Why Winning Isn't Enough

an orchestral rant

Yesterday, I made an instagram story responding to Christopher Still AKA ‘Honesty Pill.’ This generated some discussion (including his own response) and I want to flesh out my argument more fully. This is not what I normally publish here (I set up this Substack to share the fiction I publish), so forgive this detour.

(This is Christopher Still’s original video. My story is no longer up, but you can see his response-to-my-response on his page.)

In addition to playing trumpet in the LA Phil, Still runs an audition coaching business. His instagram account basically makes self-help content for musicians on the orchestra audition circuit (a world I am quite familiar with). I’ve been known to take an audition or two myself. I might even be dealing with the stress of an audition this very week by writing this instead of doing prep!  

The post in question is about maintaining mental toughness under the often adverse conditions of an audition, and for some reason it ‘struck a nerve,’ to borrow his phrase.

In truth, there is nothing so bad on its face about what Still is saying. What I reacted to was the underlying logic it operates on, a sort of Peterson-esque ‘make-your-bed’ genre of self reliance that is deeply ingrained in the classical music community. There is, of course, reason behind this thinking (good ‘musician hygiene’ is of course a pre-requisite to having any sort of performance career). But, as many commentators across fields have pointed out, these seemingly innocuous suggestions are in fact political. I don’t imagine that Still thinks of his posts in this way, but I still find his example as useful as any to explore what I mean. 

As a musician, your entire life (since age five in my case) is spent trying to perfect your instrument. This is accomplished by ascending a rigid Hierarchy. You take lessons from teachers who are essentially all-powerful figures. Throughout your youth, they are the parents you can’t rebel against. You filter through the hierarchy of the studio (“what piece are you on?”), later the hierarchy of youth orchestra, where you are ranked against your peers before you even hit puberty. After that is the endless series of auditions - schools, summer festivals, eventually professional orchestras. By the time you make it to the end of this sequence, you take the logic of the system for granted. An intense self-focus goes without saying, from the practice room, to the group warm-up room, to the stage. You have to be unflappable, no matter what happens. You should be able to wake up at 3AM and play a perfect Don Juan. You should be able to play the excerpt again a little faster, or with more rubato, or just more in tune, if the panel requests. 

What is the consequence of this attitude, when applied to a workplace? My contention is that this ‘bootstraps’ mentality is a toxic primer for an orchestra world where pettiness and resentment run rampant. 

I don’t want to speak beyond my own experience - I’ve won a few regional jobs, nothing full-time yet - but I don’t think it’s controversial to extrapolate a little. And there are, of course, many individual exceptions (there are many wonderful people in the orchestras I play in!), but in many orchestras there is a palpable atmosphere of petty complaint. On multiple occasions, I’ve shown up to sub in groups where I am completely unaware of the institutional politics, and the only reasonable reaction to how people treat each other is, “What the fuck?” I think there are three main reasons for this.

1. The Hierarchy reproduces itself through silence. This is the reason it’s difficult (or even impossible) to speak up in rehearsal if you aren’t a principle player. It’s baked into every bit of advice to ‘ignore unfairness’ and ‘focus on your own mindset.’ It goes back to the way we are trained, with guru-like teachers who presume total wisdom over a student’s total ignorance. Is it surprising that in the past few years, an increasing number powerful men in the classical music world have been exposed as sexual abusers? That this has been able to persist for so long (and at such high levels) is a testament not only to the powerful men themselves, but to the twisted reasoning of underlings and associates who would defend them. There is a reason for this, namely:

2. Part of being trained within the Hierarchy is learning to defend it. This is because our successes are mediated by it (and are understood on its terms). The rush of winning - a competition, and audition, the praise of a respected figure - is an estimable high. We love our teachers, even the abusive ones. There is a certain pride musicians like to take in coming from a rough studio. But, more importantly, once you’ve won a job, you become sensitive to criticisms of the audition process. I’ve observed this on Audition Forum, where people discuss the news of the day in the orchestra world. Many people get defensive when a particular audition is criticized, even if they work for an unrelated orchestra! The common refrain is to work harder, to be better. Be so good they can’t NOT hire you. The fear undergirding these exhortations is the implication that, if a system is unfair, then those who benefit from that system maybe don’t deserve their spoils.

I totally get this! When I won my current job, I was over the moon. If someone had showed up at my house that night to tell me that I had won a rigged game, I wouldn’t have taken to kindly to that. I worked my ass off - doesn’t that count for anything in this woke world? This is where the hyper-individualism of the orchestra world rears up again - we struggle to hear critiques of the system as anything other than personal attacks. The confusion of the two is part of the Hierarchy’s natural immunity to challenges.

I don’t mean to say that any one person didn’t deserve to win their particular job. How would I know that? But if you haven’t used the power you gained (and having a job means having power in the Hierarchy) to make your orchestra more fair and more responsive to the needs of the community, then you might not deserve to keep it. 

3. People become bitter and resentful as a natural result of spending too long in the Hierarchy. You can only be told to ‘improve your mindset’ so many times. When you aren’t able to freely express yourself, and when you train yourself to just accept the flaws - no matter how glaring - you are going to end up getting needlessly mad at that person in front of you tapping her foot. And yes, most of the atmosphere of grievance seems to boil down to basically that: a tapping foot, an errant comment, the wrong tone of voice. 

It needs to be said, also, that a big factor in this is sheer financial insecurity. People focus so intently on winning a job because they need it to survive. It’s not easy being a classical musician. It’s tough to pay the bills on these wages. But the solution to this isn’t just to work harder. It’s not all of the solution, at least. There is an urgent need for an updated consciousness - not just to tune out unfairness and injustice, but to strategize against it. It might not be prudent to dwell on it before you go on stage to play. But you should dwell on it after.

Part of what irritated me about Still’s post was that there actually are rules that govern orchestra auditions. When these are violated, you can report them to AFM. When my friends tell me audition horror stories, I often mention going to the union (not that AFM is all powerful, but it is a tool we can use). There is a widespread reticence to do this. Why? I read it as part of the default attitude of deference, how difficult it is for individual musicians to speak up even if it is unlikely they would be retaliated against. It’s easier to go back to ‘working on their own mindset.’ 

This is the importance of organizing, of expressing solidarity toward other musicians, of viewing the problems of the orchestra world as our own problems. This runs counter to the old hierarchies. Good. We should build better ones. 

So I address this to the winners of the orchestra world: nice job! Winning is no small feat, and anyone who is able to emerge the victor of an orchestra audition has sacrificed and suffered to accomplish their goals. But winning cannot be the end goal we are trained to imagine it as. Winning does not remove us from the system, but imbeds us more deeply in it. And the higher we rise in the Hierarchy, the greater our responsibility is to deconstruct it.