It's funny how being asked a simple, innocent question can affect your thinking. It's usually some kid asking and suddenly you're plowing a field that has long since lay fallow. That happened to me yesterday. A young, ambitious student was talking about participating as a guitarist in a youth orchestra. When I offhandedly commented that I had never performed with an orchestra and had even turned down one opportunity he was flabbergasted. You would have thought that I had just set fire to a winning lottery ticket. "Why??" he blurted.
I completely understood his attitude. It's an attitude I shared until about fifteen years ago. But playing a concerto or other specialized repertoire with an orchestra takes an amazing amount of preparation. It takes me longer than most because I've always been a bit of a slow study. I need to budget my practice time carefully. If I'm going to put that much effort into it, then I should have opportunities to perform it with multiple orchestras. That just wasn't my situation at all.
It was the right decision at the time and I stand by it. But as I look back over my career I have to reluctantly admit that I would have liked to have played with an orchestra once or twice. Not just a pride or ego thing, but the joy of playing a couple of those lovely concertos. I just wasn't willing to do the work at the expense of other things.
But now this simple question "Why?" sends my thoughts drifting backward through time contemplating this journey that I've been on. In a couple of months I will be celebrating my 49th anniversary as a professional guitar teacher. All those years ago it was simply a way to make a little extra money. If you had told me then that it was going to be my career I would have scoffed at the prospect. I had far bigger plans than to be "just" a guitar teacher. It took me fourteen years to embrace this as a career and to recognize that the word "just" didn't belong. Like I said, I'm a slow study.
The question is both simple and complicated. Life, it seems, has it's own plans. I was nudged onto a different path than the one I thought that I wanted and found myself in a much better place. Sacrificing a few fleeting moments was a small price to pay.
These days I play at ceremonies or cocktail/dinner parties. It's not as grand or sexy as playing in a concert or recital, but this type of playing suits me. And I stay pretty busy. But my priority is teaching. I would rather prepare my students to play with an orchestra or perform a solo concert than to do it myself. It's a greater privilege and far more satisfying.