Owning your music

When you go to church to play for service or when you play an organ recital, whose decision it is that you choose one piece over the other, one hymn over the other?

Sure, you can become good at dealing with people who want you to dance after the beat of their drummer but ultimately you have to decide if you want to be known for that, if you want to become a person who just does what he's told.

It today's world it's not enough.

Because if someone tells you what to do, he can always find a cheaper person than you to do it.

You see, it takes a certain amount of bravery to say "no" to the proposal that is simply not for you. But it also takes an equal amount of bravery falling in love with what you do choose to play.

I think it's OK to play the music that somebody else asked you to play as long as it matches YOUR goals and mission (you do have a mission, right?).

If it's not - you are wasting your time.

In today's world it's far more productive, rewarding, and lucrative to become a person who does what nobody else can do.

So ask yourself as an organist, what it is that only you can do and nobody else can?

The answer "I don't know" doesn't count.

PS Making pipe organ educational video (in Dutch with English subtitles)

[HT to Marcel]