Ending on a sweet and sour note

The last week of Banff ended in a bittersweet manner.  By week three, the novelty of room service and posh food wears off, and people become grumpy and dissatisfied, or at least, the people I was with were.  In a way, it was somewhat funny-I came back to Banff because I had wanted to study with Roger (when I decided to come to Banff, I hadn't decided whether or not to go back to NEC, so I wasn't sure if I'd ever study with him again.) and I had wanted to work with John Adams.  Both of those events occurred within the first week, so in a way, the rest of the program was a bit of a letdown.  By the time Roger left, we began to see the political manuevers that had taken place, favoring one person in the viola class, and giving him three "special" assignments.  We also all realized that Barry is kinda crazy, and that most of the remaining concerts favored people that had a political connection to him, which is rather unfortunate.  In essence, the basic unfairness of the final assignments really affected the group as a whole, especially those who were less familiar with the political workings of Banff.  The more specific part of the story is that Barry basically picked one person (who was no better in skillset than the rest of us) and put him in a special masterclass, the faculty/student chamber group, and an extra chamber group of the Britten Phantasy Quartet.  The catch in all this is that 6 violists were doing nothing all week-they had no assignments, were in no ensembles, and thus this was totally unfair.  The choices were made in an unfair manner, and really pissed off most of my friends, because this one violist went to McGill (and that group was already a pain in the ass to deal with) and was going to Glenn Gould, and knew Barry.  This person should definitely have had one of the three above opportunities, but to give him everything was unfair to the people who already knew the Britten, or who were really into Baroque performance practice (me!) since he played for Sigiswald Kuijken.  I guess the question we have to pose is, when situations present themselves that are very political, how can we keep motivated in our own self worth?
     For many of my friends, they just stopped caring and starting being pissed off most of the time.  I was definitely upset by the outcome, because it just wasn't fair to the group, and also didn't represent the skills of the whole 10 of us by any means.  I wrote a very blatant evaluation saying that it was outrageous and that I wouldn't be returning next year. (True statement).  But more importantly, I wrote that it was detrimental to the group dynamic, because it affected the way we all got along, and made us feel less worthy in the eyes of the festival.  We already had a challenging time getting along with this one person, since the McGill clique was very exclusive, and not particular social with the rest of the camp, and that only made it worse.  The truth is that there are political situations in most festivals, schools, and even jobs.  I've certainly encountered unpleasant political situations at Eastman, which pleasantly prepared me for this, but many of peers were shocked and upset by the whole thing.  The only thing you can do, in the end, is to believe in yourself, and give freely of your music and your love.  Only then can you truly succeed.  If you're in music to be competitive, and to beat other people, I don't know that you'll ever be happy.  There are few "fair" ways of evaluating performers, and few ways to truly decide who is the best.  Knowing that our art is objective by nature, we must be prepared for occasional injustices, while also knowing that we too may be favored by such a failed system of adjudication and evaluation.  I'm sure that many talented people don't get into NEC every year, and because I had connections, I was guaranteed a returning spot.  Maybe someone else was negatively affected by my advantages, and I have to know that everything is equal in the end.  One negative consequence may lead to a great success later down the line, and vice versa.  Perceived failures can also make us work harder, and rekindle our desire to express the music within us, rather than focus on ourselves and our achievements.  That's at least what I hope.

Listening to: Radiohead!  it's been a while.