Playing Gigs in Corporate Work Offices
Standing in your healing
What’s good everyone,
This week I started a new venture with my original music group Circle of Trust: playing during the workday in corporate offices here in downtown Chicago. I came up with this idea inspired in part by my dad, Attorney N. Neville Reid, who has been a corporate lawyer practicing here in the city for the last 35 years. He has been a bit bummed by how COVID has hurt the intimacy of workplace culture that he cherishes. Though he respects that people can now work remotely from the convenience of their homes, he still prizes the kinetic energy exchanged only in-person. And he is not alone; researchers have extensively studied the challenges to working remote. Perhaps you have experienced these challenges yourself.
I figured that music, which helps foster stronger social ties, could help address that challenge. God gave me the business idea of bringing music into the workplace in order to incentivize people to return to the office. What if I could play volume-appropriate music for offices during their happy hours or chill Friday lunches? I pitched it to my Dad, who thought it a great idea, and he helped me bring Circle of Trust to his law firm: Fox, Swibel, Levin, & Carroll LLP.
Playing my original composition “Share a Smile” with Micah Collier on Bass
Playing for my dad and his colleagues was so special, in part because it was a chance to inwardly celebrate my healing as a musician. That sunny afternoon I was able to hold my head up high and play with confidence, but I remember the shame I once carried when I first started getting into professional music some years back. When I talked with corporate cats I knew either from my dad’s world, my wife’s medical world, or my Yale classmates, I always felt small. Even though I knew I was called to play, I thought it was still an invalid career path for me. It wasn’t why I went to Yale. It wasn’t where real change or where power resided. Politics, law, science/medicine, economics - that’s where the real change happened in society. Nobody told my dad or wife to get a real job. (I wrote about an incident concerning a “getting a real job” comment here.)
But over the years, God has healed me, and has traded out my shame for creativity, imagination, and love. With a sense of calling, I now can visit those spaces where I thought I was supposed to live. I didn’t come to the law firm with head bowed low or chest needlessly puffed out, but just as one carrying out my vocation as the lawyers and support staff carried out theirs.
We all are well-acquainted with shame, fear, and guilt, but I pray we can also be acquainted with God’s healing power. And as we dare to see ourselves aright, I pray we can receive God’s courage even to return to those spaces of former shame and stand in our healing.
During that happy hour, seeing the happiness on those lawyers’ faces (which included some former professional musicians) reminded me of the power of sharing from healing. When we share, others are edified, as are we. Glory Hallelujah.
abundantly,
Julian
What’s Next
September 14 Notes of Rest at Southern Methodist University (Dallas)
September 14 Julian Davis Reid & Circle of Trust at Southern Methodist University (Dallas)
September 20-21 Julian Davis Reid & Circle of Trust at Andy’s (Chicago)
September 26 Isaiah Collier & The Chosen Few at Constellation (Chicago)
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Save the Dates
The Last Days of Cabrini Green Audible Originals Podcast (I scored the soundtrack) (Nov 14)
Feb 22-23 Black Contemplative Prayer Summit - Notes of Rest on Feb 23 (Virtual)
First-ever Notes of Rest Overnight Retreat - May 30-31, 2025 (Oregon, IL)