Well, after a lifetime of working in offices to support me, all the while doing my actual vocational stuff as a professional musician after hours, I am finally retiring from the day job scenario to be a full-time musician. Funny how one has to retire in order to be a full-time artist. For most of us artists the puny money just doesn’t pay the mortgage.

This brings me to an article I read in the journal from one of the professional organizations I belong to, MTNA. The national president wrote a dynamite article as you just open the publication. It was like something jumped out and slapped me in the face! It was short and sweet and to the point…and he “brought it home.” The article is about understanding your worth as a musician/performer/teacher. To take a few points from the article, it talked about how we have to start music when we’re children (by the grace of God our parents saw this in us and took us to lessons), and we have to keep up our art well into adulthood. Thousands of hours and unknown amounts of money spent becoming a professional artist. Several college degrees. Then we have to keep up our skills through regular (eternal) practice and attending workshops when we can and of course, joining the professional organizations which help with holding conferences, local meetings, performance opportunities for our students, etc. The president equated us to some of the most highly trained individuals next to doctors and lawyers. Read that again! I have a dear friend who is a world-class organist who grew up on the organ bench and has been playing literally 60 years. He’s not retired either.

And this is what we artists bring to the table. This is the depth from which we teach you to play beginning piano, sing simple early music songs, etc. I know of a group of wind instrument players who have their degrees in music and are expert at their instruments but wanted to make enough money to live so they became lawyers and businessmen but yet, didn’t want to give up the music they worked so hard for…so they formed a local group that I’ve had the pleasure of hearing. Fabulous! And what a great idea!

So upon my retirement I am beefing up my own music studio and for the first time in my life, going to be all music! This is huge for me. I realized I know how to work for other people but not necessarily for myself. So a learning curve for me at retirement but it’s going to happen! And I’m going to make a more concerted effort to keep up my blog. Something else I haven’t had a lot of time to do.

So look for more of my wisdom in the near future. Tata for now!