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Well, I seem to have raised a stir. That’s good. The amount of thought and discussion regarding my Chicken Little article is a good thing. In many ways, that is one of the key purposes of this website: to present ideas, to challenge people to think outside the lines, and, hopefully, to inspire people to continue their pursuit of mastering the instrument.
That being said, it is important to make a few clarifications regarding this particular article. Many people understand this article perfectly, exactly as it is, and many people do not. Because of that, I want to make my intent perfectly clear, no satire involved.
The Chicken Little article was not written for the extremely talented young players that are able to compete for, and win, the most prestigious orchestra jobs in the country. It was written for the 99.9% of the trumpet community who are forced to endure a sometimes endless struggle just to try to make a living. Some people understand this article to be about bashing talented young trumpet players like Matthew Muckey. That is not my intent at all, and if the article is read carefully, without bias, it is very clear. That without bias thing, however, is not always easy to do.
Many of you would be surprised to know that I worked with Matt when he was in the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, in fact, I was the one who he auditioned for in order to get in. He was a 15 year old kid from Sacramento who came in and blew our minds. Every week, he made the 2 plus hour trip into San Francisco in order to play in the Youth Orchestra. He worked hard, played well, and was an extremely valuable member of a very talented trumpet section. Matt is truly talented. Matt is also extremely focused, hard working, and a really nice guy. The most important thing I will say in this post comes next. Get out your magic marker, set up your tape recorder, whatever you need to do, this is as plain and straightforward as I can say it:
Matthew Muckey deserves this job. He has earned it. He showed me at 15 years old that he had the ability to win a job like this someday. I have no doubt that he will go on to have an incredibly successful career, wherever it takes him. He has made plenty of sacrifices to get to this level, and they have paid off. My hat goes off to Matt, and I wish him the warmest and most heartfelt congratulations. However, this article was not written for Matt. It was written for everybody else besides those few who sail from school into elite jobs without seeming to even break a sweat.
I have been in the trenches. I have friends there. I have students there. I know people that have sacrificed everything they could possibly think of to win any orchestra job, and never succeeded. I know people that are extremely talented and gifted musicians that never quite had the fortune of things going their way, or never found a solution to that one particular problem that kept getting them cut. I know people that have foregone successful careers in business to try to make a run at an orchestral career, only to have their hopes and dreams stomped into oblivion. To these people, Matt Muckey is a heart breaker, a dream ender: not Matt himself, but what his statistics say. To anyone not talented enough to win a post in a top five orchestra before they finish their undergraduate degree — and that is almost all of us — talented young people like Matt can be just the thing that makes us throw our arms up in despair and abandon our dreams. If you are in this group, Chicken Little is for you. It says forget your age, forget whether you are behind or ahead, and follow your dream. Follow it until you realize it just isn’t your dream anymore, then find another one, get on, and ride it for all it is worth.
Oh yeah, and just in case you are curious, I knew exactly who Matt was when I heard the news, and before I wrote the article. And to whatever extent I can be proud of him, I truly am! (although I have no clue if I ever taught him anything worth remembering in that year of coaching his trumpet section. Maybe he can tell you.)
So congratulations Matt Muckey! You have done something that is truly extraordinary. And to those of you that despair over the news of someone so young achieving so much, take heart, your day may be yet to come.
Okay – I can see what you’re saying. I apologize for what I wrote before. I misunderstood some of what you wrote.
But what you wrote…is what you wrote unfortunately:
“Having reached the grand old age of 21, Mr. Muckey will be bringing in over $100,000 playing the trumpet in the best brass section in the country. Fortunately for him, having reached a legal drinking age, his friends will be able to buy him a beer to celebrate his achievement.”
One way or another, what you wrote was insulting. Your purpose was to say, “man, it hurts to see them succeed – in light of all these other people who deserve it as much as he does. we should keep trying harder.”
That’s a wonderful message to spread. But next time, you should try writing your articles without insulting people. Well, as long as you say you didn’t mean it.
Craig,
Thank you for writing the first article as well as this follow up.
Sincerely, Alex Yates
Craig- Thanks for the article. I needed it. Thanks, too, for all the others, as I need them, too.
Isaac,
What I wrote isn’t an insult. It’s satire. Read “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift. That is the vein in which this article was written. Chicken Little is an exploration of what it feels like when you fear never being able to have a successful career. It does feel like the sky is falling, like your dreams are being destroyed, and like it is these people that are doing it. Of course, they aren’t doing it, but it does feel like it. That is the point. And, personally, I think the article states this very clearly. You obviously don’t, but I stand behind what I wrote.