- So let's address this issue
of what a musician in training who's thinking,
it's hard enough to learn just how to
be musically adept.
To be sharp enough to get or to nail auditions.
To be able to get the jobs that I wanna get.
And I have the sense of the kind of career track I want.
What is all this other stuff?
How do I deal with that?
Well, we don't have very good answers
for you yet institutionally,
we're beginning to work as a field,
to figure out what is this relationship
and how to begin to support
your natural entrepreneurial impulse.
For example,
I'm not saying you need to take time away
from your audition preparation,
or your investment in chamber music,
to go study business ideas.
However, I can tell you
that we need to plant these seeds
right among your musical development.
Because unless those seeds are planted,
and you begin to develop the curiosity,
the interest in how you're gonna apply these musical skills,
once you get out of school,
you're gonna hit a wall when you graduate.
I've heard this from so many students
who've graduated that
they felt under prepared
for what life after school was like.
They had a kinda a narrow idea
that, you know, they kinda take the major audition,
they get the job,
they'd have happy fulfilling careers in orchestras.
It's a nice fantasy,
it doesn't work that way.
It doesn't work that way,
even if you happen to be lucky enough
to get the jobs that lead to orchestral careers.
And it certainly works that
most musicians don't even have that path.
They don't step right into the getting the job
that leads to an orchestral career.
So for those that have both
what looks like a normal career track,
and those that don't,
they need these extra skills.
Because let me describe the two different tracks.
Let's say you are lucky enough
to be good enough to nail that audition,
get a great job and a great orchestra.
I have worked around a lot of orchestras in the last years.
And the musicians who are thinking narrowly,
who came into the orchestra
thinking only about musical skills,
technical issues, getting jobs.
They are the ones who get very unhappy
no matter how good an orchestra they're in.
They develop dry, small, angry lives,
and they are the ones inside orchestras
that are the most unhappy
that create the greatest tension and pettiness
within their careers,
because in the early stages,
their thinking wasn't expanded
to create the kind of richness and exploratory thinking
that is required for a full life in music.
And for those others
who don't take the narrow orchestral track,
they absolutely need this broader range of thinking,
because it is gonna provide
the kind of curiosity broad thinking,
entrepreneurial developing of ideas,
that is gonna make their careers viable.