What to do in professional discomfort

What to do in professional discomfort. This is a contract that you have to develop with yourself, or at least this is how I’ve handled it, which is, I certainly know that most situations I can stand into and have complete command with. And I say that with honesty, humility, but also a healthy sense of ego. I will also say that I know I will come up against situations where I don’t have command of the situation and I say that with honesty and also a healthy sense of ego.

And so the commitment is in knowing myself and knowing that in the moments of professional discomfort that I have made a commitment to that moment because whatever most likely has brought me in there has been by my choice of contract. So it might not be, if I was sent in, what’s the option? I get called to stand in for a conductor for a performance on no rehearsal. The question isn’t, can I do the thing? The question is, how much discomfort am I willing to experience in order to do the thing. And that is only a guess. I can only assess maybe the orchestra, the situation, is it a university group, is it a professional group, have I done the repertoire before, have I not, am I reading something for the first time, is it a new premiere, all of these things inform me. But the instant that I say yes, I am accepting the discomfort, come what may, that’s the contract.

I would say the only way I protect myself from all of this is by only putting myself in that position a certain number of times a year or a month or whatever the calls are because I would say conductors in general, not all, but most of the conductors I know, we operate with a sense of hyper-vigilance and we can’t turn that off when we go home and I would imagine for any other musician you operate with the sense of I want to do this really well. If I’m putting myself in the room, I want to do it really well. And that comes home with you. It comes home with you, especially when it’s not going well.

And that is just, at that moment, is just committing, finding a way to survive it, getting to the end of it, and saying, okay, that felt awful. Did I miss something in the assessment? Or do I just now know I can’t do that? Or I can’t take on so much. Or I can’t do five concerts. Or I can’t do a concert and a guest thing. Or I can’t do an orchestra rehearsal and a podcast, I have to choose. So I sent my graduate assistant to do the rehearsal, which is the beautiful thing.