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Hey, here's your Weekly Rx. It's time to face the music.
Words Worth Keeping
"Categories are unnecessary."
— Duke Ellington, program notes for Such Sweet Thunder, 1957
Walt Disney Concert Hall. Frank Gehry, 2003. Nothing classical about it. Photo: Linda Pomerantz Zhang / Unsplash.
This Week
One of the best orchestral musicians I know is a top-call sub with some of the best orchestras in the country. Plays on film scores. First name on a lot of contractors' lists.
But at 2 a.m., you'll find her DJing in a club. Some nights the instrument comes too, with a pickup strapped to it and a pile of effects pedals at her feet.
This week, waiting backstage to go on, we were chatting about it. She doesn't see herself as a classical musician who happens to DJ, or a DJ who happens to play in orchestras. She's an artist, and her bandwidth is wide enough to hold both. Probably a lot more.
The club isn't a hobby. It's a different vibe. No part on the stand. No scrutiny. No chasing perfect. Just her, the music, and a crowd moving to it. One night it's a dance floor. The next, it's Stravinsky or Brahms. Same musician.
Most of us run on a much narrower band. What I find insane is that we did it to ourselves. On purpose. Over twenty years, one excerpt at a time, we locked ourselves in a museum of our own creation, and "classical musician" became the whole definition. The real cost isn't how we sound. It's who we reach. We end up playing for one group of people, and as artists, I find that disappointing.
Part of the problem is the label. We call what we do "classical music." Strictly speaking, that word covers about seventy years, Haydn to early Beethoven. We slapped it on everything from Bach to Mahler to the world premiere we played last week. Somewhere along the way, we let it describe us too. Narrow. Careful. Classical.
Scroll up and take another look at the building in that picture. It's where I work. Walt Disney Concert Hall. Frank Gehry. Stainless steel that looks like it's still moving. No marble columns, no Greek temple out front. Nothing like what people picture when they hear the word "classical."
So here's my ask.
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Can we please stop calling it classical music?
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Call it music. Call it orchestral music if a program needs a label. I honestly don't know the perfect word. I just know this one shrinks what we do.
The architect got the memo. The musicians inside didn't.
The Prescription
Stop pinning a label on yourself. Widen your bandwidth.
That takes some nerve. Stepping into something new is uncomfortable, especially after twenty years of getting very good at one thing. You'll be a beginner again, and you'll sound like one. Do it anyway. Sit in with a band. Learn a bass line by ear. Fumble through a tune you'd never put on a résumé, in front of someone, and be bad at it on purpose.
We may be the only musicians on earth who freeze when the notes aren't written out in front of us. Take the part off the stand and a lot of us, me included, go quiet. That's not a talent problem. It's a bandwidth problem, and it's ours to fix.
And here's a pro tip: the groove you can't find in Beethoven is sitting in a funk tune, waiting. The ease you can't find at an audition shows up the first time you play something without trying to make it perfect. And then you've done the thing that's the entire point of why you started playing in the first place. You've made a connection with another human being.
Ellington said it in three words: categories are unnecessary. He meant the music. It goes for the musician too. The building isn't classical. Neither are you. You're a musician. The label came later, and it's smaller than you are.
Start small. This week, pick one tune you love that has never been on a stand. Learn it by ear. No paper, fifteen minutes. Then hit reply and tell me what it was.
Happy practicing,
Chris @ Honesty Pill Coaching
P.S. Widening your bandwidth is easier with company. That's what the Honesty Pill Audition Community is for: Monday goals, Friday wins, and a monthly Hot Seat where I review real playing live. First 30 days are free. Try it →
Something land? Something miss? Hit reply. I read them.
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