The Making of a Pro Violinist

Matt Means was on the interstate, a half-hour outside Denver, zooming along in the left lane, when he realized the cars ahead had ground to a halt.

He slammed on the brakes. His car went into a skid, lurching across several lanes of traffic before nose-diving into a ditch.

Miraculously, Means was unharmed. The car didn't sustain so much as a blown tire, despite plunging into a thicket of brush.

"It sounds stupid, because I'm not religious, but I felt like somebody was trying to tell me that you did not die because you have a job to win today," he says.

The job was a seat in the Colorado Symphony. Means had studied to be a violinist for more than a decade, but this would be his first professional audition. The pressure was tremendous. More than 60 people had shown up to compete for just one opening.

Means, a Denver native, had an edge. He had played this stage before, even worked with some of the judges, and his near-death experience had somehow given him tranquillity. He breezed through the repertoire with nary a wrong note.

"I can't imagine doing anything better than I did," he told a friend. Orchestra officials seemed similarly pleased. The proctor, who ordinarily looks on dispassionately, flashed Means two thumbs up. Soon, the field was narrowed to nine. Means was still in the game.

His performance in the semifinal that afternoon was also nearly flawless. "I was in the zone," he says. He had never played with such confidence in his life. It only reinforced his belief that God was looking out for him. The competition was cut to six, Means among them. His success seemed all but ensured.

But in the next round, it all went horribly wrong. A few notes sounded out of tune. The tempo wasn't quite right. With each gaffe, Means groaned inwardly. Any one might go unnoticed by an untrained listener, but the judges wouldn't be nearly so forgiving.

It came as little surprise that Means's name was on the list when the orchestra's personnel manager announced, "These people are free to leave." He put away his instrument, collected his coat, and walked out the door. "I got sloppy, and that was it: bye, bye, bye," he says. "But I got close. I got very close."

Nobody said becoming a pro violinist would be easy. Jobs with metropolitan orchestras are scarce -- maybe three or four dozen open each year. Auditions can draw hundreds of players, all vying for the same seat. By pure numbers, it's easier to get a job in the NFL or Major League Baseball.

But over on University Circle, at the Cleveland Institute of Music, there are dozens of people who nonetheless feel compelled to try. Just getting into CIM is something of an accomplishment. Each year, about 900 people try out for 130 spots. U.S. News & World Report once placed it among the nation's top 20 orchestral grad schools, but the best testament comes from its alumni: Thirty-three play in the Cleveland Orchestra, which Time has dubbed "the best band in the land."

CIM boasts that 80 percent of its alumni find work in music, but that includes a lot of teachers and part-time players in small orchestras. Full-time jobs with metropolitan orchestras are much, much harder to come by. Rejection is frequent and cold.

One of Means's teachers told him about a former student, a cellist, who took nearly 40 auditions, getting rejected each time. She decided she would try once more. If she failed, she would sell her instrument and quit forever. Her next audition was with the Pittsburgh Symphony.

"And she won it," Means says. "And she was saved."

For the winners, the rewards are sweet. Top orchestras pay six-figure salaries and grant tenure, meaning players can't be fired, even if they slack off on practicing. Going pro also means quitting your day job -- no more tutoring kids or slumming in small-town orchestras to pay the bills. Best of all, you get to do what you love: Play music.

It's a good gig, all right, but only if you can get it.

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William Preucil teaches as much with facial expressions as with words. He is the lead violinist in the Cleveland Orchestra and one of the many who serve as teachers at CIM. He scrunches up his bald head and widens his piercing blue eyes to highlight the changing emotions as he plays.

Today he is giving a lesson to Rachel Coltvet, an intense young woman with curly blond hair. Her face is a mask of concentration as she plays with robotic precision. But for all her technical skill, she has missed the emotion of a passage. Preucil stops her.

"What's happening in the opera right here?" he asks.

"She left him," Coltvet says, referring to the characters the violin is meant to represent, "and he's sad, and he's yearning."

"Could you yearn a little deeper?" Preucil asks.