Jazz Music is Like Lawyering

Being a lawyer is a lot easier than being a jazz musician. In a sense, I’ve freed my art from the burden of having to support myself. And I would do it all over again. Do musicians make good lawyers? Or do lawyers make good musicians? Or is it, as Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brett Klein jokingly suggests, just that lawyers can afford the time and money to buy instruments?

While several studies claim a link exists between music training and intelligence, many personal injury attorneys have a background in music and attest to some correlation between music and law.

Plato wrote in the Book of Laws II that a well-educated man was one trained in music, because music training was required to develop a healthy sensitivity. However, Santa Monica Deputy City Attorney David Fairweather admits, “people wouldn’t expect a lawyer or a judge to have the sensitivity to be a musician.”

If I had to do it all over again I’m not sure I could have done it any differently. I enjoyed playing music so much that it didn’t matter how much I got paid or what I had to give up to experience the thrill of bending the guitar to my will and making beautiful sounds. You’re an artist for the art, not for the money.

The same headwinds that face the working-class -- declining income, increased housing and health care costs -- have long been pushing against professional artists as well.

I think you can be an artist anywhere, even in the United States, if your passion is strong enough to drive you. Enduring sacrifice is part of the job. But you need money to eat and pay the rent, and the same headwinds that face working-class Americans -- stagnant or declining income, increased costs of housing and health care -- have long been pushing against those who make their living in the arts. And raising a family is expensive for everyone.

For me, the financial pressures were tolerable when I was single and childless. They became much less so as I was approaching 40 and longing to start a family with my new wife. It may have been possible to earn enough to support a family as a modern jazz guitarist and composer, but it would have required extensive touring (in other words, time away from family) and reliance on a capricious and unpredictable business.

I did enjoy scoring independent films and documentaries, but these hardly paid the bills, and the commercial gigs just weren’t for me. I didn't want to be Miki Navazio Music, Inc. My fate was sealed when the National Endowment for the Arts terminated funding for individual artists in the mid 90s.