Erin Sullivan, rockstar!!! welcome to lady-roars, 2 ~ !!!
i initiated free*form conversation with fellow women creators about art, identity, and whatever else.
Erin Sullivan is a bassoonist from Denver, Colorado. She is currently finishing her dissertation for a doctorate degree in music performance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Since college, Erin has had a passion for performing modern music written for the bassoon. Her dissertation, which expands on this interest, is on Luciano Berio's Sequenza XII, a monstrous piece for solo bassoon, which demands the performer to master all of the most difficult techniques developed for the instrument. She will perform the piece in August.
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"Life is an opportunity, happiness is a choice." This is a phrase I read from an article in Rolling Stone used by Jimmy Fallon's wife in describing her husband's optimism; and it really describes why I feel being a musician is an opportunity that has lead to positive and happy choices. I learned in college that making my love of music into a career would not be an easy road, but every time I would have doubts about how far I could take this career, I would always ask myself, "what else could you do that would make you this happy?" Since I could never find an answer to this question I kept going. Now that I am almost done with my doctorate degree and the pressure of being a musician as a full-time job is ever present, the statement of "life is an opportunity, happiness is a choice" is even more poignant. I choose to be a bassoonist, a not so common occupation, but I do so because I am continually happy with this choice. Being a musician is about being an opportunist: no one is going to come along and say, "here is this high paying great position for you." Instead you have to be willing to take that day job while you network with everyone in the field and be willing to do jobs outside of your comfort zone like in my case, teaching middle school students. I think that the cliché of a suffering artist is crap. Of course this lifestyle has its difficulties, but in the end it is a choice. With happiness comes trust, which is the foundation every artist needs to succeed: trust in one's talent, in one's ability to overcome problems, and trust in one's choices.
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"Life is an opportunity, happiness is a choice." This is a phrase I read from an article in Rolling Stone used by Jimmy Fallon's wife in describing her husband's optimism; and it really describes why I feel being a musician is an opportunity that has lead to positive and happy choices. I learned in college that making my love of music into a career would not be an easy road, but every time I would have doubts about how far I could take this career, I would always ask myself, "what else could you do that would make you this happy?" Since I could never find an answer to this question I kept going. Now that I am almost done with my doctorate degree and the pressure of being a musician as a full-time job is ever present, the statement of "life is an opportunity, happiness is a choice" is even more poignant. I choose to be a bassoonist, a not so common occupation, but I do so because I am continually happy with this choice. Being a musician is about being an opportunist: no one is going to come along and say, "here is this high paying great position for you." Instead you have to be willing to take that day job while you network with everyone in the field and be willing to do jobs outside of your comfort zone like in my case, teaching middle school students. I think that the cliché of a suffering artist is crap. Of course this lifestyle has its difficulties, but in the end it is a choice. With happiness comes trust, which is the foundation every artist needs to succeed: trust in one's talent, in one's ability to overcome problems, and trust in one's choices.
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