Guest post by Jill Timmons, DMA

A number of years ago, my editor at the Oregon Musician* asked me to write on the topic of invisible work as it relates to performance and teaching. The dog days of summer were winding down and concert season was about to unfold. Students and teachers were returning to their academic schedules, and as my editor suggested, it might be a timely topic to explore how invisible work undergirds our careers as artists and educators.

I found myself pondering for days this notion of invisible work as it relates to the creative process. What is central to the lives of artists and teachers can be elusive in terms of a precise definition. Here in the distant outpost of the music industry, artists and educators devote vast amounts of time to their craft, a large portion of which often goes unrecognized. It’s a little like an iceberg. The visible part might be our public performances, reviews, recordings, publications, workshops, residencies, and the list goes on. As an educator, one’s professional persona can include students in recitals, auditions, competitions, master classes, service to the profession, and so forth. These are the public events, the actions we take that others see, and those tangible results that are evident. But this all hints at something deeper. Like all icebergs, the bulk of the structure lies hidden beneath the surface. For musicians, this is at the heart of our invisible but essential work. It contains our long-term commitment to study, to practice, and to the formal education that often begins in childhood. It requires a sustained and passionate devotion to the art. There are countless hours of practice, lessons, master classes, years of higher education, mentors, finding the right teacher, and a search for that cadre of like-minded folks pursuing their own pilgrimage into music. It’s all invisible work.

As artists and educators, we know experientially about this unseen and often solitary work. I am not writing about anything that is a mystery or an unknown. On the other hand, what is mysterious is how we convey this understanding and application of invisible work to our students and our audiences. Without the invisible work, there is no true encounter with music let alone a career. In an age when a student might win a contest with the same four pieces they have played for years, or when loud and fast is modelled by performances that feature theatrics and histrionics as new realms of performance practice, it is little wonder that our young people today may be short on time in the “invisible world.”

Invisible work has its own demands: blocks of uninterrupted time, a quiet space, self-reflection, study (not just drilling the notes!), scholarship, and countless hours alone with your instrument. You become the measure of your work and your mastery of the music, and it is you that know in that private way the struggles, the triumphs, and the arduous trek to fluency. This is why great teachers are the ones who offer a language and wisdom about the nature and necessity of invisible work. Without it, there is no artistry.

As teachers, we can validate and encourage the invisible work of our students. From our experience, we can offer a road map for this temporal and elusive terrain, confirming the power and necessity of this work. In our culture of instant gratification and unrelenting distraction, we can serve as a guide to our students into that private world of exploration, study, preparation, and mastery. If they are lucky, our students will encounter not only great musical works but also themselves. As teachers this is our invisible work.

From my vantage point, the biggest impediment facing artists, regardless of age, is the quantitative approach to life. It’s that insatiable appetite for more. For our young students it can take the form of more after-school activities, more extracurricular pursuits, more awards, ribbons, contests, trophies, you name it. Pile it up for that résumé. And I am not speaking of just young people. For professionals in the field, it can be an unquenchable thirst for more concerts, residencies, workshops, students, publications, degrees, accolades, piled higher and deeper. But more is not an indication of quality – it’s just an amount. Quality, conversely, is the result of invisible work, and invisible work requires time. Think of Einstein’s theory of relativity. As an unknown patent clerk, he laboured over that construct for years. There was nothing remarkable on the surface. But underneath was a reservoir of imagination, original thought, brilliance, courage, and invisible work. Einstein forever changed our notion of the universe.

Not all students, however, subscribe to Einstein’s model of how essential invisible work is to mastery and original thought. For those students who believe that volume is equated with excellence, a word of caution. The music profession has its own rules. The world of artistry and the gateway into the profession requires, first and foremost, quality. Only the depth of your artistry, and your integrity and wisdom in service to the music will sustain a career. It takes years to have entrance into this world and the price of admission is invisible work.

Years ago, I encountered a wildly talented student who could sightread just about anything in the advanced piano repertoire. And with a little practice, she could cobble together something approaching performance level. She had an extraordinary gift. For her, however, music was all about the tip of the iceberg – being on stage, tearing through “big pieces,” dazzling the audience, and so forth. It was a challenge to convey to her that without that invisible work of practice hours, lessons, going to a deeper level with her music, and cleaning up the technical fluffs, she would not reap that true reward – a deep and informed connection to composers and their music. It was many years into her professional training before she grasped in an experiential way the power of developing her invisible work.

Over the course of my life, I have been drawn to invisible work. It’s my joy and my passion. And while I relish the tip of the iceberg from time to time, it is the private labour that gives me the greatest reward and exhilaration. I continue to search for ways to convey this rich experience to my students. In addition to “iceberg,” there are a lot of “i” words connected with invisible work: intrinsic, illusive, interesting, illustrative, intuitive, integral, intriguing, illuminating, independent, to mention a few. These might be useful words to weave into our teaching as we enlighten our students and audiences about the power and impact of invisible work. Now that Fall is nearly upon us and as we return to our performance and teaching schedules, invisible work can continue to serve as the underpinning of our efforts. It’s a great time to reflect on what that means for each of us.

*Online scholarly journal for the Oregon Music Teachers Association—MTNA). Excerpts reprinted from Jill Timmons with permission from the Oregon Musician © 2016.

**For more information and an in-depth narrative, see my recent publication, The Musician’s Journey, Second Edition (Oxford University Press, 2023). https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-musicians-journey-second-edition-9780197578520