What happens when artists go on strike? Does anyone go hungry? Anyone except the musicians that is? QSCM argues yes: when art stops, the soul starves. Remember the pandemic? How did we survive? Reading, watching movies, listening to recorded music. Remember what happened when lock down was lifted? The joy of gathering together to hear real musicians playing live was itself contagious! Everyone was desperate to experience live performance. Eeryone wanted to be together in the presence of those who can get up on a stage and draw us in, draw us together. Live perfomance enthralls the individual, drawing each of us into a collective experience, reminding us that it is good to be alive, good to be human, good to be together. 1942 saw the first ever strike by professional musicians as the American Federation of Musicians walked out on the recording industry. Unionized musicians protested the unfair distribution of recording royalities that left the musicians who made the recordings possible under paid, or even more commonly, unpaid. Two years of radio silence followed. The industry ground to a halt. Musicains went hungry, or left the profession for paying work. Eventually the dispute was settled. A royalty fund was set up and the money was used to fund free concerts. The American Federation of Musicians became the biggest employer of musicians in the USA, and by association., Canada. Equally importantly, contracts with record companies going forward established practices more fair to professional musicians. Today a similar concern comes to the fore. Streaming companies are making huge profits while the artists creating the content they distribute go unrewarded. An effective response on the part of the Musicians Union is yet to be launched. To learn more about the Musician's Union and the possibliy of such a response check out Joey La Neve DeFrancesco 's article here. I am writing about this here to underscore the importance of professionalism in the music performance industry. Or to put it more bluntly: Why it matters that we pay our professional classical musicians a living wage to make music. The short answer is this: if we don't pay our musicians, they can't practice. Professional quality musical performance is based on hours and hours of work, year after year, day after day, hour after hour, minute by minute. This work is done alone, in the practice studio, without an audience, without immediate financial compensation. Without this much practice on a daily basis, classical music simply cannot be performed as it was meant to be heard. That's the reality.
Since the pandemic outbreak, a large number of professionally trained classical musicians have been compelled to leave the profession. 83% of Canadian musicans and 79 % of performance artists overall reported a substantial loss in creative income. Never an easy field in which to make a living, the uncertainties of performance contracts in the context of cancellations due to outbreaks made performance an even more unreliable way to make a living. Heartbreaking as it is, many musicians walked away from the career because they simply can no longer afford to do the work.
So what does it mean when a professional musician "quits?" Do they stop practicing? That is the first question, and the last. The answer, essentially, is yes.
The average professional classical musician practices a minimum of 4 hours, alone with their instrument every day. IN addition they can spend anywhere from another 4 to 6 in reherasal with other musicians. When they are not doing that, and more often in addition to that they are teaching 4 to 6 hours a day. That's a minimum in order to make up for the shortfall in income that all but the highest paid professional performers experience.
Essentially, being a classical musician is about that full time, lifelong commitment to spending hours in the practice studio. You cannot do it and do it well, while working at some other job. That commitment, that habit, that practice begins in childhood. Most professional string players began when they were at most four or five years of age. Pianists the same. Singers - training of the voice sorts later. It is similar for wind players, the body has to mature for the musculature to be able to handle the strain. But even those players, those who make it to the top began with piano, violin or some other instrument early on to develop the ear, the focus and the musicianship. Parents pay for lessons, supervise practice, encourage apprectition. The decision to make a life in the field usually happens in the early teens. If it is not made then, and the commitment to practice already in place, the likelhood of success as a professional is virtually nihil.
Professional classical musicianship is highly competitive. Once the career is launched, a professional musician must maintain that practice commitment or risk losing their reputation and the work it engendars to another who does. Think of it this way: a lawyer who does not practice law, does not make a living. Neither does a doctor who does not practice medicine. The difference is that the lawyer and the doctor "practice" in contexts where the work is immediatly seen by the client or the patient, solving whatever crisis that person is experiencing in an obvious and often dramatic way. Musicians on the other hand practice alone, in the studio, if not quietly, and most certainly without recognition. They practice regardless of conditions. They rarely, if ever take "holidays" from it. It's a use it or lose it proposition, being a classical musician. A lawyer can take six weeks off of the law, and walk into the courtroom the next day still ale to articulate an argument, make her case. A musician on the other hand is best described as an athlete of the small muscles. A day, two days, three days without practice and the instrument - that is the hand, the arm, the embechoure (of a wind player), the face (of a singer) - all these cease to function well. The player now has to work double, triple time to regain facility, strength, fluency. "Holidays" are rarely worth the cost. The result of this ongoing commitment to excellence, to being the best musician possible, is profund. The effect on the listener of a first class musical performance can be as dramatic as a medical cure or a courtroom success. At the very least it excites happiness, pleasure, creates community and makes life worth living: most people can attest to the value experiencing the arts adds to their lives. Emerging from the pandemic, most people realized how much they missed performance arts events, how much they missed their musicians as ell as each other.
QSCM exists to allow everyone in the rural comminity to experience what happens when we pay for that. QSCM hires professional musicians. That means, in effect paying musicians to practice their art, every single day, not just on the day of the performance. 2025 marks ten years of that commitment on the part of QSCM volunteer. It's about designing and producing events. It's also about raising money to make professional musicianship something that everyone can enjoy, not just few who have deep enough pockets to pay full price for concert tickets. Not once in almost a decade of presenting professinal musicians in our rural community have we failed to excite an enthusiastic and deeply felt response from audience members. "I've never heard anything like it." "That was so beautiful." "How do those women sing like that?" "I didn;t know the piano could do that." "I had no idea - I just had no idea. How can just four players (string quartet) make so much sound." These are among the comments we hear. Most of all, what we see are shining eyes as people are moved to tears and laughter and joy by the music, a wordless response to the wordless expression of experience that -well, if we could put it into words we wouldn't need the music.
QSCM relies on donors and sponsors to make these performances possible. Canada's professional muscians rely on you, the listener to support their professional commitment. If you can donate, please contact QSCM at info@qscmusic.com If you can volunteer to help us do the work of making all this happen, reach out. We'd love to hear from you. We need your support: Canada's professional classical musicians need get paid for their work. If they don't, they can't practice. And as every classical musician knows from the age of four, if you don't practice, you can't play. It's that simple
Musicians rarely go on strike: they can't. They need to practice! So I ask you, encourage you, to join QSCM as we do our part to make sure that rural Ontario is a a place that supports, fosters and enjoys the benefits of a professionally committed work force in the arts. Let's make our rural community a place where beauty happens, for all.
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