POLITICS

Consider your role professionally. If you are not yet in the professional arena, behave as if you were. Your fellow students, even as early as youth orchestra, will be your colleagues. If you are fortunate, your teachers and mentors will be your colleagues, too. Once you are a teacher, your students are your future colleagues. Seize the opportunity to foster mutual respect wherever you can.

Do not surrender your integrity in this life, but do surrender to the hierarchy of the professional world. Show respect for your teachers. Show respect for your conductors, colleagues, and students. Show respect for yourself by behaving the way you’d like to be known to behave. Your reputation matters; care for it.

If you’d like people to choose to work with you, you must either be so incredibly amazing that they’ll put up with your careless personality, or you must be a good colleague. I spent many years a substitute player with many fine orchestras. I played at their pleasure. If I behaved like a jerk it would be very easy for them to stop calling me.