Don't Call It a Comeback

Don’t Call it a Comeback

Ted Nelson
 
Some of you may know that I recently took *yet another* audition. “Yet another” in the context of my entire career, during which I have taken many more auditions than I can count, but most of them were a long time ago. My last audition before this was five years ago, that was after almost a decade of no auditions.

And then of course there’s that one little detail: I retired three years ago from performing, and only came back temporarily about four months ago.

TLDR: I gave myself a solid B+ on my performance onstage, and an A++ for the preparation.

“But Ted: what was it like coming back to an audition after two years of not playing? Was it different? What did you learn?”
1)        It was really weird.
2)        It was very very different.
3)        Let me tell you a little about what I learned…

At the risk of including too many numbered lists, here’s a list of things I learned from this experience.

• Don’t ever be afraid to take time off. Muscle memory is a real thing, and while we have all heard the old story attributed to various great artists (“If I take one day off, I know. If I take two days off…”), there is a lot to be said for giving yourself the space to think about what you do. Most of us have spent a great number of years playing our instruments for hours every single day, and especially once we find ourselves with regular performing and rehearsing schedules, the time we used to spend in a practice room exploring and imagining is totally out the window. The daily grind creates permanence in our habits which cuts both ways; we solidify our technique and approach to a high degree, and we stop thinking about how we could be doing it better.
• Always be experimenting. I changed bowings and fingerings that have been gospel to me since I first studied this repertoire *ahem* thirty years ago. *Not* taking auditions let me sit down with a piece, listen to my performance objectively, and question my choices. Why am I always missing that shift? Why am I straining to finish that phrase out beautifully? Maybe it’s because I’m doing a stupid bowing/fingering that I assumed was the right one because I’d never actually questioned my habitual solution?
• Mock auditions are the shit. I don’t know why I didn’t play more if them in the past. Maybe I didn’t want to impose on friends and colleagues? Maybe because the first three or four really suck, the way it sucks to be onstage playing an audition? My experience this time with 10-12 mocks in the weeks leading up to the real thing was amazing. Each one improved slightly on the previous, and occasionally one of my fabulously talented and insightful friends and colleagues actually had something useful to say. After so much time away from the hot seat behind the screen, and without a few years of taking every single audition that there was to take, the experience of putting myself in front of a discerning human changed my own experience of what I was doing so radically, and enabled me to adapt to the nerves and discomfort of being onstage in the bizarrely pressure-filled audition context in a way that nothing else could have.
• Know what the f*@k you’re doing at your instrument. I don’t mean just practice a lot. I have always believed that I am a uniquely un-talented cellist. I felt behind when I arrived at Eastman, I felt behind in Cleveland, and I felt behind preparing for this audition. The result of that sense that I have no natural ability is that I have always spent a ton of time worrying about *how* I play the cello. Analyzing mechanics, experimenting with technical approaches, and seeking out new methods and exercises to increase my sense of ease and efficiency. This served me incredibly well after my time off. I knew I was behind in terms of how automatic my playing would be for this audition, but I also felt that I was more aware of my challenges and how to overcome them than most cellists (even those who weren’t staging a comeback after retirement). Being open-minded and thoughtful in my technical approach rather than dogmatic means that I’m always open to solutions to my playing challenges, rather than banging my ahead against the wall using stale rote approaches.

None of this is meant as audition advice, exactly. It’s more a reminder that the work we do when no one is listening still counts. Time away doesn’t erase craft. Thoughtful preparation compounds. Curiosity beats panic. And sometimes stepping back from the grind is exactly what lets you come back with clearer ears, better questions, and a little more trust in what you’re actually doing.

Also: mock auditions. Seriously. And record yourself. A lot.