This weekend is a big weekend for me...and not so much so for the other members of the Brown household. This Saturday I get the amazing opportunity to play a concerto with an orchestra Holly and I used to play with when we lived in eastern Washington. For those of you who don't know what a concerto is, it's a genre of classical music where a single player is featured in front of the orchestra, and plays a crapload of solos. This person is sort of like the lead-singer, if you will. This particular concerto that I'm playing is my personal favorite, written by a 20th century Russian composer named Reinhold Gliere. The piece is about 26 minutes long, so I get to stand up there the whole time, but luckily I don't have to play the whole time. Composers of concertos are nice enough to give the soloist a good deal of rest. So, the soloist stands there (in my case, I'll be emptying a bunch of water from my horn) while the orchestra becomes featured. So, I get to do this on Saturday with a group of musicians that I shared an orchestra with for the last 4 years...with an orchestra that I've come to love. What a great opportunity for me. How lucky am I? Heh, I've just started reading this book by Leonard Nimoy called "I Am Spock", and on the first page he talks about how lucky he is for things that have happened in his career. This time, I'm lucky.
Well, sort of. I mean, in order to get this opportunity, I didn't win any competitions or anything. All I did was ask the conductor one time how one gets to a chance to solo with this orchestra (by the way, this orchestra is called the Mid-Columbia Symphony), and then I mentioned that I'd like to do that sometime. At the end of that season, when we were holding auditions for the following season, the conductor asks me to think of a concerto to play. Wow, right? I've always worked hard on making my part sound good when I played with the orchestra, and it paid off.
So why is it going to be not such a good weekend for Holly and Luke? Well...they have to remain here in Wisconsin while I head to Washington. It really sucks to leave them behind, especially since Holly is alone caring for Luke. But, that's how it has to be. I'm going to miss them terribly.
It really saddens me to think of the amount of emotion that people display when playing music. No, I'm not talking about one who actually expresses the emotion of the music itself as they play it. I'm not talking even about good emotions. I'm talking about how musicians can be so rude to each other. Making music involves so much of the concept of "right and wrong" that musicians get too caught up in it and get emotional about it. They let emotions get in the way of everything, especially when it comes to criticism. The thing we tend to forget is that criticism is supposed to help people, not hurt them. In music, criticism is provided by people in order to help other. But people get so emotional about criticism that things turn ugly. This isn't how it's so supposed to be. Making music together should be a privilege, and should be a team effort. But how can it be so when people won't take criticism, won't be open to changing their ways, or won't even listen to what other people say at all? If people would put aside their egos and their emotions when they're making music, and definitely stop taking things so personally...man, wouldn't that be great?
I think the biggest problem is that success in music involves so much competition that people always feel that they have to compete with each other even when the competitions are technically over. It's all about being right and not being wrong to them. But in reality, does it really matter to an audience who's right and who's wrong? Does the competition even matter to them when listening to a concert? Probably not. They come to a concert to hear good music being played the best it can be. It's our goal as musicians to work together to make it sound that way. A team that competes with each other doesn't do very well.
And yes, in case you're wondering, I do take my own advice. I hate all that negative stuff...I hate arguing, so I try my hardest not to produce it. I sometimes let it slip, shame on me. But I strive for just being...cool with everything.
Take care and value music.
No comments:
Post a Comment