{"id":5174,"date":"2010-08-17T23:25:43","date_gmt":"2010-08-18T06:25:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/?p=5174"},"modified":"2010-08-18T22:30:40","modified_gmt":"2010-08-19T05:30:40","slug":"power-vacuum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2010\/08\/17\/power-vacuum\/","title":{"rendered":"power vacuum"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is said that Nature abhors a vacuum, and the same could be said of human<\/em> nature as well.\u00a0 This is especially true in orchestras of any budget size or artistic merit.\u00a0 The one truism that I’ve come to dislike very intensely? That those who seek to gain power in the absence of strong leadership are to a one uniformly weak and cowardly.\u00a0 If they were otherwise, then they wouldn’t have to seek leadership in such craven ways.<\/p>\n

Orchestral musicians are sensitive beasts.\u00a0 We face our own harsh criticisms every day in the privacy of our own practice rooms, and then we go to work and face the judgment of our colleagues and our boss, which can sometimes seem arbitrary and capricious.\u00a0 It’s easy to crack and start taking out our frustrations on our select colleagues, the governance systems of same, and the less-than-powerful music director.\u00a0 That’s the easy way out, however, and there is the more difficult route: professionalism.<\/p>\n

I offer two versions of people doing their jobs that illustrate the difference between being unprofessional and maintaining the utmost professionalism.<\/p>\n

The first job was featured on an episode of a show where CEO’s of major corporations went down to the entry level positions of their companies to do the work and see how life was at the bottom of the corporate food chain.\u00a0 In one episode, the CEO of Waste Management followed around a guy whose job it was to empty and sanitize port-a-potties.\u00a0 This guy had a smelly, difficult, and sometimes hazardous job, but he did it with a smile and a laugh, and was very good at what he did.\u00a0 He was unfailingly polite to the CEO (whom he did not know was the head of the company) and did a great job of showing him the ropes.\u00a0 The guy was a consummate professional in every sense of the word.<\/p>\n

The second job was the guy who pumped gas at the Shell station a block from my house (Oregon is the other state besides New Jersey where you’re not allowed to pump your own gas).\u00a0 Every time a car would come up to his pumps, he’d shake his head and swear under his breath as if he were being asked to do the most difficult job imaginable.\u00a0 If more than one car were at the pumps, he’d get even more agitated, an start yelling at the pumps, and sometimes the customers.\u00a0 He seemed so angry and upset over nothing.\u00a0 He didn’t have the greatest job in the world, but he made his life harder than it had to be with all of his negativity.\u00a0 He was eventually let go.\u00a0 That man was really the epitome of unprofessional.<\/p>\n

What does this have to do with orchestras and power vacuums?\u00a0 Well, first of all, most job satisfaction ratings of orchestral musicians are probably lower than the two jobs in my examples.\u00a0 Secondly, the unprofessional people, they’re the ones who make power grabs or become borderline insubordinate in orchestras.\u00a0 People who are well-respected by their colleagues usually are reticent to accept positions of power, and they often have to be coerced to serve on their player committees and the like.\u00a0 It is those who sit back and complain loudly about everything and anything, about how they could do it better, or the tempos are too fast, and the strings never listen to the winds, those people are usually shunned by most of the orchestra as far as being electable to a leadership position, so they are the ones who most often make power grabs when the moment seems right.<\/p>\n

What often results is a spiral of apathy and anger that can result in a radicalized player base, eager to do damage to those who held power before them, and quick to lash out against management, whether fairly or not.\u00a0 It’s not a good place to be, and I know this from first-hand experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is said that Nature abhors a vacuum, and the same could be said of human nature as well.\u00a0 This is especially true in orchestras of any budget size or artistic merit.\u00a0 The one truism that I’ve come to dislike very intensely? That those who seek to gain power in the absence of strong leadership […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_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},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-orchestra-world"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8kC-1ls","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12608,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2013\/04\/21\/random-thoughts-on-this-week\/","url_meta":{"origin":5174,"position":0},"title":"random thoughts on this week","author":"Charles Noble","date":"April 21, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"It is entirely possible to put way too much pressure on one's self as a performer. Sometimes you just have to trust yourself and your colleagues. Just about anything that is done cheaply will turn out to be lacking in quality - not always - but more often than not.\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":379,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/07\/09\/on-teaching\/","url_meta":{"origin":5174,"position":1},"title":"on teaching","author":"Charles Noble","date":"July 9, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Over the past few days (and to be honest, years) I've been discussing the vagaries of teaching with many of my colleagues. It's been an interesting discussion, and among the most common subjects has been the changing nature of the students we all teach. I guess it's not a totally\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":7575,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2012\/05\/09\/sibelius-an-mahler\/","url_meta":{"origin":5174,"position":2},"title":"sibelius & mahler","author":"Charles Noble","date":"May 9, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"[In October 1907] Sibelius met the composer Gustav Mahler, who was visiting Helsinki. The two colleagues noticed that they had experienced the same phenomenon: with each new symphony both of them always lost listeners who had been captivated by the previous symphony. But they disagreed about the essence of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "appreciation"","block_context":{"text":"appreciation","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/appreciations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/JS_Goteborg_1915-200x306.gif?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":978,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/05\/19\/entropy\/","url_meta":{"origin":5174,"position":3},"title":"entropy","author":"Charles Noble","date":"May 19, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Entropy is the Second Law of Thermodynamics (also known as the entropy law). Here's the jargon: A measure of the amount of energy in a physical system not available to do work. As a physical system becomes more disordered, and its energy becomes more evenly distributed, that energy becomes less\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "fundraising"","block_context":{"text":"fundraising","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/fundraising\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":257,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/04\/01\/april-fool\/","url_meta":{"origin":5174,"position":4},"title":"april fool","author":"Charles Noble","date":"April 1, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Happy April Fool's Day! As a violist, I take special pride in what is, along with bassoonists, our special day. It's been a busy week. I've been in rehearsals for the two different concerts that we're doing with the OSO this week: the subscription classical series which involves Leonard Bernstein's\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":2287,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2009\/04\/02\/a-mild-rant\/","url_meta":{"origin":5174,"position":5},"title":"a mild rant","author":"Charles Noble","date":"April 2, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Hannu Lintu This week we've been rehearsing with one of our regular guest conductors, the Finn Hannu Lintu.\u00c2\u00a0 He's a great guy, with a typical dry Finnish sense of humor, and is a wonderful musician.\u00c2\u00a0 He's also quite followable, even though his movements can look a bit indecipherable at times.\u00c2\u00a0\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":"hannu-lintu3.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/03\/hannu-lintu3.thumbnail.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}