Posted by Rick Denney on December 31, 2002 at 10:29:31:
In Reply to: Re: Tis the Season to Audition posted by Dave Zerkel on December 31, 2002 at 09:21:46:
Dave, I think you hit the nail on the head with the exhortation to "live...life with integrity."
I've met very few people for whom music was an inevitable choice--nearly everyone has a short list of things that they enjoy doing and could do professionally. Those very few who can't conceive of anything else but music for their life's work are those few who will be committed enough to do what it takes to get gigs. And even that isn't always enough. But only a handful of people have that path so clearly laid out in front of them, and they usually know it long before college rolls around.
I went into college as an architecture student. Being an architect had been a childhood dream, something I couldn't conceive of NOT doing. But I learned that the business of architecture is quite different than the doing of it, and I didn't have needed aptitude. I switched to engineering, and decided that it didn't need to be buildings that I designed.
Music is no different. Jay Bertolet spent much of last year embroiled in a bitter and deflating union battle with management. Is that making music? No. But it's part of the gig. It takes a lot of dedication to work through those unpleasant but unavoidable adjuncts to earning the daily bread in any field.
Each new turning in my career has presented a choice, and making those choices demands a responsibility to see them through. This leads back to Dave's advice: It isn't so much a matter of what you decide to do, it is a matter of making the decision to enjoy it and do it well. I have a feeling that frustrated musicians-turned-band directors are bad band directors because they choose to resent it. If that's the case, they'd be bad at anything they attempted, from serving french fries to interacting with a pompous conductor and a mean-spirited symphony board.
I hope that Ray will bare a bit of his soul in this thread, because he has been there and the choices he made would be good for us to hear. He is a high-school band director with a graduate performance degree, and despite that his good sense about education doesn't always fit with the stupidities of the education establishment, he is wholly dedicated and, I believe, truly happy.
Rick "who thinks dedication is a decision not a skill" Denney