Where Even Pros Pay to Play
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Goode, the CRO’s manager and principal trumpet, had arranged something special. At its July 13 session the reading orchestra would perform two ambitious new works of music, with the composers–Silk Road competition winner Angel Lam and Loyola faculty member Bjorn Berkhout–in attendance. Lam, eager to hear her piece in professional performance for the first time, had already arranged to come here from New York, but as the date approached Goode found he was coming up seriously short of musicians. “100+ players have backed out on their commitments,”he lamented in his faxed SOS. “[Lam] has already purchased her tickets, will be staying with my wife and I, and has no idea we have only 10 players committed. . . . It is terrible how cruel people can be.” On the night of July 12, Goode was in his Oak Park office, still scrambling, working the phone and hoping to come up with a cohort of least 80. “I sent out 1,000 e-mails. All the hardest things, we’ve already got–a harp player, the goofy percussion equipment. We’re awash in flutes. But I’m having trouble with bassoons. And the string players–in this town there’s an attitude that you don’t do anything unless it’s the last minute. It’s a little bit scary. I have almost half the orchestra to fill.”
That’s the point, Goode says. The CRO is meant to be a “safe place” for musicians “to play and work their problems out.” Chief among those problems is the demon he battled himself–stage fright. After repeated episodes of shaky hands, pounding heart, and dry mouth, he made the phenomenon the subject of a master’s thesis he later self-published. In this lightweight tome he presents a brief research review, four composite “case histories” of his own creation, and the opinion that stage fright stems from the unconscious effect of early negative feedback, usually–as in his own case–from parents. Fixing it, he says, requires “intense analysis into the emotional causes and sources of psychological blockages”–shrinks, support groups, yoga–whatever it takes to get “back in balance from childhood trauma.”
Miscellany
