In case you’re new here, I’ll give a tl;dr thumbnail sketch. I have been Assistant principal violist of the Oregon Symphony for the past 30 years. During those 30 years I also have played in two nearly full-time string quartets, a new music ensemble, and whatever else came along. This season, my 31st, I decided to hit the pause button on everything but the symphony work. I would’ve paused everything but taking a year without any income isn’t in the cards for me. So here is my report card on the experience so far.
I have to admit that it is feeling quite luxurious right now! I see days with no work on the calendar and I know that I won’t be leaving the house with the viola on those days – at all! I have ample time to prepare for new and/or very difficult pieces on the symphony’s schedule without juggling half a dozen other also new and/or very difficult pieces of chamber music at the same time. The pace is a bit more relaxed and I find I have time to actually do, gasp, other things.
So that’s the social media postcard of these first two months. The part that isn’t curated for public consumption is a bit different (but not fundamentally so). When you first start working as a musician, for the most part you are a gigging musician (some musicians stay in this lane and make fabulous and rewarding careers this way if the musical ecosystem in their city can support them). This means you are hustling for work. You always answer your phone in the hopes that someone from Big City Philharmonic or Medium City Chamber Music will call and need your services. Sometimes you have a ton of work, other times, crickets. Feast or famine. So, you take on as much as you can when the pickings are many to get by during the times when they’re slim.
That gets ingrained very deeply into your musical sense of self. First of all, if you’re getting called, you’re good. Someone heard you or heard about you, and the word was you are the person to hire because you’ve got the goods. In our business, if someone offers you something, you take it. Your ego also takes a good bit of gratification – even if you don’t want to admit it – from being hired for good gigs. And this is why making the decision to step back from regular extra work is so difficult. There’s a bit of “the younger generation will get hired and then I won’t get asked any more”, or “what if something really amazing comes up and I miss out?”.
There’s not much you can do about the first one. If there are better musicians around, then that’s the breaks. As for the second one, I’ve done many really incredible gigs with some amazing people, and if I’m honest with myself in retrospect, they really didn’t move the needle overall in my artistic journey. Sure, I could name drop over cocktails to some new acquaintances, but over the course of a decade or two, things even out. There are always opportunities of one kind or another. I recently listened to an interview with the actor Olivia Coleman in which she was asked how she made decisions whether to accept or turn down roles. She said that early in her career, if it wasn’t a matter of survival, she trusted her gut. But now in the latter part of her (illustrious) career she was advised by her long-time agent to imagine the trailer for the project that she was considering with her nemesis in her role. How would she feel: jealous or appreciative. It’s a good way to think about it.
I’m no Olivia Coleman, that’s for sure. But I’ve had a lot of opportunities come my way, and have tried to make the most of all of them. But it’s been difficult to take time away from my friends and colleagues who I’ve been making music with for years and watch them do some amazing stuff. My stupid brain has taken advantage of this and whispered to me how maybe it was time to hang up the chamber music since I’m not the player I used to be. It’s easy to be seduced by that harmful inner monologue. And, frankly, it’s self-indulgent, too.
What I’ve missed the most so far is seeing my friends who I’ve played with so much over the years in an intimate setting. In the orchestra I’m technically playing with them in the same room, but I can go an entire run of rehearsals and concerts without seeing them in any meaningful way. That brings to mind a central tenet of what it is to be an artist in a collaborative medium: our friends we work with are what make it wonderful, in addition to the music we’re playing.
That’s where I am right now. I’m going to some events as an audience member, but not all of them. I hope to see you at some of them as well, and to see your face from the stage next season as well.