Author: lowclarinetman
Date: 2006-11-10 15:51
I have a few more thoughts on the subject.
I am just about to turn 30. I graduated from Oberlin Conservatory and Rotterdam Conservatory(specializing in bass clarinet). I have a professional job playing clarinet in an orchestra. Is the orchestra great, not by any standard I ever held, are we good... yes. I also teach in the local conservatory and in another more basic school. I make what living I make on just music. Sounds good?
Well, I work 7 days a week and most of those days are 12 hours long. I make under 30k a year. Still sound good? To me yes.
To find this amount of "success" I had to go out of the country. I live in Mexico. In my orchestra we have a brass issue. We can't get trombones or french horns to stay, and the ones that do want to stay, are at less than the ideal standard of the orchestra.
I have often said that musicians are geographically challanged. We do not choose where we live. The job chooses where we live. A lot of the musicians I know that have not gone on to play professionaly have not been willing to go anywhere or do anything for the gig. It is unrealistic to think you will get a job in your ideal city, close to your family, by the ocean, whever YOU want to live. If there is an opening, for example right now in Bergen, Norway, you cannot think well it is too cold/ too dark in the winter/ the taxes are too high for the salary. If you want to be an ORCHESTRAL musician you take the audition. Four years ago, before I moved to Mexico, I took the Bass clarinet audition at Bergen(made a fool of myself.. jetlag), but I was the ONLY American there and only 45 people showed up. INSANE!!!! Begen pays 60K Dollars a year.. its a good job. You lose the right to complain if your not even TRYING!!!
On the other hand, conservatories are NOT doing there jobs. My orchestra just recently auditioned a bunch of clarinetist for the principal job.
We went through a years worth of completely unprepared clarinetists. They could not play in rhythm, in tune, sight read, and did not know the repretoire very well. These are all basic functions of an orchestral musician.
We found a good guy, who could do MOST of this. And he is from a VERY good clarinet school. The same can be said of the french horns and trombones we audition ALL the time. Most can barely make a sound. Education is a big problem. The people graduating are simply not prepared for the rigors of professional playing. In my orchestra, because we are in mexico and we don't pay THAT much, we brgin people in for a few weeks at a time, let them play and see if they like it/we like them. After which they play a formal audition, and we make a final decesion.
You cannot have unrealistic goals. Only a very few musicians make very large sums of money. You will probably not own a vacation home in the bahamas or find yourself wearing versache. If you have an open mind you can surrivive even thrive as a musician.
The previous quote from Ernie Watts is right. If you can imagine yourslef befing happy doing something that isn't music, do that. The life is hard, but I know if I worked at a desk job somewhere I would kill myself. Its just not for me. So I worked very hard to get where I am . I hope this helps, and sheds some light on some problems I have noticed in the professional world.
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