The third clarinet seat war finally ended

We played the final rehearsal for the Mahler Third today, and just before the last movement, the third clarinet player—new to the section, fiercely precise—made a tiny mistake. Not wrong, not bad, just… human. The whole orchestra exhaled at once. I didn’t cue. No one needed to. In that silence between notes, something settled. We weren’t chasing perfection anymore. We were just… playing. And for the first time in months, it felt like we were together.