Professionalism
What is professionalism? If your goal is to be a professional musician, you need to conduct yourself in all levels of the music business as someone who is honest, considerate, dependable, and always performs at the highest level.
Your Reputation Begins Now
So you’re in high school or college, and you’re in a rehearsal that seems utterly worthless. In fact so worthless that you didn’t really prepare. This happened to student recently who is quite a good player. She showed up unprepared and the conductor had to stop several times and help her with her part. Little did she realize that the bassoonist next to her was the contractor for most of the work in town. She stopped getting gigs before she even started.
When you begin to play professionally your reputation is a clean slate. No one knows anything about you, so it is your goal to create a reputation as competent, sensitive musician who is a pleasure to work with. You have no more professional capital than the goodwill extended to you by the leader. You accumulate professional capital by all your actions during your career.
Context
It still amazes me how many musicians fail to show up on time with the proper equipment for a performance, or fail to understand that everything they play happens within a certain musical context. Saxophonists will expect to play a show with a number 12 Dukoff/ARB/Guardala mouthpiece that has two dynamic levels—on and off. I have played commercial gigs where one of the sax players thinks its hip to substitute a Coltrane matrix over an R&B tune. Some musicians believe that if they are asked to improvise, they have permission to play whatever they want – regardless of whether it makes sense musically or stylistically. Your goal for any performance is to make the best music you can, and contribute to the overall performance of the ensemble. By doing this you will also make whoever hired you more relaxed by the end of the gig than they were before it began.