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Amateurs ? How often do you perform?

9K views 45 replies 29 participants last post by  1saxman 
#1 ·
Amateurs - How often do you perform?

A few definitions of different types of musicians to clarify the inquiry:
  • Professional - Musical activity (performing, teaching, writing, etc.) is your exclusive or primary way of making a living. Buying and/or selling gear is not what I mean by musical activity, so you could be a professional music store owner or mouthpiece maker and still be an amateur musician.
  • Semiprofessional - Musical activity is not your primary way of making a living, but you engage it in regularly (e.g., weekly gigs or lessons) and typically get paid.
  • Amateur - Musical activity is more of an avocation than a primary or secondary occupation, and you typically do not get paid, although you may on occasion. Can include a retired pro or semipro who now performs with an amateur group.
This question is addressed to people who are out of school, because student musicians constitute an entirely separate group.

Fellow amateur saxophonists, how often you do perform in a typical year? I'm referring to formally scheduled concerts or gigs to which members of the public are invited, not jam sessions with friends, rehearsals, etc. In my case, it looks as though I'll be playing at about 15 events in 2014 between concert band and sax quintet. (Sometimes we do both at the same event, but I'm counting each of those events as only one performance.) I'm curious about whether that number is high, low, or average.

Btw, I wanted to post this in the Learning, Playing, Performance, Teaching Discussion subforum, but there's no appropriate category there.
 
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#43 ·
Yeah - I tell my band mates the same thing when they hand me something I can't play and ask me "why can't you play this?" - because I'm not a professional saxophone player. I often add - and that part is not actually written/arrange that way in any recording ever made of this tune either. Many of the bari parts in the horn band charts I see include unison parts with alto/tenor that were never played on bari in the original scores.
 
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