A clarification:

"Classical training, for the most part, means training to be part of an orchestra."

Within my experience (three years at the University of Washington School of Music and two years at the Cornish School of the Arts), I never met a freshman music student whose initial ambition was not to become a concert soloist. Then someplace along the line it becomes obvious that some of them just don't have the talent, technical facility (usually limited by one's physical attributes), or the drive and ambition that being a concert artist demands That's just the way it goes. Sometimes their teachers or professors had to break the news to them, but more often than not, they figured that out on their own. Then they decided to shoot for whatever they considered to be the next best alternative, which might be playing in a small ensemble such as a string quartet, early music group, or something like that—or a symphony orchestra, if they can make it. Being a concert soloist or a member of a group like, say, the Mukilteo String Quartet or the Tukwila Baroque Ensemble involves the hassles of getting bookings, spending a lot of time on the road, that sort of thing. Being a symphony musician is a steady job, not much traveling, and far fewer hassles. Some of them feel downright relieved at the prospect. Some, mostly singers and keyboard players, find careers in liturgical music and become church musicians. Some decide to make careers in other kinds of music, and often find that their classical training has given them a substantial edge.

"Individual expression is antithetical to orchestral music—and choir music, which is the equivalent for voice. If there is to be any expression, that's what the conductor is for."

This is as it should be. The orchestra (or the choir) is the instrument, and the primary player of this instrument is the conductor. The conductor is not just some yahoo off the street. This is a person with a vast body of musical knowledge and experience. Otherwise the orchestra wouldn't hire him. His purpose is to determine and interpret the intentions of the composers whose music they intend to present—Beethoven, Berlioz, Mozart, Copland, Gershwin, whoever—and tune, train, coach, and rehearse the orchestra until they can best express the composer's intention. The individual musician's job is to do his or her utmost to carry out the composer's intentions as interpreted and explained by the conductor. It's a cooperative effort. Any musical group (including folk) is a cooperative effort. The individual musician may disagree with the conductor's interpretation, but he or she sets that aside in the spirit of cooperation and a desire to strive for the good of the orchestra or group as a whole. In a different context, that's called "teamwork."

In Making It with Music (Harper and Row, New York, 1978), Kenny Rogers says that with any group, you have to have a leader or "musical director" who lays things out, does the arrangements, or at least okays them, sees to the lead sheets, and makes the final musical decisions. Otherwise, groups tend to degenerate into chaos, and soon—no group.

When I was at the U. of W. School of Music, a young woman named Ruth Lewis had written a short opera (about an hour) as her Masters' Thesis project. The University staged it. The opera called for a small orchestra (about two dozen musicians) with a fairly unusual mix of instruments, including a classic guitar. Since I was the only classic guitarist in the department at the time (although my main interest was folk music), the job fell to me. During the rehearsals, the goal of all of the musicians was to play Ruth's music the way she wanted it played. She spent a lot of time conferring with the conductor, and the conductor explained to us what Ruth wanted. We really liked Ruth, we were rooting for her, and we worked our little butts off! At the end of the performance, the audience applauded like crazy, and some faculty members who took a dim view of woman composers and who had opposed the project were surprised at how good it turned out.   Ruth was tickled pink and she got her Masters in Music Composition. Believe me, there is a lot of satisfaction in this kind of playing, and in no way did it inhibit my ability to do my own thing! I feel like I gained a lot from this experience.

Because of friendships made back then, I know several musicians who play in the Seattle Symphony. They all feel a great deal of pride that within recent years, under the baton of Gerard Schwarz, the Seattle Symphony has come to be regarded as a world-class symphony orchestra. I don't know any of these musicians who regard themselves as oppressed and unfulfilled.

"One thing that classically trained musicians miss out on is playing for dances."

Most early music, say Elizabethan era, was dance music. Go through a list of suites put together by Johann Sebastian Bach and his contemporaries, and you find they are made up of titles like Branlé, Gavotte, Pavane, Allemande, and Minuet. These are all dances. And they're dances that were danced in the royal courts and manor houses, and often in the town square. Much early music is built around dance forms, and much classical music grew out of this. Many of the Seattle Symphony musicians I know also play in the orchestra that backs up the Pacific Northwest Ballet. I know that's not the kind of dancing you had in mind, but if the musicians didn't lay down some pretty solid rhythms, the dancers would get mighty ticked off at them. Rhythm in general: classical music wouldn't hold together without it. If you are really under the impression that classical music de-emphasizes rhythm, what can I say but try listening to some. Try listening to a couple of Rossini overtures, for example, and if you don't wind up tapping your foot, then somebody should close your eyes and fold your arms across your chest.

I'm not trying to honk on you, Jim. I'm just trying to clear up some apparent misconceptions.

And Tunesmith, yes they do. Most university music schools have jazz departments. But more to the point, if one spends much time at all playing early music, and it's pretty hard these days to escape from a music school without spending a fair amount of time involved in early music, improvisation is not just allowed, it's essential.

Before 1800, classical and traditional music were much more closely associated, with much more blurry boundaries than most people believe. These days, people who play much early music need to actually create about fifty percent of the music they play, because that's all the written notes they have to work from. Oftentimes all that is written down is a melody and a suggested bass line. The original intent was that it would be played by a small group or "consort" made up of a variety of instruments (unspecified in the manuscript) such as recorders, viols, lutes, citterns, whatever was at hand, all sitting around a table, reading the notes that were there, and improvising their own parts. Each group that plays a particular piece plays it its own way, and often each time they play it, it's different from the previous time. And these were not professional groups. They were usually a group of friends getting together for an evening of playing music. Sound familiar?

That's pretty much the way groups like the Baltimore Consort do it now.

Don Firth