I had the week off last week! Sort of. Edmonton Opera hired a “reduced” version of the ESO for its recent production of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro and I was one of the small handful of core players who were rotated off the schedule for the run. Earlier in the season I was in the pit for Verdi's Rigoletto when others had their own turn at time off, and I'll be there again in March for Bernstein's Candide. But the last couple of weeks my wife was booked as a sub to play oboe in Figaro while I stayed home, where I took advantage of my hours of quiet solitude to catch up on some nagging items on that good ol’ to-do list. But there are also three different folders of music on my stand for upcoming programs demanding my attention, so it's not like I wasn't still working for the orchestra. And the quartet I joined this season - fellow members of the ESO - is booked as a guest artist for one of those programs (exciting!) so we had a few rehearsals of our own as well.
I don't quite know what other core members typically do with their odd time off, when it comes midseason without very much notice (I didn't know I wasn't playing the opera until a couple of weeks earlier when the roster was posted).
When I was in a touring string quartet there was no such thing as taking a week off while others in your section played your part in a particular program. It doesn't work that way! Four parts, four people. The common refrain was that our job was actually two or three full time jobs each. Every day was filled with preparing for something else upcoming, whether in rehearsal all together, individual practice, emailing our staff or consultants or recording distributors or teachers, updating the website or our mailing list, making or taking meetings, etc etc. Time off was usually carefully planned months in advance, a week or so squeezed in between concerts and gigs, scheduled to ensure we'd be back at it enough in advance of the next important engagement to be confident in our ability to truly do our best, hopefully without completely burning out from not having had enough time away from each other and the work. But again, inevitably some of the work always came home, or came along in the luggage.
We had incorporated as a nonprofit, with a sizeable board of directors and a staff of several people working for us, and no matter how much - because of how much - they worked to support us, our own supervisory responsibilities were never done; we performers were never off the hook for all of the details, musical or business-ical.
It's one of the weird things I'm still getting used to in this still fresh “second half” of my career, as a quartet-turned-orchestral musician: so much less responsibility for the behind-the-scenes stuff.
As one of many - my team is much larger, now - I find, at least for now, my mind is able to wander more creatively, less desperately, more selfishly, plotting on the side, knowing and trusting that all the various technical issues in the business side at work are truly being handled by not just someone else I might have hired to help me succeed, but a whole trained team of someone elses working full-time with benefits to do so.
So when my mind wanders, relieved from a daily stressing about whether we've got enough concerts next year or whether the last review will be a good one we can quote in our new publicity materials, or whether I'll be apart from my wife on our next anniversary again because we got hired to teach at a festival across the country again… — Nowadays when my mind wanders, ideas come and go; old dreams are recalled, new dreams emerge. To-do lists are born, and grow, and get refined, and on a week off, items start getting checked off. Some bring satisfaction in completion; others bring joy simply in the attempt to begin tackling them.
And then the week is done, the to-do list is (emotionally, if not actually) shelved, and my daily commute to orchestra services recommences. And soon enough those three folders of orchestral music will each get turned in after their final performances, and replaced with more, and my new quartet's guest artist gig will come to pass, and we'll begin learning something new together…and who knows what else lies in store - a happy uncertainty in the land of orchestral tenure.
In May 2017 I won the audition for Assistant Principal - third chair - in the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony viola section. There's a two-year tenure review process, during which time I was on probation, watched and quarterly-reviewed with feedback on how I was doing well, and how I might improve in my role.
In September 2018 I won the audition for Assistant Principal - second chair - in the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. The ESO's 16-week tenure review process is remarkably short, and you get no official feedback about your work until the announcement is eventually made that you've got it - or you don't. I got it, just two weeks ago now, and it feels good.
When I'd won the ESO audition, the school year had already started and I was already booked for a range of recitals and concerts that season I was able to fit into the KWS schedule, so it didn't make sense to up & move to Edmonton and begin whole hog right away. But I found four chunks of time when I could get away to Alberta to play as a casual musician with the ESO for a week or two at a time, as a sort of series of taste tests before committing my family to the move with me the following summer in advance of my finally beginning the new job in earnest at the start of the 2019-20 season.
The 2018-19 season, then, was not quite half & half between KWS and ESO, and I made sure my time in Kitchener included all the major concerts in the season, thinking that it was a good idea to at least get tenure in one place before leaving for the new gig, even if the new gig might be better, simply because “you never know” how the new place will turn out - and what if I didn't get tenure in Edmonton? I wasn't ready to burn the bridge back to KWS.
The final KWS concert of the season came and with it, my tenure there - and with that, my 12-month leave of absence was approved so I could go and give the ESO a proper go. A bittersweet celebration and farewell among our closest friends followed, and by the end of August, after an epic summer road trip to end all road trips, we were moved into an apartment in the Glenora neighborhood of Edmonton.