What I Did This Summer

What I Did This Summer (2011), by Payton MacDonald

People who don't teach typically assume that the summer months are a vacation for professors.  No doubt there are lazy professors out there who sit around and do nothing during the summer months, but many of us are pretty busy.  I certainly was. 

I keep a disciplined schedule.  I'm at the computer by 6:00 a.m.  I warm up with about a half hour of email and then I dive into composing.  This summer I finished a large-scale work for chamber orchestra called METADRUM.  I wrote it for Alarm Will Sound, an amazing chamber orchestra that I co-founded ten years ago that specializes in contemporary classical music.  METADRUM is 20 minutes long and is basically a double percussion concerto.  It involves a lot of fast, complex drumming, executed by myself and Chris Thompson, my colleague in Alarm Will Sound.  It's an intense piece and very ritualistic.  I also composed a 14-minute piece for string quartet for the JACK Quartet.  That's a lot of music.  Each day I'm lucky if I get 20 or 30 seconds of material down, and that takes about three hours.

Around 9:30 or 10:00 I would start getting fidgety so I would then do my workout.  I run marathons and race triathlons, so I usually work out anywhere from one to three hours a day.  After the workout I would clean up and eat lunch, and then start practicing my percussion instruments by about 1:00 or so.  I had numerous concerts to prepare for this summer, as well as this fall, so I usually practiced for three or four hours.  The music is very complex and hard, so the practicing is slow and tedious.  I enjoy it because I enjoy playing percussion instruments, but honestly many days are pretty boring.  It's not like I'm just playing along with Led Zeppelin records or something.

Around 4:00 or so I went back upstairs to my home office and spent at least an hour or two working on the endless business matters that consume the life of a musician, including hustling gigs, booking recording sessions, organizing rehearsals, applying for grants, filling out paperwork, downloading audio files, editing audio files, emailing audio files to people, burning CDs, printing scores, etc, etc, etc.  Several times a week I also went to the post office, bank, or other errands. 

I also spent time each day dealing with university matters.  In May and early June I taught an online class, which I usually handled in the mornings, after composing and before my workout.  For the rest of the summer there is advising, equipment maintenance, ordering music, studying scores, talking with students on the phone about various issues, etc, etc, etc.  Even though I'm not teaching I'm still working.  I usually did that in the afternoons.

But some days I did none of that and spent the entire day in the recording studio.  I finished two CDs this summer: Payton MacDonald: the solo marimba commissions, volume 1 and Payton MacDonald: solo marimba improvisations volume 1.  And of course there were a few weeks this summer when I was on tour with Alarm Will Sound.  Those days are even longer.  I would usually start composing around 5:30 a.m., then do my workout around 7:00.  Then rehearsals from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., then after dinner I would practice for a few hours and go straight to bed.

When I was home, though, I tried to finish each day by 6:00 or 6:30 at the latest so I could devote some time to my two beautiful young daughters (ages 1.5 and 3.5) and my super awesome wife.  Minus the workouts and lunch, I worked an average of nine hours a day, six days a week.  That's approximately 54 hours a week, more than 14 hours more than a standard 40-hour per week corporate job.  Next time someone makes a comment about "summer vacation" for university professors, please show them this blog post!  (And remind them that we get paid much less than corporate employees.)

So it was a busy summer and very productive with two big pieces finished, two recordings, a class taught, and five triathlons.  But I'm looking forward to seeing my students.  I love them dearly.  They're funny and smart and talented and they inspire me as much as I (hopefully) inspire them.  William Paterson University Music Department is a special place and I'm glad to be there.

Dr. MacDonald
www.paytonmacdonald.com