I Never Want to be a Professional - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/104/music-lessons

I took music lessons from the age of seven (if not earlier) until I graduated from high school. The first few years was nothing but piano, but after that was piano and cello, and ultimately was only cello. With all of that musical knowledge, I know that I want nothing to do with ever making music as my profession.

The amazing thing about Las Vegas is that the classical music scene is amazing. You see, when famous people come through Las Vegas, and they need a live orchestra to back them, Las Vegas has a horde of professional musicians ready and waiting to fill that role. The thing is, that when the professionals don't have any professionals to play with, they still have families to feed so they need a job, so they teach those that aren't professionals - those that are more worried about prom than they are about Paganini.

This is the amazing, and scary, part about Las Vegas. We have professional musicians teaching high school and middle school music classes. That means that in the best case situations, the high school students have learned from their teachers, and are borderline professionals. Thanks to Las Vegas' crazy pool of professional musicians/teachers, the Las Vegas Youth Orchestra has done things like playing entire symphonies, having amazing soloists, and playing at a level that can only be described as professional.

It was amazing to have that experience. To be able to sit through amazing performances, to put notches on my belt to say which symphonies and composers I've played are experiences that I will never forget, but the down side was that I got to know those professional musicians.

Richard Straub was my cello teacher. He is an amazing musician. You would never expect it from him, but the musical qualities that he had on his instruments of choice were through the roof. He had skills as a cellist, and even a bassist, but in my opinion piano and accompaniment was where his ability to understand music was beyond my understanding.

Mr. Straub was the gold standard that I put every single pianist against. The prime test was how well he could not only sight read complex classical pieces, but the amazing ability to compose his own sections of music if the person he was accompanying missed their cue to come in. It's a powerful thing to have a pianist that could make it seem like nothing was wrong and cover up for any mistake that you made as a soloist. Normal pianists stick to the music and don't stray from that, but Mr. Straub would willingly, and often, go off of the notes that were on the page and fill things in however the soloist needed. The most amazing thing that I ever saw him do was not only create 'filler' music that fit perfectly in the style of the composer, but to watch as his music fell off of the piano, which in every other musicians hands would have left a train wreck of noise or dead air. . . and he kept playing. He didn't have the song memorized, but he listened to the soloist and knew enough of the soloist's section that he managed to create a faux accompaniment that (in my opinion) sounded better than the original.

Even though his musical talent was something that was beyond comprehension, he was just making it. His wife and him were both music instructors, and they were both giving their life to watch 6th graders butcher twinkle twinkle, and there were only rare occasions that I got to see him really enjoy the music that he had devoted his life to.

Then there was Mr. Pfeil.

Brad Pfeil was my conductor.

Most people have multiple conductors. At the bare minimum you get one conductor at your middle school, and then a second conductor at your high school. In a weird swing of Mr. Pfeil switching jobs at the same time that I switched schools, for seven years of my life in school, he was my conductor.

Let that sink in. From my first day of sixth grade to my last day of school in my senior year, I saw Mr. Pfeil, and although I might be slightly biased, the man was/is a genius conductor.

Most conductors have their pet instrument or group that they love to conduct. Band students when they become conductors know how to conduct a marching band, but they have no clue how to get any good results from orchestra or choir. When a choir conductor tries to conduct an orchestra, they say things that make no sense at all to the orchestra students and the results are just as catastrophic. The list keeps on going. In the worst case scenario, a bad conductor knows how to get their favorite instrument to make the right noise, but the rest of the orchestra or band takes second place. Mr. Pfeil never showed that weakness.

He knew how to conduct a small string quartet, all the way up to a full symphony orchestra with a full choir with the same exact degree of control over the students he conducted. Without skipping a beat he could tell the string instruments exactly what he expected out of them, the brass section how he wanted their noise to sound, and dictating to the choir how their noise was unbalanced then give a single four count and have the mob of us start playing and it would sound exactly (or at least very closely) to what he requested from all of us.

It was in his hands that I played Handle's Messiah - all of it.

It was in his hands that I played just about every single orchestra piece that I have ever played, and I have a good grasp on who he is and what his life is like, and even with his skill and talent that he could throw around as a conductor as well as a very skilled bass player I don't want that life. Watching him put that much time and effort into music was nice, and it was great as a high school student, but I can not imagine as an adult trying to balance that much dedication to music while also trying to live a somewhat normal life.

As much as I love music, that's the biggest part about being a professional musician that I would never be able to do in a normal world, the absolute sacrifice of all things to become that good of a musician. Being a classical musician isn't as much about skill as it is about sacrifice. Skill gets you only so far, and sooner or later every single classical musician has to dump hours upon hours of personal time to make sure that pure raw practice covers for anything that their skill couldn't. The cost versus the reward just wasn't worth it to me. The personal cost of time and dedication just to sit in an orchestra to always be 'part of the team' and never stand out wasn't worth it.

I can honestly say that being a professional musician was an option for me, but there is no way that I ever wanted to practice and dedicate that much of my life into something that was interesting, but not something I was obsessed with.