artists around the world. She's given talks and workshops for such organizations as UCSF Medical, Berkeley Executive Coaching Institute, Academy of Management, and West Coast Songwriters.
In 2022 she began translating her fifteen years of creativity coaching into Muzi.
Rachel grew up in Maine and currently resides in Oakland, CA. She holds a BA in Social Anthropology from Harvard University.
Learn more about Rachel at rachelefron.com.
Jay Clemens
Co-Founder & Board ChairJay served as Global General Counsel of eBay and the Lenovo Group, and as Board Chair and Interim CEO of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He brings to Muzi a wealth of global business and legal expertise in the tech industry, as well as leadership experience in nonprofit arts and cultural institutions.
In 2020 Jay took Rachel's songwriting class, promptly enrolled in her ongoing Songwriting Salon, and then hired her to produce his debut album, New Nirvana — whose songs have won numerous national songwriting awards. Jay was struck by the power of Rachel's creativity methods, both in his life and the lives of his classmates — and became convinced that they deserved a wider audience.
Jay can usually be found in the San Francisco Bay Area or at his ranch in the Badlands of North Dakota. He holds a degree in Asian Studies from Dartmouth College and a JD from Harvard Law School.
Learn more about Jay at jclemensmusic.com.