"Who Cares?"

| Nov 7, 2017 |

It seems as though some of the best lessons in life come when one is least expecting them. 

One such lesson for me came years ago when I was still a member of the Summit Brass Ensemble. This was after a two-week summer seminar, and we were warming up for the second day of a two-day recording session. The first day had been brutal… a full day of recording difficult and very strenuous music. But it was even more brutal for Ray Mase, who was the designated piccolo trumpet player with Summit. As I was passing by Ray while we warmed up, I was just making conversation when I said, “So, how are your chops feeling this morning?” And Ray answered, “Who cares?”

What Ray meant was that it didn’t matter at all how his chops felt; he had a job to do and somehow had to find a way to do it. I think that, like most people, I have had a tendency to rely too heavily on how I feel on a given day or at a given moment. As in: (as a trumpet player) ”My chops feel bad, so it will be hard to play well”; or (as a composer), “I didn’t get nearly enough sleep last night, so it will be difficult to compose well.” That approach, of course, was and is a recipe for disaster, and also a clever excuse for not doing my best.

As a young player, I had one lesson with Adolph Herseth of the Chicago Symphony, and during the course of the lesson I asked Herseth what he did when he had to play a difficult solo with bad chops. He replied that he concentrated only on how that excerpt would sound if played beautifully—and said that he felt some of his best concerts were played with bad chops, simply because he had to concentrate with total focus on how an excerpt should sound. So over time I gradually adopted a rather strange way of viewing difficult future concerts, and it seemed to help me quite a bit. Whereas in the past if I had a difficult concert to play I would think, “I sure hope I have good chops for that concert,” I now would just assume that I would have bad chops for the concert. That way, if I had bad chops it would be no problem because I was expecting it, but if I had good chops it would be a bonus.

To me this question pertains to all aspects of life: how to do our best when conditions are not optimal. Because, if you really think about it, conditions are rarely optimal. That is the challenge we face every day. To help me in my daily struggle with this challenge there are several quotes that I keep at the piano where I compose. One is from Alistair Cooke: “A pro is someone who can do great work when they don’t feel like it.” The other is perhaps my favorite, and it comes from Gil McDougald, a Hall of Fame second baseman with the New York Yankees from 1951-1960. The quote is crude but also direct and to the point: “Anybody can have a great day when they feel great and a horseshit day when they feel horseshit. The question is, can you have a great day when you feel horseshit?” That is the challenge.