God Bless the OSO!

I did something I never thought I would do. I promised myself that this would never happen: I quit. I didn’t quit my job or my marriage or anything dramatic like that. I quit the Olympia Symphony Orchestra. There is a small chance that I will finish the season, but I am definitely not coming back for the next season.

There aren’t any hard feelings at all. As a matter of fact, I feel honored to have been a part of its development into a first class, first rate orchestra. It is this very reason that I cannot continue as its principal percussionist. True, I am going to miss the rehearsals, the conductor (the Great Huw Edwards), and the camaraderie that I felt with some of its members. But the orchestra is moving past that of a casual, community group and into the fast paced, tense world of the professional orchestra. It isn’t that I couldn’t make it work. My abilities as a musician are not in question. It is the fact that I am a first time band director in a school that needs 110% of my attention, and I feel that if I spent one more ounce of my energy than I already do on the group, I would be neglecting my students. That is something I will not do.

Even more important than my students is my son. I have a two-year old that spent almost the entire weekend with relatives so my wife and I could participate in the last concert. I cannot let this time slip by! I missed him terribly while I was gone, and the only time I had with him, he was asleep. It seems like between the orchestra, and my job, I never see him. Since I cannot scale back work to accommodate, and we need the income, I had to let the only thing that was not contributing to my familial situation…yes, you guessed it…the orchestra.

Let me give another example. The next concert happens to fall on a weekend that some of my students will be in Ellensburg competing in the State Solo competition. I CANNOT miss this opportunity to support them. I missed the Regional competition because of another district obligation (not to mention there was a symphony rehearsal that day as well), so I would have to neglect the orchestra anyway. I might as well make it a clean cut.