Sean gets on a soapbox

My younger brother Sean, third of the three brothers in our family, is a professional cellist. For him, life is a constant struggle, as it is for most musicians. Sean routinely puts in seven-day weeks, and while I imagine that a musician of his international caliber is raking in the big bucks, Sean informs me that the reality is far less romantic. Anyway, I had recently texted Sean a YouTube video of musical humorist Charles Cornell; the video is a hilariously cynical take on what you need to do to enter a competition like America's Got Talent (AGT). Here's the vid (watch it—it's both funny and painfully true):


When I texted the video to Sean, I also texted the following:

Funny, but also deeply cynical. Is this your impression of how things sometimes work in the music biz?

Sean ended up sending back a lengthy reply (edited to look like regular prose instead of broken-up fragments of texted dialogue):

Very funny... I love this guy.

Yes, this is how things work sometimes in the music biz, even with something as simple as a wedding gig. Actually, at wedding gigs, our playing is almost the least important thing.

All things that are prioritized over the musicianship itself:

- showing up early
- having nice, dry-cleaned, matching outfits
- having pleasant expressions on our faces while playing
- speaking “like the help” when interacting with clients and guests
- having matching music stands

Some of this kind of attitude is understandable in performance in general. The fact is that the vast majority of most audiences is made up of non-musicians. Most non-musicians don’t understand subtlety in performance, but they can see bravado and can hear when something is fast. They can also see faces that look pretty. So, in a performing arena like AGT where non-musician priorities are on steroids, the quality of musicianship is definitely low on the list.

You need to have a narrative that non-musicians can latch on to:

- survived cancer but the power of music pushed you through
- homeless
- physical deformities

—you get the point.

As classical musicians, we’d love to have music appreciated for the music itself, but that is financially impossible. It also doesn’t help that in the US, foundational music education is pretty pathetic. When you don’t have a foundation of basic music understanding, it makes it almost impossible for someone to listen to music from centuries ago and find relevance. Which is a shame because so many of the basic human emotional concepts conveyed in old music are completely relevant to modern humans. People are missing out. I got on a soapbox about this at a recent performance where we took questions from the audience. My theory is that if we globally had a basic music competency, it would make the world a significantly more peaceful place. The concepts that you learn in music are not just the ones you always hear about, e.g., “Higher math and science scores,” etc.

But in the performance of a piece (pretend we’re talking about a string quartet), you’re literally conducting dozens of wordless negotiations that are started and completed every minute. Who is pushing the tempo? How are they changing the tone and color of the notes? Will I accept this new direction, or will I “right the ship”? How can we make these changes without destroying the piece? I could go on and on.

And this doesn’t even get to the benefits of having a wordless emotional outlet for mental health. I know that I would go crazy if I didn’t have this outlet. I don’t know how others function without it.

I’m sure you’d hear a similar answer from other musicians in different words, but it would be the same concept. We all do it for the value. We certainly didn’t get into it for the money.