I must admit that I am just as much to blame for missing opportunities as the next guy. I miss most of the opportunities because I am just too busy...which is, I suspect, something most of you can relate to. So whatever opportunity comes our way that competes for our time, has to have a certain je ne sais quoi to grab our attention and compel us to take advantage.
Throughout my career, I have lumped opportunities into two broad categories: those that enrich my life, and those that further my career. You would hope that, in the great Venn diagram of life, the intersection of those two spheres would be quite large. I have found, again speaking generally, that the Venn diagram of life is dynamic, not static. Sometimes my opportunities are enriching and further my career. Other times furthering my career involves doing lots of things I don't want to do (like not getting paid enough for my work, for instance).
There is a group of composers that meet regularly on Tuesday mornings that I used to attend routinely. At the time it fell into the intersecting subset of career development and personal enrichment. Slowly, it became less urgent to my career development and now lands purely in the personal enrichment circle. So what does that look like? Well, now when I go, I enjoy it fully and for it's own sake. When we talked about Bartok's string quartets a few weeks ago, it spawned all kinds of thoughts and creative energy. To be in a room full of musicians of the caliber that were there and to talk about music at a very deep level is inspirational. It is very much like the good old college days when you had nothing to do but talk about music's arcane side.
But because these meetings have not had the urgency of a career in development to compel me to go, I go only sporadically now. It is a luxury that I afford only at the rare times I happen to think about it and happen to have the morning free. You'd think that a guy who has put together an organization dedicated to providing opportunities would take full advantage of these meetings. Sadly, I don't. I am too busy.
Which brings me to the NCA and our offerings for opportunities. It is our hope that our opportunities provide the double whammy of personal enrichment (how often do you get to write music "just because" and have it performed?) and career development (if no one hears your music, how will they know what you can do?).
Just a word to those musicians out there that are "slinging notes" as my friend Steve Mauldin so aptly put it. It is probably not particularly important for people to "hear" your music since your music is being heard all the time, far and wide. However, I think most of you who are involved deeply in commercial music (or even film music to some extent) would agree that often the music is highly tailored to a specific purpose. Most of the time, your personality is hidden within the music (too much personality isn't usually considered commercially viable) and you end up writing music that serves someone else's purposes rather than your own. Our opportunities hopefully will allow you to express yourself fully, no holding back.
So let's say you get a quartet performed on WPLN, hopefully your colleagues will say something like, "I didn't know you could do that!" or simply, "Wow." Writing music for your own enjoyment and then sharing it with others is a little scary at first. Recently, in the program notes for the NSO, Samuel Barber was quoted as saying [paraphrasing], "I am glad I did my own thing." This coming from a guy who composed in a period of time when tonality was laughed at by his peers. But he stuck with his "own thing." I think most of us in the commercial world would have a hard time pointing to what "our thing" is much less stick to it. We are asked to write all kinds of things in all kinds of genres...which one we love best is hard to say.
So the NCA is there to help you enrich your personal growth as well as, hopefully, open up new doors for your career to blossom.
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