Most musicians who are actively performing live in a world of “gigs.” A jazz musician might have a gig playing Tuesday afternoon in a coffee shop. A rock band gets a gig playing at a club on Saturday night. Pianists often get gigs accompanying a singer or someone playing another instrument. Gigs are the lifeblood of the working musician.
Now, I’m not a full-time musician. That is, I don’t depend on music gigs for my living, but I do play a lot and I teach regularly, so I consider myself a working musician. Most of my playing these days is on the organ. I play in church nearly every week, which is very enjoyable. Occasionally, however I will get a real true-to-life gig.
And for an organist, gigs are weird.
Basically, you are either playing for people who are really happy (weddings), or people who are really sad (funerals). You never get a gig playing in a club or a coffee shop or anything that would be relaxed. Perhaps it’s just the nature of the instrument that it is only used in the most formal and solemn occasions in people’s lives.
One of the odd things about organ gigs is that you become sort of a go-to person for information about how the event in question is supposed to work. Couples planning a wedding ask you what order things should be in (sometimes the MINISTER asks you what order things should be in). A survivor planning a funeral asks you what you think they should do at the funeral.
On one hand, this makes sense. Most people only get married once, and so have never had a wedding before. “The organist must have been to a thousand weddings, so he would know what to do, right?” Hopefully, most people don’t plan a whole lot of funerals either, but “surely the organist has been to his share of funerals, so he would know what to do.”
Are you wondering what an organist says when it’s his first wedding too? Ask Ronda. Whatever I told her is what you say when it’s your first time. 🙂
What prompted this? I played at a funeral about a month ago. “Tim,” (names have been changed) the son of the man that had died, was a professional funeral director. He knew what he was doing. He called me and asked if I would play, and told me what music he wanted and when I got there for the service he gave me the order of service and that was it. Nobody asked me how I thought things should be done. I wasn’t a funeral expert, I was simply an expert on…the organ. It was one of the best services I’ve ever been to (probably because I didn’t meddle in it).
The last weird thing about being a working organist is return customers. When you’re a rock band, if a club calls you to come play a second gig there, that’s awesome. It means that they liked you and that their patrons liked you and they think it will be good business for them to have you back. When you’re an organist, and someone calls you for another gig, it means that either 1. They got divorced (sad), and are getting remarried (happy), or 2. Someone died and you played at their funeral (sad), and now someone else died and you’re playing at their funeral too (sad). That’s only a 25% coefficient of happiness. Not good. Basically, in order for you to get a return customer as an organist, something bad has to happen to somebody.
Tim called me again today. His cousin passed away. Tuesday will be third time I’ve played for him. Tuesday will be Tim’s third funeral in a month.
Of course I will accept every gig I can, because I enjoy providing magnificent music for these solemn and important occasions in people’s lives. I also, as any musician, enjoy every opportunity I have to use the skills that I’ve spent many thousands of hours honing.
But Tim is a good man and a good friend, and I hope he doesn’t have to call me for any more gigs in the near future.
And that’s weird.
