Jesse Voogt, Composer of the week with Moving Classics, says:
“…well, lots of things could go wrong if you choose a career in music, a career in which even the successful often struggle to make a living. Usually the story goes: a young artist struggles with parents, who want the artist to be a doctor or a lawyer, but the artist breaks free of all restrictions and conventions to do ONLY the thing they feel in their innermost being they were born to do: MUSIC! Mine was not such a journey – my parents have always been very supportive of my artistic leanings, including when I enrolled in music school for composition right after high school. But I felt lost in a world that seemed hardly even to notice the kind of music that had, in only a few years time, filled me with such a passion to create, much less reward those who entered into classical music as a profession. So it fell to me to decide: do I stick with music, or do I make a living in a more practical way?
If there is one thing I’d like to impart on other musicians, it’s that you do NOT need to choose between music and another profession. I feel in visual arts this is somehow more accepted than in music – many musicians seem to think it must be all or nothing with music, when in fact the choice is not so binary. It may not be enough for every burgeoning musician (some I’m sure would not be satisfied unless they are performing as a soloist around the world), you can play & write music your whole life without it being your entire life. Having music as my hobby while I earn a living in another manner has meant that I can write the music in any manner that I prefer, without the added stress that I would face if I relied upon the music to also put food on the table.
All this being said, I do hope you enjoy listening to Anna Sutyagina play my nocturne in Fm. The nocturne was mostly inspired by Chopin, but I added a bit of a twist.”
-Jesse Voogt
Image artwork by Shaheen Alikhan