Texas Bandmasters Association
Bandmasters Review • September 2014
27
Fran Kick
Balancing Your Band and Your Life
I don’t know about you, but life
seems to be tossing all of us more
spinning plates—both at home and
at work—than that famous plate-
spinning circus act. You know? The
one they used to bring out between
two big acts during the circus—
always musically accompanied
by Aram Khachaturian’s “Sabre
Dance.”
Now unless you’re a plate-
spinner extraordinaire like Erich
Brenn (the most-famous, Austrian-
born, plate-spinner to ever appear
on
The Ed Sullivan Show
) or David
Spathaky (the current Guinness
World Record holder who spun
108 plates simultaneously in 1996),
I bet you’ve got some wobbling
plates in your life. Both at home
and at work perhaps?
Band directing demands that
you spin lots of plates. Maintaining
balance in your lifemight evenmake
you more effective at maintaining
balance in your band. Mentally,
you need to “be there” when you’re
there. Whether that means at work
or at home. When either one (work
or home) interferes with the other,
your ability to keep those plates
spinning is severely diminished.
Ultimately, you’ll find yourself
running from one wobbling plate
to the next wobbling plate...
Wondering why you’re even
spinning all those plates. Rarely
enjoying the process of spinning
those plates. Fearful that if you ever
stopped to consider
why
you’re
spinning all those plates, they’ll just
crash to the ground!
Balancing your band and home
life challenges even the best-of-
the-best in the band directing
profession. Quality-of-life issues
for the modern band director were
probably
not
discussed during your
undergraduate, graduate, or even
post-graduate education. Most
mentors for young directors focus
more on the musical or logistical
nuts-and-bolts of making a band
better. But, making a personal
relationship better? Making a
marriage better? Making a family
better? Those are plates we just
didn’t learn to spin very well
especially as they relate to
also
being a band director.
As Scott Rush and Jeremy Lane
pointed out during their 2011
North Carolina Music Educators
Association In-Service session: “As
we were learning to become band
directors we learned how to do
our jobs very well. We did not
learn how to do our jobs
in relation
to other things very well.” It’s
those other things that sometimes
challenge us.
My guess is that you could easily
add to this list of challenges. We
all deal with the quality time vs.
quantity time issue that Bob Bryant,
Executive Director for Fine Arts in
Katy ISD mentioned during his
interview. How you deal with that
quality vs. quantity issue might
be the very key to successfully
spinning all your plates—because
we know this isn’t really an either-or
issue. It’s both! “It’s quality time with
whatever that quantity of time is.”
So how can you make the most
of the time you have with the
people who are most important to
you? Regardless of whether you’re
in a relationship with someone
significant, dating, married, or
just trying to maintain quality
friendships with people who may
or may not be in the band world,
here are some strategies to consider:
5 to 1
. Psychologist John
Gottman (who has studied more
relationships, over a longer period
of time than perhaps anyone else
on the planet) found that there’s a
magic ratio that impacts the quality
of relationships. That ratio is 5 to 1.
(continued)
Listen to a few of your professional
band-director colleagues, along with their
spouses, share what challenges them:
http://
youtu.be/7cKko5Bda_0
or just scan this
QR code to watch on your phone right now.