vrijdag 28 oktober 2011

Making a living

Many people told me that it is impossible to make a living out of playing chamber music on saxophone. Now I know it is hard, but certainly not impossible!


The road is long and difficult, I admit. At least, it was for me. But I am doing it. And loving it. I make a living out of playing classical saxophone and more specifically, chamber music on the saxophone. I play with my quartet and do solo gigs, recitals with my pianist, Hans Eijsackers and solo performances with Bach and stuff with electronics. I worked hard to get here. But it does take sacrifice. Hard work, not only on the saxophone, but also communicating and creativity (in that order in practice, yes!). We are saxophone players and our goal to astonish people and show that this is music as well. Our instrument does not know boundaries and this is how we should approach our practice. We are no violins, clarinets, there are no orchestras waiting for us. Thank God we get to do our own thing! Develop repertoire, arrangements, even compose and improvise ourselves. That is saxophone today.
When people tell you it is not possible to live off chamber music it is only partly true. It does take some adaptations in life style. Maybe not such a big house in not such a top location, reduce your expenses to a minimum while maximizing them for taxes. It's a fine line. But the reward could be making music for a living. If the circumstances are right. What circumstances? If I knew that I wouldn't be writing this blog and working out factors to create those circumstances….

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