Many people have expressed an interest in learning what it’s actually like to BE a musician.  We thought we would share some stories and profiles of our musicians so you can learn how our day-to-day lives work.  Here Ruth Ann Ritchie, our Executive Director, shares her thoughts:

My “day job,” like that of many musicians, is teaching music lessons.  I currently work for one of the public school districts in Texas, teaching private lessons during the school day.  I have about 35 students that meet with me once a week, plus I run the sectionals at one of the high schools.  That means that once a week I meet with the bands’ flute sections as a group, and we work on band music, chamber music, or have mock auditions for upcoming competitions.

Thirty-five students either sounds like a lot or not very many, depending on who you talk to.  This is Texas, so the band programs are HUGE (thanks to the love of football!).  Besides the actual teaching, there’s all the work that goes on behind the scenes—scheduling, answering parent phone calls and emails, replying to the student who lost their music the day before the concert, cheering up the student who didn’t place as highly as they’d hoped.  There’s a fair bit of social work that goes on being a private lesson teacher, too, as we are often the only adults that are able to see the kids in small groups week after week—so we know exactly whose parents are getting divorced, who’s stressed out over college applications, or whose boyfriend dumped them right before prom.  (FYI, you can’t cry and play the flute at the same time.  They all pretend nothing is wrong, but it becomes fairly obvious fairly quickly!)

That’s the biggest part of my week, tracking down all those kids.  In addition, I freelance in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, which is possibly the most entertaining part of my job.  A good freelancer turns down no reasonably well-paying concert, as we love to play and ALWAYS love having a good story to tell.  There is the couple who met at Disneyland, so are married wearing Mickey Mouse Ears with their tux and gown.  There are the awkward individuals who invariably interrupt to request “Stairway to Heaven.”  (Give it up folks…it doesn’t sound good on violin and cello.) There are also the hosts of large garden parties who don’t understand why you object to their dogs running in and around your music stands.  And what musician hasn’t performed a “Star Wars” medley accompanied by a Darth Vader impersonator?  But in order to be ready for any gig at any time, we have to stay in physical shape and practice regularly.  I’ve become a master of fitting in warm-ups while students change class periods.

I, of course, also juggle Astraios.  It’s not a full-time job yet (although it rapidly appears to be becoming so!).  I get to use other parts of my brain that were specifically NOT used as a music major—the parts responsible for accounting, marketing, contracting, licensing.  Unfortunately, these are subjects that are just now starting to appear in music curriculums, which means that I spend a lot of my time doing research.  But I have a lot of help, and it’s not nearly so stressful now to create a balance sheet as it was in the beginning!

And this year, The August Winds, of which I am a member, have decided to enter the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition.  (Astraios audiences hopefully remember The August Winds from our last two summers in Colorado.)  We’re all hitting the age limit this year, so it’s now or never.  To add to the confusion, four members of The August Winds live in Dallas, but our clarinetist, Marianne Shifrin, is splitting her time between Colorado and Arizona.  She flies in every few weeks for some intense rehearsals, and we’ll be recording the first week of February.  When she comes to town, we cram our students into as few hours as we possibly can and cram in the rehearsals as late into the evening as we can stand.  (Healthy?  Maybe not.  But many musicians learn to love caffeine in music school…)  While it becomes insanely intense and QUITE exhausting, we are still managing to like each other after all this time.  On the plus side, Natasha Merchant, our oboist, is an expert ice cream/cupcake/truffle maker, and enjoys trying out new recipes on us.  That’s always a happy ending to a rehearsal!

Future articles will include profiles of musicians and musings on our day-to-day lives.  If you have a topic you’d like to know more about, we welcome your suggestions!  Please email your ideas to info@astraiosmusic.org.