The Career of a Professional Harpist

[Misty Harrison]

Carl I don’t always agree with your posts but this one is terrific

really good solid supportive advice

especially the last sentence

it’s good even for professional harpists sometimes we end up doing work on the harp we didn’t see coming

[carl-swanson]

Thank you Misty. I really appreciate that. As far as my posts are concerned, I don’t expect everyone to agree with me and I find the Harp Column Forums most interesting when people don’t agree. I really enjoy reading other perspectives.

[Sarah Mullen]

I’ve made my entire living from the harp for the last 8 years, which is funny because it was never what I set out to do.

[Misty Harrison]

good point about incidental expenses

that is what I find just teaching and gigging

the gig fee seems high until you pay for gas or food if you are really far from home for a long day or you have to buy a dress that works for the event or new music for it

and you might use the music or dress later but it still is an expense connected with that gig

[Sarah Mullen]

You know, I misspoke.

[Sarah Mullen]

On the other hand, all of those incidental expenses are tax deductible, so in the end they aren’t quite as expensive.

[harp guy]

Thanks. I’m definitely struggling with the whole ‘identity’ thing. When I ask myself ‘Who am I?’ I always answer ‘ A flutist.’ It’s hard. It’s really hard when people I know joke about how I’m a quitter or when I start to think that I couldn’t make it even if I tried. Those things just aren’t true. I know I could make it if I wanted to, but I’m choosing not to carve out a little niche for myself that will barely pay the bills. I just feel that a dream becomes a nightmare when the pressure pushes you into calculating how many milligrams of beta blockers you need every two hours to stay on your toes at a weekend long audition process and makes you so upset that you can’t eat. It’s not worth it. I’ve seen this sort of behavior in myself and in other people. It’s madness to me.

I’m spending time thinking about what I enjoy and what I’m good at, then looking at the jobs in fields related to those things. These things range from being a flute maker to a web designer, to an elementary school teacher (LOVE kids!) or a lawyer. Who knows? But in the mean time it’s hard.

Thank you for sharing your story. I know that I’ll find my calling in life. I just need the time to step back from everything and rediscover my self worth.

[Misty Harrison]

harp guy what about an elementary school music teacher? elementary school teachers have a high female to male ratio and kids that age could use more male rolemodels

i

[steven-todd-miller]

Harp Guy- I can offer some perspective on this one! I’ve been an elementary teacher for 24 years now. It’s not for the timid nor will you be Anna Leonowens from “The King and I” singing “Getting to Know You.” You’ll be exhausted from the sheer physicality of it all and sometimes wiped out by the emotional stress. Add in the government saying that you should be able to make a fish fly at the 80th percentile. BUT… the long term rewards are immeasurably wonderful. Now to the harp/music aspect: The teaching career itself has been a dream for me. I have lots of time for practicing and gigs. The summer is like a two month harp workshop where you can play all day long. You won’t have much money, but you will have a steady paycheck, great work hours, insurance, and hope for retirement; whereupon you will be a professional musician 24/7.

[carl-swanson]

Harp Guy- I’m really bothered by your ‘loss of self worth,’ but I understand. As I said in my previous post, it took me two years, at the end of my 20’s, to redefine my self worth. Turning 30(many many years ago) was a hard time for me. I didn’t own a house, didn’t have a career to speak of, didn’t have much money saved, and didn’t know what I was going to do with my life. These were all the things that I thought, at the time, should have been in place by age 30.

A year later I bought the house that I’m still in. I started repairing harps full time, which is my main occupation to this day. I loved the changes I made to my life and still do. You have to explore various things and find what fits best for you. What concerns me is that if you get really depressed in the process it will make it that much harder or impossible to get on with your life. Changing careers is not failure. Whatever you do in the future is not second best to what you started out doing.

You’re not the first person to go through this and you won’t be the last. I’ve spoken to many people over the years who trained to be professional musicians and who changed careers because they could not control the nerves in performance. One of them is now the president of a music school. A friend of mine in the harp world, whose name you would know told me that one of the graduate harp students at the major music school near her-a girl who was competition material-recently announced that she was going into nursing because she couldn’t make a living as a working harpist. A friend of mine who regularly plays Broadway shows told me that the most frequent conversation among the pit musicians, many of whom are in their 40’s and 50’s, is what they could do in the non-musical world so that they could get out of professional music, because they were having such a hard time making a living. You’re lucky in a way. You’re facing all of this now before you have a family to support or kids to put through college.

Since your options are wide open at this point, I would suggest going to a career counselor and discussing all of this. I believe there is a kind of test that you can take to measure your aptitude for different careers. I would suggest that to. It could provide a list of occupations that you had not even thought of. Good luck.

[Misty Harrison]

harp guy

your college should have a career counselling service and alumni can use it

if you want to take Carl’s advice on that which is great check with the school you just graduated from for career services

it will save you money and they want to help because it is good for the school to get alumni placed in good careers

makes other people see the school as successful.

[carl-swanson]

-When I ask myself ‘Who am I?’ I always answer ‘ A flutist.’-

You’ll always be a flutist. I have never stopped identifying myself as a harpist. Whether I repair or build harps for a living, or if I retire someday (fat chance!), I will always identify myself as a harpist. The great thing about having some other way of making a living(other than playing your instrument) is that it takes the pressure off to play it, and take every gig available, just to earn money. You can then decide what you want to do with it and not worry about income. You can teach, play the occasional gig that interests you(maybe only orchestra gigs which don’t pay enough to live on but which you enjoy for example). Or maybe chamber music or the occasional solo recital. I’ve given about 15 solo recitals over the past 10 years, none of which paid me a cent, but which I really enjoyed doing. Several were fund raisers to which I donated my services. So as you go through this metamorphosis, don’t stop thinking of yourself as a flutist. You’re simply adding something else to the mix.

[kay-lister]

Interesting . . . I don’t let what I do define who I am really.

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

There are many who want to be a harpist, but does the harp want them?
To be an artist of the harp requires many hours of daily practice, probably three or more by high school, the finest instruction, and five hours daily practice from age 18-35 or so, a selective repertoire—not too little, not too much, impeccably prepared and of impeccable quality; taste, discretion, I think dignity, but more than anything else, artistic sensitivity and intellectual interest. I think some harpists fall short there, they are happy to be able to play the notes and never delve any deeper. We have enough of that already. So when someone says they want to be the best, what does that mean to them? To be a Casals or a Rubinstein? To be a (fill in the name of a current harpist)? An orchestral job is a fine thing, a unique challenge that suits people oriented to ensemble playing. It used to be that being a soloist was a higher calling for a unique individual with an artistic vision. But to do it as a career now is to face the unknown. It isn’t impossible, but it does require convincing a lot of people along the way, and a lot of resources, especially financially. Unless you are young enough to get hooked into a lot of scholarship and competition opportunities.
So, it is one thing to think of yourself as a burgeoning star, it is quite another to actually be one, to do the work to become one, to have the luck to succeed, and to have the network to support it.
There are some alternatives, such as having a chamber ensemble or duo that tours. Working abroad is another.

[Kat B]

Saul,

What do you mean specifically by “working abroad”? Do you mean doing the same orchestra/chamber ensemble gigs and teaching etc. but just in a foreign country? Does that make it any ‘easier’? Are there not just as many foreign harpists, trying to make a living?

Kat

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