My Life as a Musician
by Moira Burke
Life as a violin-viola player is lots of fun! I followed my childhood dream and became a professional musician… but it’s not always an easy thing to do. The hardest thing about being a musician is the inconsistency of work. Sometimes, I am booked solid every day for months at a time, other times, I worry about not having enough work. In order to compensate for this lack of consistency, I follow my other passion for teaching others to learn music. Juggling the scheduling of teaching and playing can be very tough, so I need to be extremely organized so as not to double book myself.
But even though the playing world can be tough, it’s always fun. I have been so lucky as to travel for free throughout Canada, the United States, France, Italy, Belgium, Japan, Hong Kong, Cuba and Grenada. Most people of my age would not have had this opportunity to do so!
One of my favorite things about my job is the diversity of music that I get to perform. I play mostly classical, however, I also play some Jazz, some Pop music, some Rock and some Hip Hop. In one week, I could play an orchestra concert, a jazz show as well as a rock concert… so it certainly keeps me busy and on my toes!
My other favorite thing about being a musician is going on tour. I often travel with my string quartet with pop bands. We get treated like rock starts, get to sleep and eat in 4 star hotels and have fun while doing so. The only thing that is not always so much fun is the schedules while on tour. As a musician, we mostly work in the evenings and nights. Concerts generally finish around 11pm, so by the time you get back to the hotel and get to bed, it’s pretty late. Often while we are on tour, we have 6am wake up calls, so we often find ourselves overtired, especially at the end of our tours.
As a musician, it’s not always about playing concerts and going on tour. We also have to keep on practicing. Even though I am a professional, I still practice a couple of hours every day. Doing this keeps me in top shape and ready to play any style of music at any time. I often compare myself to an athlete. If a runner were to just run races and never train, chances are they wouldn’t be winning any races, and it’s the same for a musician. One day I hope to win a permanent job in a big orchestra, but in order to do this, I need to be ready to play an audition at any time. Auditions for these orchestra’s do not come up very often so, you need to be very prepared when they do get announced, and hope that you win the job!
Elite Music is a private music school offering music lessons in Toronto. Violin and viola lessons are offered under the instruction of qualified and accredited musicians for students of all ages and skill levels. For a free consultation please contact the main desk at 416 406 5355 ext1.
