Angela Bilger: The Start of My Story
How many times have I sat down to write this story? There have been at least a handful of concerted efforts, and dozens of more scattered, haphazard attempts.
One of the times I started writing this, the world was in what I thought was the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic (it was only the beginning). I had recently had a baby, and my son was doing an online math class with his second grade teacher. The day was a windy, rainy day. The day before was overcast and mild. The day before that, the Blue Angels flew over New York and Philadelphia to show support for hospital personnel and health care workers who put themselves at risk.
Another day I started writing, my nearly eight-month-old daughter was nearing the end of her nap. It was a bright, chilly fall day. My husband took my son to the beach so that he could fly his kites. It doesn’t seem to be a mere coincidence that flight, any kind of flight, has captured my son’s imagination started during the pandemic, when we are all essentially grounded. He’s made dozens, maybe even hundreds of airplanes, parachutes, and kites out of trash bags, construction paper, paper bags. He uses skewers and kitchen twine and hot glue. Now he makes kites from ripstop nylon and carbon fiber spars. They fly beautifully and he’s a natural at flying them. I’ve tried my hand at making one kite. It was fun, but I think I’ll leave it up to him.
Even now, as I try to will words onto paper that would tell of my injury, my mind wants to wander other places, to describe instead the shape of my days during the pandemic—the hardships and unexpected joys. But I’ll get this story out eventually. Today, there is no concert life really, not only for me, but for most musicians, and the future is uncertain. Horn playing is down the list of things that command my attention, yet I’m able to make time (most days) for at least one short session a day, sometimes two, and it feels good. Even though there are no concerts on the horizon for me any time soon, practicing brings a slice of normalcy to the way I feel during a time when my world has changed in profound ways.
Back in the spring of 2016-2017 season, I was nearing the end of a one-year position with the Philadelphia Orchestra as fourth horn, a position I’d held before during the 2008-2009 season. Both years were good years for me and I felt comfortable and happy in that position. Following each of my one-year positions, there was an upcoming audition for the permanent position on the horizon. I didn’t win it in 2009, and here I was again.
I went into the 2016-2017 season saying to myself that I had to figure out a way to still be, at the end of the year, the kind of versatile player I wanted and needed to be. Ironically, playing the job for a year doesn’t necessarily put you in a good place to win the job. Anyone who has played fourth horn for an extended period of time knows the joys and challenges of the position. One of the biggest challenges for me, aside from keeping my high chops, was to remember what I sound like in a solo setting and to feel comfortable hearing myself play onstage above the texture of the orchestra. Beethoven 9 has a substantial fourth horn solo in it, and I had a run of the piece coming up on the Asia tour in the spring of 2017. So, between that and the upcoming audition, I had good reason to take any chamber music or high horn jobs that came my way so that I could keep my soloistic skills honed.
One of the things I booked during a light orchestra week was to play principal with the Pops. The week before I was to play with them, I developed a canker sore on the underside of the lip right where the mouthpiece sits. I’m prone to canker sores and have always just played through them. It hurts, but it’s always been fine. But this one was particularly painful and inflamed. I felt I needed to let it rest, so I took a couple days off to give it a chance to heal. But it didn’t heal during that time. After a couple days of rest and no progress, I decided I’d just have to play through it after all, like I’d always done before, so I picked up the horn again to get ready for the following week. It did not go well. My first rehearsal with the pops was painful and I felt weak. The week got progressively worse, and I asked my colleagues and the personnel manager if I could move down in the section. I probably should have bailed altogether, but it was a particularly busy week all along our part of the northeast corridor, and no one was free, so I decided I’d take it easy on fourth horn—warm the seat and play only what was necessary. On the last day of the run I felt pain. Not just canker sore pain, but an unfamiliar uh-oh pain.
What followed was a panicked time of getting out of more work, eventually bowing out of the tour, booking appointments with a doctor and a physical therapist in Baltimore who are specialists in chop injuries, and talking with people who might be able to advise me. The diagnosis was not a tear, but a muscle strain. I would need to take a full six weeks off work—two or three weeks of no playing, then I’d slowly build back. It was a torturous time, not knowing for sure what I was dealing with and how much damage I’d really done.
I was able to play with the orchestra again in a limited capacity in July. My colleagues were incredibly supportive and helped arrange things so I could play what felt alright to play, but not overextend myself.
The audition was coming up in October of 2017 and my goal was to be in a position to take the audition if at all possible, even if I wasn’t yet feeling one hundred percent.
I got through the summer season and was managing. I could play, even if I was tiptoeing in certain ranges and being conservative with my loud dynamics. I threw myself into getting better, and getting better as fast as possible. I did everything my doctor and physical therapist told me to do, plus daily journaling and tracking of my practice times and what I played. I had a spreadsheet of the excerpts and spent a certain amount of time each day both in meditation and visualization. I was seeing an acupuncturist and taking Alexander Technique lessons. But I was still only about seventy percent, I’d say, when the audition came. I didn’t have power in the high range yet, and I was still on the conservative end of louds in all ranges. On the day of the audition I took three Advil and went for it. I drew upon every ounce of everything that I am and truly gave it all I could give on that day. I did not win or even advance to the super-final round. What I had to give was not enough.
But life continued as it always does. I had my opera job, which I really enjoyed, and I had a good amount of subbing with the orchestra lined up for the rest of the fall. In November, Mahler 1 was on the docket. I was feeling alright, still stepping gingerly sometimes, but I was managing. I could keep on like this, I thought, just being smart about what I took and then, in time, perhaps I’d be back to normal. The week was going fine, as I recall, but on Thursday things changed. Thursdays, during a normal week (pre-pandemic), is the orchestra’s double service day. There’s a dress rehearsal in the morning and the first concert that night. I felt good at the start of the rehearsal in the morning. We ran the piece, though, and after we were done, even though I had tried to conserve, I felt done for the day. I was very tired that night, and at some point in the piece I felt a similar sensation to what I’d felt back in May. I had an overwhelming sense of dread at feeling that old sensation. I took it as easy as possible, left out what was doubled, and played what was not doubled. When the concert was over, I went to the personnel manager and tearfully told her I had to take the rest of the week, but in my heart, I knew I was putting it down for much longer than that.
Over that previous summer, I’d been in touch with a trombone player who’d had very similar symptoms to mine. In his case, he had taken three months off and a year later was doing really well. I had been told by someone I trusted very much that strains take a good six weeks to heal, so it had been on my mind that perhaps the two or three weeks I’d initially taken away from the horn had not been enough to allow the strain to heal completely. Three months, I thought, should be more than enough time for anything to heal. So, that’s what I decided to do.
It was a time of unraveling, of disentangling my ego and identity from the horn. It was also a great relief. After the months of stress and of strategizing about how I could be in the best shape possible for the audition, time away from the horn was exactly what I needed. It was a relief not to have to worry every single day about how my lip would feel and what I might be able to play or not play. I loved not having to make the time for practice each day. I don’t remember much of what I did, but I do remember embracing the slower pace and enjoying home life. Sometimes I wonder if three months wasn’t a bit much. Rebuilding was no joke. But I do know that the three months was good for my soul.
When the time came, in late January or early February, I started very slowly. I had a loose plan for practicing and rebuilding, which I followed, but I didn’t feel quite right. It was very slow going and there were confusing sensations elsewhere in the embouchure. So I began reaching out to people for help again. I remember wishing someone could just tell me what to do.
I consulted with one person who was very kind and had some interesting ideas. In the end, most of it didn’t work for me, but one very important thing came from this consultation: it spurred me to get a second medical opinion, that of a noted neurologist in New York who works with musicians. His diagnosis was that it was never muscle damage. It was nerve damage. This made some sense to me. The part of my lip that was damaged had lost some sensation. The random pains I was feeling elsewhere—he was unsure of that, but I’ve come to think that it might have been referred pain. Also, I’ve often wondered if it’s possible, when one puts so much of one’s awareness into an area of the body for so long, does it become overly sensitive? Are there more pathways linking that region of the body to the pain area of the brain? I don’t know. But I came to think that maybe that was case, that maybe I needed to find a way to get my head out of my lips!
I reached out to another person recommended to me. Much of what was said had me topsy-turvy and I had to leave a good portion of it. But there were some key points that were very helpful for me, specifically in getting my focus on moving air, going for sound—essentially, getting my focus “out there” rather than at my lips.
Throughout all this, from the beginning of my recovery to the present, I’ve found the work of Ariel Weiss, my Alexander Technique teacher, to be invaluable. Very early on in my injury, Julie Landsman (another person whose guidance and support has been of extreme importance to me) had suggested I see her and I’m so glad she did. Ariel has helped me know where to place my attention, how to respond to unpleasant sensation, and how to stay connected in practice and performance, among many other things that have been helpful in my daily life.
One thing that became clear in the many months of rebuilding was that, as good as it can be to reach out to many people, it was really important for me to have a couple people who knew my playing and technique very well pre-injury. They kept things grounded and real for me, and helped me to parse out the helpful information from the unhelpful (for me) information. It was impossible, stripped down and confused as I was, to find my way through on my own.
During this time I was the beneficiary of so much support and kindness. Many, many people talked with me and shared their own stories of injury and recovery and insights they had gained. This eventually inspired me to start this website, “Musician’s Well.” Even stories that were very different from my own gave me hope that everything would be alright one way or another, and that even if I ended up not recovering my full capacity as a horn player, I could still live a full and vibrant life.
Over the remainder of 2018 and into 2019, I was able to play and work more, both with Opera Philadelphia and as a sub with the Philadelphia Orchestra. In the summer of 2019 I found out I was pregnant with my daughter, and I had to turn down work during the first trimester from pregnancy sickness. And because of my compromised immune system from pregnancy I became sick more easily which led to me having to miss some work. But in the fall and into January and February of 2020, I took whatever I felt I could handle, which was most of what was offered to me. I knew that come March 2020 when my daughter was born that I’d be looking at another break and slow-down of work.
Little did I know.
Photo by Honey Lazar. Taken via Zoom, Nov 2020.
I’m so thankful for that work I had in January and February of 2020. It felt good to play and I felt I was on a good trajectory. The last concert I played was nearly a year ago as I write this, and so many musicians are struggling and on forced hiatus. My feeling of not knowing what the future holds for me as a musician is suddenly what a huge portion of musicians are feeling. In the earlier days of the pandemic, sometimes this feeling of dread or panic would pass over me, or a feeling like I was living in some alien world. Among other fears that would come to mind, I would wonder if I’d played my last concert. The feeling would pass and I kept picking up my horn day after day. I’m still picking it up and still hoping for the return of everyone’s concert life—and my own concert life—in the future.
On the day when we heard news of a vaccine from Pfizer, my son suggested I change the overly verbose name I gave to the kite I made from “You Are My Sunshine” to “Light at the End of the Tunnel.” There is, of course, a long way to go still. I don’t know if the world will feel “normal” anytime soon, and I don’t know if I will feel completely like “myself” again, or my old self, anyway. Perhaps both the world and I will both be forever changed and maybe that will be alright.
These days I practice in our unfinished basement facing a large tapestry that my husband hung ceiling to floor to absorb some of the weird angles of the space. There’s a photograph of the ocean printed onto it from our 2019 trip to the Pacific Northwest. In the distance are enormous rock formations and the water looks turbulent and restless. I think of its brutality, its constant shifting, how it’s always present. I think of the healing properties of salt water and the movement of the air. Sometimes I imagine as I’m practicing, the sound of the horn as a kite being held aloft by the unceasing wind.
This story of mine feels broken, fragmented, and unsure of itself, but maybe it doesn’t need to feel finished or even particularly cohesive. I put it out there right now, as flawed as it is, in the hopes that whoever feels drawn to this story, and whoever might need this story, will be able to pick up the pieces they need for themselves. After all, underneath the brokenness is another story of a growing wholeness, with or without the horn. I still prefer wholeness with the horn, and work every day towards that, but I don’t know how this will play out. In the face of so much uncertainty, I take into my hands whatever is given to me to do each day. That includes so many little things—listening to my son read, nursing my daughter, doing the dishes, getting dust bunnies from the corners, playing the horn a little while, and today, finally sharing this unfinished story with you.