Building Career Diversity

In much of what is taught in music schools these days, there is a rift between art and practicality. Teachers often extol the virtues of esoteric artistic aspirations, while forgetting to instruct students on the business of surviving as musicians. But the Victorian notion of the artist as a poorly endowed businessperson is an antiquated and false one. Both artistic and practical considerations are critical to the happiness and success of musicians. And for string players, the notion that there is no career in music unless one wins a major orchestral position is equally false.

The relationship between music as art, and music as vocation has intrinsic conflict, even at the loftiest levels in the music business. For instance, an up-and-coming soloist, in great need of a concert fee to pay rent, and hard at work building a career, may be offered a solo date with the New York Philharmonic on short notice. This could create a conundrum: it is not a good career building move to turn down a date with the New York Philharmonic, but is it prudent to risk a major appearance with less than adequate preparation time? And what about paying the rent? The parallels to this situation exist throughout the business, and aspiring musicians will do well to understand this, if they are to make wise choices in their careers.

For many aspiring string players the contemporary thrust of their education is threefold:
1. The study of solo repertoire, which fosters skills integral to achieving instrumental mastery, but only in rare instances offers a career opportunity.
2. The study of chamber music, which is the clearest path toward high level ensemble skills and is artistically rewarding, but also, rarely has practical vocational application, and
3. Studies aimed at winning a major orchestral position, relatively few of which are available.

This leaves a great many well-trained string players feeling like people without a country, when upon matriculation, they fail to prevail at major orchestral auditions. Even for the elite who do capture major orchestral positions, the artistic and emotional future for them in music can be bleak, as they find that initiative and individuality are necessarily subsumed by the needs of the large ensemble. It is a well-known fact that many orchestral string players become quickly jaded by the mechanistic aspects of playing in an orchestra. Over time many cease to be enriched by the music they play except financially. Ironically, they may come to feel just as disenfranchised by their success, as colleagues who did not win major orchestral positions are by their failure.

The cure for this problem may lie in how we prepare string players to regard themselves and their careers. By fostering a sense of autonomy, and helping string players to develop their entrepreneurial skills and drive, we can make players who feel empowered to create their own artistic environments, and are able to separate the vocational from the artistic aspects of their lives as musicians. Specifically, it is important for string players to understand that diversity of experience is essential to future success. To play, to teach, and to mind the business of being a musician, are the threads of existence common to nearly all musicians. To create artistic and economic opportunity is the prerogative of all musicians.                                   Cont'd