Plans

So for the past little while I’ve pretty much been living the freelance life… by which I mean I haven’t slept in the same place for more than three or so nights in a row since finishing McGill. It’s actually been pretty awesome, and I’m almost done with all the work I have scheduled before the start of the National Academy Orchestra: next week I’m playing second on two pops shows with the Toronto Symphony, and then I’m going back to Montreal for Convocation, and then my lease starts on the house I just signed for with a few other NAO musicians. I don’t (at the moment…) have anything scheduled between when our lease starts on June 1st and when the orchestra starts on the 16th, so I guess I get two weeks’ vacation! NAO goes until mid-August, and then I’ll be up teaching at the Interprovincial Music Camp as per usual. And then I have the whole month of September to get settled in… Thunder Bay! I have been offered a one-year position playing second in the Thunder Bay Symphony for next season! Although I’ve been enjoying a taste of what life would be like as a freelancer in Southern Ontario, it’s amazing to have the stability of a full-time job– even if it is only for a year– right after graduating from my undergrad. Although I would like to go to grad school at some point (okay, there’s one grad school in particular I kind of have my heart set on) I didn’t feel prepared to do a big grad school audition tour while putting together my first-ever recital this year. But I admit I regretted it a little when the acceptances started coming in for everyone in my year who had done that: Juilliard, Colburn, Royal College of Music, and plenty of other exciting and prestigious places where my colleagues from McGill are about to go start the next stage of their musical lives. So for me the fact that I now have a job for next year is validation that I made the right choice for myself by putting off grad school auditions.