It’s no secret that it takes extraordinary effort and preternatural talent to achieve coveted, competitive positions at top universities, internships, or sports leagues. (Who you know and how much money you have certainly doesn’t hurt either.) Now consider a job that makes the task of getting into Harvard, or the NFL draft, or an internship at Vogue seem like a walk in the park. Give up? Try winning a seat as a professional tuba player in one of America’s full-time or part-time professional orchestras. Most orchestras aren’t able to pay their musicians anything close to a living wage, so making a living from any instrument is a tough task. And making a living as a tubist, with most orchestras retaining only one or two individuals? Those seats come available to rarely, it might be considered well night impossible to win a spot and even less likely to get tenure. That is, unless you’re able to harness all that talent, effort and luck (a lot of luck), lightning might strike. When it does happen, as tubist Richard Antoine White details in his memoir I’m Possible, the result is sweet music to the ears.
But it wasn’t really like a lightning strike that won White the distinction of being the first African American to earn a doctorate in tuba performance. Throughout I’m Possible, White recounts the small and large decisions made by those around him, and eventually by White himself, that brought him increasingly closer to his dream. Born into poverty in 1970s Baltimore, White experienced homelessness, his mother’s alcoholism and the violence that prevailed in his neighborhood. Seemingly minor moments —a teacher’s decision to hear a last minute audition, inspiration from a Canadian Brass recording—mix with the larger, gut-wrenching choices—like Cheryl White’s choice to relinquish Richard to his grandparents—all set him on the path to White’s role playing tuba professionally. White marvels at the number of people pulling for him, from staff at the Baltimore School for the Arts to Indiana University friends who helped him pay off loans when his first orchestra went belly up during the Great Recession. But what really comes through too is White’s own determination to make his dream happen, in spite of the sometimes absurd positions he finds himself in. It’s not everyone who can get up at six every morning for the first of several hours spent practicing daily, or survive mishaps playing the Wicked Witch of the West for drum corps in Indiana, nor the wherewithal to help rebuild an orchestra after financial ruin. Not least is White’s challenge of navigating the very white world of classical music, where he is often made to feel like an outsider, or the sometimes fraught connections he felt to his Baltimore roots.
It’s an inspiring story, but one that doesn’t rely on the sort of hokey ‘I never doubted myself’ sort of tone that’s sometimes evident in other memoirs of successful careers. White is a natural storyteller, and makes even something as potentially mundane as learning how to practice compelling. I would especially recommend the audio version of I’m Possible, which White reads in a natural and conversational tone, and includes excerpts of his playing and some tuba beat-boxing (something I didn’t know I needed to hear). I’m Possible is an obvious choice for fans of coming-of-age memoirs, music memoirs and inspirational stories of perseverance in the face of apparently overwhelming odds. And anyone who could use some hip-hop tuba—i.e., everyone--would find it a great read as well.