Dear Alma, My friend dumped me from his concert
Daily Comfort ZoneFrom our agony aunt:
Dear Alma,
My friend got a pretty big concert that actually pays. He is playing mostly solo, but is putting together one chamber piece in the program. We have always played together in school but he didn’t ask me to be in the concert. He asked our teacher and some other people, who I think I am as good as. I am angry and want to confront him.
Feeling jilted
Dear Feeling Jilted,
You are at an intersection – a student still, but with friends who are beginning their careers, something that you will soon be doing yourself. A career in music goes far beyond playing the right notes convincingly. There is a game afoot – a game we all learn to play. And a big part of it is gaining and giving favors.
Your friend deserves his concert. And he is smart. He understands that he has a powerful opportunity in his choice of program. A chance to thank his teacher, to make new connections, and to pave the way for potential future collaborations.
Feeling Jilted, be happy for your friend. Support him as he prepares for his big break, help him if he needs a meal or someone to play a passage for. Understand that a career is complex and the choices you make are not about friendship, but about your future.
Observe your friend and the next steps he takes, and where they lead. Then practice. Practice and practice. Until you get your first professional invitation. Then, with the choices you make, you will chart your own path.
Questions for Alma? Please put them in the comments section or send to DearAlmaQuery@gmail.com
Rubbish advice! It’s dog eat dog, no semblance of manners in this professional world – it’s whose back you can scratch!
A serious violinist, will always choose competency, over friendship, when the time comes to hire a viola player.
Although it might be easier said than done, you should try to let it go. Confronting your friend is an indirect way to demand something from them. Personally, I would not want to attend a party I am not invited to, even if an invitation comes up later because I requested it. What has value is what people do spontaneously, and not under some sense of obligation or under duress. It’s better here to take the high road.
You will look at this in a few years as an insignificant event. Not being invited to play this concert will make absolutely no difference in your future career. If you’re meant to have one, you will — whether or not you get to play this concert. If this is about a bruised ego, try to let it go. Handling rejection — sometimes, a lot of it — is part and parcel of every musical career. In the greater scheme of things, this is rather meaningless.
Excellent advice.
And now you can decide how much of a friend he really is.
Many musicians feel, not unreasonably, that the tacit understanding when a colleague takes your time and energy for performance work with little/no pay is that the colleague should be making proactive efforts to recommend you to the skies in the relevant field and come back to you if and when a better paid opportunity comes along (although I think the OP is on tenuous ground in expecting such a tacit understanding to apply in respect of performance work where both parties were students studying with the same teacher at the same institution). Naturally, it can be upsetting to learn that the colleague has not taken an opportunity to do so. I remember getting rather irate when I spent a lot of time for very little pay working for a certain colleague as her accompanist for a challenging obscure work: the colleague was making great efforts to advocate for the work, to the extent of encouraging fellow performers on her instrument to add it to their repertoire, but when I asked whether she would mention my name as an accompanist who had this obscure work in his repertoire, she answered that she felt her fellow performers “should find their own team”…
Unfortunately, this feeling of being overlooked or marginalised by a person whom you had considered to be a “loyal” colleague is quite common, and will happen to you many times in the future. It may feel unfair, but there is not much you can do about it, except according a much lower priority to that colleague’s future requests (if any). If you are going to take that course of action, it is important to be unfailingly polite and bland about it (“sorry, I am too busy”, “I am not sure I can commit to that schedule at the present juncture”, or “sorry, I cannot afford to {{cancel so much teaching / incur such high travel expenses for the fee on offer / get so many hours of childcare}}” are good all-purpose responses), and to maintain the utmost professionalism (i.e.: do not resort to underhand tactics such as double-booking yourself or reneging from existing contracts).
It could be that the colleague has engaged you in the past because he/she perceives you as cheap/free rather than good, and therefore does not consider you a first choice when there is a substantial budget available — naturally, upon realising this, you may feel somewhat exploited. Alternatively, some colleagues are just reluctant to recommend/engage anyone they perceive to be ‘junior’ to them (whether on the grounds of age, experience, fame, expertise in a specialist field, &c.) when they have other options. Remember, however, that working with/for a colleague who is/becomes more famous does come with the benefit of your being able to boast about it, and (assuming you have not signed some kind of confidentiality clause) you have every right to avail yourself of that privilege (if you look at publicity for performers, a lot of copy/blurb comprises lists of big names with whom the performer has worked).
Get used to it. Sorry, but it’s the way things are. He might even have been advised to take the others for reasons to which you are not privy. You can afford to be sentimental in this business when your stock is sufficiently high. Until then, accept that hurtful things happen.