A curious performance comparison

I sing in a community choir. We have completed the rehearsals and are ready for our concert on Saturday evening at a local Lutheran Church. (If you live in the Seattle area you may be interested in more details at http://www.marketstreetsingers.org/schedule.html )

There is a little sadness this morning as I think about the music and our singing. Throughout the summer we have been practicing the songs for the concert. Each week we have learned and improved our singing of the music. It has been enjoyable and fun. Now that we have practiced the music we will present the concert. Once. Then it will be over and we will not sing that music again. I will miss it and this saddens me, somewhat.

I am contrasting that this morning with what the professional music groups do. In my humble opinion a professional group will collect the music that they want to perform, much of which they have performed previously. They rehearse until they have the music ready. I suppose that they practice less than the community choir does because they are professionals and pick it up faster as well as having more talent and experience with more music and they have sung much of it before.

The professional performers then schedule many performances of their work. They may even take it on the road and perform the same concert in many different cities.

The contrast strikes me. The pros practice less and perform more while the amateurs practice more and perform less.

I wonder where else in our world there is this difference?