Submission by Anne
Professionals play for pay. Amateurs pay to play.
You'd think it would be easy, given a distinction so stark, to define yourself as either/or, but it turns out, for me, to be insanely complicated. Partly this is because the dichotomy is nowhere near as pat as I made it appear: I have known professionals to pay -in one way or another- to play, and I have known -and played with- amateurs who, once in a while, cash checks.
In addition, there's more determining professionalism than dollars. At a minimal level, there's professional training and associated questions. Can someone self-taught ever really be a pro? It's insanely rare for a self-taught player to make her living playing classical music, but other genres are another story. How much training makes you a pro? Majoring? Minoring? Having the knowledge to offer formal training to others? What if you have the training but do not play?
Then there's your living. If you make 25% of your living -say $10,000- making music, are you a pro? What about 50% of your living? Would you be more of a pro if you made the same $10,000 but did nothing else? Does it make a difference if you have an archetypal "day job" versus a bona-fide second career?
I probably made a third of my income playing this year and the other 2/3 working in a completely unrelated field. Last year I made a little less playing and a lot more in the unrelated field; I was still trying to work full-time while gigging. Yearly, I struggle to locate myself on the pro- to amateur continuum. The question is not, at least according to the IRS, academic.
Perhaps most interestingly, there's the question of love. An amateur plays for love; a professional plays for...what? It's not entirely love, otherwise you'd never take a gig you didn't like. But it's not entirely money, either, or most of us musicians would be doing something else. In my case this truth is particularly stark: I can earn 2 times as much money per hour as an SLP as I earn as a musician. Therefore, every hour I spend gigging, practicing, or teaching comes at a hefty opportunity cost. In a way, you could say I pay to play-
which puts me back in the amateur category.
But I don't feel like an amateur, in the sense of taking unadulterated, uncaring joy in what I do. I'm more often tired from traveling, or worried about sounding excellent, or concentrating very, very hard on getting it right. There's room for joy in there, but it's mediated joy, joy tethered to very hard work and high stakes.
Contrast this with singing. This weekend I attended a reunion of my college Collegium, an early-music choir in which, for four years, I sang soprano. Like most people in the choir, I was a musician but not a singer: looking around the room at Saturday's rehearsal -a full six years after our last meeting- I saw organists, instrumentalists, people who'd chosen other paths but still loved music.
We were amateurs, in the best sense of the word. We sang for love. We tried hard but not too hard, forgave ourselves our mistakes, celebrated our achievements. We hit most notes, missed a few, sang with gusto and un-self-consciousness.
I miss being an amateur.
Guess I've answered my own question. Time to tackle the damn Schedule C.
Showing posts with label Anne. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anne. Show all posts
Monday, March 15, 2010
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Where are you?
Submission by Anne
Where am I? In Indianapolis This was an accident.
Now that I'm here, I'm trying to make the best of it. There is a very small baroque scene with even smaller audiences. Most of the playing I do is somewhere else. I'm struck, in Indy, by the challenge of marketing early music to mainstream audiences. Sometimes I feel like early music is the ultimate self-indulgence: there are a whole lot of people who want to play it, and not very many people who want to listen. And sometimes I wonder if that's a load of self-loathing hooey, and I'd feel differently in a city with a healthier early music scene.
Still: My last concert -yesterday- was a Purcell program. We attracted an audience of about 45, all but a few eligible for AARP membership. In a few days, I'm flying to a different Midwestern city to play a multi-media project with a Celtic/Renaissance crossover band. That group routinely attracts 600-800 people of all ages.
The onus is on us to make a change. I believe our concerts need to be more accessible and less academic. We're performers, not historians -and entertainment, not pedagogy, should be the preeminent goal. I'm not saying informing and educating don't have a place, but I think early musicians sometimes assume that doing it "right" (i.e., in a historically-informed, thoughtful, well-documented, well-played manner) is enough. I submit that it is not.
Where am I? In Indianapolis This was an accident.
Now that I'm here, I'm trying to make the best of it. There is a very small baroque scene with even smaller audiences. Most of the playing I do is somewhere else. I'm struck, in Indy, by the challenge of marketing early music to mainstream audiences. Sometimes I feel like early music is the ultimate self-indulgence: there are a whole lot of people who want to play it, and not very many people who want to listen. And sometimes I wonder if that's a load of self-loathing hooey, and I'd feel differently in a city with a healthier early music scene.
Still: My last concert -yesterday- was a Purcell program. We attracted an audience of about 45, all but a few eligible for AARP membership. In a few days, I'm flying to a different Midwestern city to play a multi-media project with a Celtic/Renaissance crossover band. That group routinely attracts 600-800 people of all ages.
The onus is on us to make a change. I believe our concerts need to be more accessible and less academic. We're performers, not historians -and entertainment, not pedagogy, should be the preeminent goal. I'm not saying informing and educating don't have a place, but I think early musicians sometimes assume that doing it "right" (i.e., in a historically-informed, thoughtful, well-documented, well-played manner) is enough. I submit that it is not.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Anne
Submission by Anne
1). I'm Anne. Amazingly enough, I sometimes get paid to play the recorder. I also work half time as a speech pathologist for the 3-5-year-old inner city set. I like it this way. I have never, ever wanted to do just one thing. Music by itself is not enough for me; conversely, life is not quite enough without music. Switching back and forth can be jarring -the music world and the inner-city education world have pretty dramatically different values and norms. Also it can be tough to juggle the gigs w. the steadier life. But it keeps me supple.
I grew up in Bloomington, Indiana, which is pretty much the answer to question #2. I started taking recorder lessons w. the local prof in high school. I have a coupla degrees in recorder performance from Oberlin and from I.U. I also have a B.A. in Psych, another B.A. in Creative Writing, and an M.A. in the aforementioned speech therapy. I rationalize that I am not indecisive, merely, um, broad minded. I'm married and I live in, of all places, Indianapolis. Marriage will do that to you. Most of the playing I do is out of town, which stinks, because I hate almost everything about being a freelance musician (hello, travel) except music.
Damn you, music.
2) I don't really differentiate between early music and music. I do not play a modern instrument. I grew up in early music. It's all I heard and played; Bloomington was, at the time, an early music mecca. I feel like many early musicians have a discovery story, an aha moment when they actually chose early music, bought themselves a ticket, hopped the ship, emigrated from modern-land. I'm the bratty second-generation. I insufficiently appreciate the sacrifices of my elders. My acculturation was accidental, so I take it for granted. This insider perspective is becoming steadily more common. I can't decide whether or not this is a good thing.
1). I'm Anne. Amazingly enough, I sometimes get paid to play the recorder. I also work half time as a speech pathologist for the 3-5-year-old inner city set. I like it this way. I have never, ever wanted to do just one thing. Music by itself is not enough for me; conversely, life is not quite enough without music. Switching back and forth can be jarring -the music world and the inner-city education world have pretty dramatically different values and norms. Also it can be tough to juggle the gigs w. the steadier life. But it keeps me supple.
I grew up in Bloomington, Indiana, which is pretty much the answer to question #2. I started taking recorder lessons w. the local prof in high school. I have a coupla degrees in recorder performance from Oberlin and from I.U. I also have a B.A. in Psych, another B.A. in Creative Writing, and an M.A. in the aforementioned speech therapy. I rationalize that I am not indecisive, merely, um, broad minded. I'm married and I live in, of all places, Indianapolis. Marriage will do that to you. Most of the playing I do is out of town, which stinks, because I hate almost everything about being a freelance musician (hello, travel) except music.
Damn you, music.
2) I don't really differentiate between early music and music. I do not play a modern instrument. I grew up in early music. It's all I heard and played; Bloomington was, at the time, an early music mecca. I feel like many early musicians have a discovery story, an aha moment when they actually chose early music, bought themselves a ticket, hopped the ship, emigrated from modern-land. I'm the bratty second-generation. I insufficiently appreciate the sacrifices of my elders. My acculturation was accidental, so I take it for granted. This insider perspective is becoming steadily more common. I can't decide whether or not this is a good thing.
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