I came close to the feeling when I toured with Mayard. While my time on the band wasn't "flawless," the sense of wonder about it was pretty cool.
With that premise, the best feeling I have since then was playing the CD relase concert with my quintet at a local high school jazz festival in the Chicago area. We played for 90 minutes, non stop, and played just my compositions, with the excetion of three jazz standards.
So, my dream job???
I would love to play concerts (not dives!) with my quintet and be able to support my family doing that - nothing more (don't care to get rich) nothing less (got bills to pay and two kids to put through college). I love the road, too!
As an addendum, I'd love to do concert solo work, but not doing things like the Haydn or Hummel. There are too many terrific classical players who do that already. I'd like to do the Fischer Tull, Arutunian, Tomasi and Jolivet and get paid to do it. I can actually play these things, but I never have the opportunity to do so. OK, I've played the Tull and the ARutunian a few times with local community orchestras, but it has been a while, and I didn't think I played them all that well when I did. I can really nail them now, but the opportunities aren't there. Oh well...
Ok, the premise was DREAM career, right? Well, there you go!
Peace.
Nick