Letter to the SF Symphony

Dear Members of the SF Symphony,

My name is Quyen Nguyen and I am a violist in Southern California. Even though I hold a BM in viola performance, play with the La Jolla Symphony, and keep a teaching studio, I am not a fulltime musician. Instead, I decided sometime ago that classical music is on its way out, that nobody really understands our art, and that classical musicians are woefully underappreciated, even though we work for years honing our skills. (I'm sure being a violist, on top of all that, increased those sentiments somehow :P)

Anyway, when I was doing music fulltime as a career, I would come to rehearsal, sit in my chair, play, people would clap, and I would walk away with my paycheck - and I became pretty jaded. I felt that what I did really didn't make a difference and had no real point. Year after year, audience sizes would shrink, orchestras would go bankrupt, and more and more people thought being a "classical musician" wasn't any better than working retail or some other unskilled job. My colleagues admitted they felt the same way more often than not. So, I quit.

Years later, I find myself sitting in this morning's open rehearsal of Stravinsky's Firebird, and you know that story about how if you play with enough heart and emotion that you'll make your audience cry? Well, I never believed that story, until this morning, when I started crying. Seriously, mascara was everywhere.

I didn't cry because you made me feel sad or it triggered some nostalgic and tragic event in my life; I cried because as I was watching Maestro Dudamel passionately emote from the podium, with each of you giving back just as passionately, I witnessed beauty. I witnessed the beauty of the world contained in a concert hall - beauty that made the world a better place, beauty that could help people deal with the stresses and rigors of life.

And I realized that I was so wrong to think that being a musician was little more than entertaining a crowd or filling the gap of silence. For the very first time, I witnessed the power of our art. Music was one of the few things that made the world a better place, that exuded true beauty - and here you all were, creating it.

Maybe you get emails like this all the time, and maybe you don't, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to congratulate all of you for your talent and courage to pursue a path that everyone may not readily appreciate. For without you, there would have been one less place in the world where beauty could exist. One less place art could breathe. And to be honest, one less person who came to the realization that it's the beauty in the world that makes life truly worth living.

Thank you.