Gig slut

"Gig slut" is a term musicians use when they take pretty much every freelance job offered to them (no matter how lowly) to keep the bills paid. I was one briefly (one long Saturday singing 4 separate carolling jobs, in costume, covering about 200 miles, cured me of that).

Blair Tindall's book Mozart in the Jungle chronicles her life as a freelance oboist in New York City. It has generated a lot of "word of blog" because of her tales of "sex, drugs and classical music" (to quote the book jacket) and admission that many of her jobs came from contacts that she made in the bedroom.

It's a shame that the book had to be marketed that way. The book jacket blurb promises:

Now in "Mozart in the Jungle," Tindall exposes the scandalous rock and roll lifestyles of the musicians, conductors, and administrators who inhabit the insular world of classical music.

But the book isn't really about that. Apart from one short episode early on, I'm not sure where the "rock and roll lifestyles" are. Her sexual escapades are frankly the least interesting part of her story and aside from some pot and a few lines of coke, drugs don't really figure prominently. It is however, a compelling story of her life as a freelance musician in New York and one to which many musicians (including myself) can likely relate. In her career she achieves a certain amount of success but ultimately becomes disillusioned with the jobs that she has to take to make ends meet. Throughout her narrative she also weaves the emotional story of pianist Samuel Sanders, who was a preeminent accompanist for many world-class soloists (Itzhak Perlman appears in the story), but who died relatively young of a life-long heart problem.

Freelance gigging in New York is a lot about contacts. Most of mine came from friends and in particular my brother, who preceded me on the NY scene by a few years. Tindall's early jobs came from her boyfriends, which, apart from an early predilication for married older men, doesn't seem particularly out of the ordinary to me. It was dangerous for her since once the relationships ended, so did the jobs. It's not all that different in the business world. Since leaving freelancing myself, all of my jobs have come from contacts and acquaintances. Networking is the name of the game in just about any business.

The final chapter about the financial realities and future of classical music seems tacked on to me. She may be right in her conclusions but she really hasn't taken enough space to be persuasive. I think that this would be good material for another book. But other than that I did enjoy her story and found it interesting and truthful. I just wish she could have done it without the hype.