I read Stephen Cottrell's broad-ranging ethnography Professional Music-Making in London with both great interest and disquiet. Cottrell has made a significant scholarly contribution in successfully outlining the myriad social, political, economic, and artistic forces that comprise that city's classical music performance culture. His model, which offers potential bridges between ethnomusicology and musicology, will prove useful in any number of locales and theoretical studies. My disquiet arose from the fact that the author details a musical world of frustration, dead ends, and downright failure. Twenty years ago, and an ocean away, I escaped a similar professional existence in New York City.