Yep, it’s that time of year again.\u00c2\u00a0 When the schedule starts back up and all the old habits and fears and regrets come out of that hiding place in the back of the closet or under the bed.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s hard to deal with.\u00c2\u00a0 We just got back from Sunriver, where we played in a chamber orchestra for two weeks.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s such a lovely place.\u00c2\u00a0 We don’t have a laptop, so no email, no web news, nothing to really connect us to the normal demands of day to day living at home.\u00c2\u00a0 So it’s always a shock to come back and read hundreds of emails (half of which are spam), riffle through the mounds of mail that come avalanching out of the post box, and deal with the fact that the season is starting up in a few short days.<\/p>\n
This year there are additional factors that make life more difficult.<\/p>\n
My father is having a health crisis and the overall outlook probably isn’t great – he’s in his 80’s and even things that would just set us back have become serious challenges.\u00c2\u00a0 He spend a few days in the hospital and then a few more in a nursing facility, and now he’s at home but not moving around too much, except with the PT person comes by for a session.<\/p>\n
The health of the orchestra continues to worry me.\u00c2\u00a0 I wish I could go more than a season or two without wondering if it will be the last one with the orchestra in it’s current form.\u00c2\u00a0 There are so many unknowns, and there are factors which make me more skeptical than usual about the future, so while I’m happy to be going back to work, I’m worried about how long things will remain the same as they have been.<\/p>\n
My wife has been one of the first call substitutes in the cello section for nearly a decade, and this year she’s gotten only one call for one series so far.\u00c2\u00a0 She’s taken work with the opera (Carmen) in September, but it’s not boding well for the amount of work that she’ll get this year, which makes up nearly all of her income.\u00c2\u00a0 She does some private teaching and work at Pacific University, but she’s a performer at heart and doesn’t want to get trapped into teaching a large studio just to make ends meet.<\/p>\n
All this makes me wonder how long we’ll continue to stay in Portland.\u00c2\u00a0 We love it here, but need to have some stability and enough income to seriously think about buying a place and having some real roots.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ll keep you posted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yep, it’s that time of year again.\u00c2\u00a0 When the schedule starts back up and all the old habits and fears and regrets come out of that hiding place in the back of the closet or under the bed.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s hard to deal with.\u00c2\u00a0 We just got back from Sunriver, where we played in a chamber […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[3655,55,3662,3656],"class_list":["post-419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-orchestra-world","tag-news","tag-orchestra","tag-portland","tag-the-orchestra-world"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8kC-6L","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":191,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/02\/01\/colorado-symphony-signs-new-deal\/","url_meta":{"origin":419,"position":0},"title":"colorado symphony signs new deal","author":"Charles Noble","date":"February 1, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"From the Rocky Mountain News: Colorado Symphony officials today announced the ratification of a three-year contract with the musicians of the orchestra. The deal marks the first multi-year agreement since a five-year contract expired in 2003; single-year extensions had been approved since then. The new contract, which runs through the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "the orchestra world"","block_context":{"text":"the orchestra world","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/the-orchestra-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":563,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/12\/04\/33-musicians-resign-from-virginia-orchestra\/","url_meta":{"origin":419,"position":1},"title":"32 musicians resign from virginia orchestra","author":"Charles Noble","date":"December 4, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"This is a sad tale - I used to play in the Prince William Symphony when I was a student at the University of Maryland. Apparently there has been a good deal of trouble there since I worked there. 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Some say the lockout that\u2019s kept the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra off the stage may now have reached a critical point that could result in some musicians leaving town. 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