Klarinet Archive - Posting 000678.txt from 1998/02

From: garylsmith@-----.com (Gary L Smith)
Subj: Re: "Professional" vs. "amateur"
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 22:50:10 -0500

SINCE THIS POST IS SO LONG ALREADY, I'VE ADDED FOOTNOTES. ENJOY,
EVERYONE... - gls

On Mon, 16 Feb 1998 15:23:20 -0600 (CST) Roger Garrett
<rgarrett@-----.edu> writes:
>No offense meant to Gary and his somewhat indignant response, but the
>original question asked about this issue......I simply responded.

No offense taken, and I'm not indignant, just feeling a little
misunderstood. :-) Don't get me wrong - I've enjoyed debating this. I
haven't taken anything you've written as a flame, and I hope I haven't
been perceived that way either.
>
>Well, I would rather stick with the area in which we are discussing,
>unless you have something you would like to say here. If someone is
>looking for a professional teacher, or a professional performer, many
>people will look to that label. The label is often defined by the
>criteria
>in my earlier post.

You might (or might not) have misunderstood what I was saying at one
point: Larry Combs (to keep picking on him) is clearly a professional(1).
A 9th-grader playing along with the CD player, almost certainly not(2).
I'm not proposing some eglatarian utopia where we just assume everybody
is about the same and just try to get along. Believe me, if I'm going to
take somebody's money and agree to provide a WW quintet at a particular
time and place, I want 4 other strong players with me(3).

I hope I don't sound argumentative when I say this: it's just that I've
re-worked this paragraph several times and can't express it any
better(4). You have set out your ideas on what a professional is. Fine. I
might not exactly agree, but I haven't yet argued against your criteria.
I have only sought to point out that there are circumstances in which
neither label seems to get the job done, no matter how you define the
terms. I am currently in that circumstance.

I practice regularly, I study and take lessons to further my competence,
and I have on-going committments to students, a band which charges for
performance(5) and pays its members(5), and free-lance engagements. I
make enough money at it that it's altered my standard of living(6). Most
of my students are thriving, and I keep getting more opportunities to
play, so I guess I do all right. I have not arrogated the term
"professional" to myself, but I don't like what the term amateur means to
most people, at least in music: a nice polite word for someone who just
messes around with it. Okay, it's a sloppy definition(7), and I can't
wait to see what the list does to *it,* but anyway...

So Nancy expresses a similar dilemma, and my advice was: just don't use
either label if you're in that boat. And your position seems to be, if I
follow you, is that we can't do that because labels *matter.* Okay, they
do work for some, and when they do, they're convenient, but this idea
that they have some self-evident importance, such that us, well,
whatever-we-ares, just *have* to pick one, is something I can't get
myself around. I never said that the terms don't apply to some people,
but I choose not to apply them to myself, and have found that when I
apply them to others I haven't said much. As for what other people call
themselves or others or even me - have at it.

And with that, I just want to drive a stake up. As I said, you haven't
offended me personally, and I hope I haven't offended you.

Gary

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(1) He's also the fourth cousin of one of my students, according to her
mother. Mr. Combs, if you're reading this, and have an R-13 she can have
that you can't use since the LeBlanc deal went through, e-mail me...

(2) But I can't resist pointing out that many jazz greats started out
copying solos off 78's.

(3) Not an oboe player who used to play with the local symphony, had a
sticking C# key, and DIDN'T NOTICE. True story. Dates back to my amateur
days (sorry).

(4) Build time on this e-mail (so far) - about 90 minutes (don't worry,
I've already practiced).

(5) Usually.

(6) Before the paying stuff started coming in, my wife used to complain
about how it altered our standard of living.

(7) But at least I kept it clean.