How crucial are linguistic skills in a profession where language doesn’t serve as the primary expressive medium? Drawing upon the concepts of language ideologies, translanguaging, and spatial repertoires in language for work research, I explore this inquiry within a relatively overlooked set of professionals: Musicians. More precisely, in this presentation, I delve into the self-perceptions of a group of Latin American Art Music composers regarding their professional and artistic practices of communication and expression. As an introduction, I contextualize this compelling case, highlighting my participants as both an undefined set of workers and “newcomers” to an industry traditionally dominated by European and North American institutions. Using grounded theory methods of codification and categorization, I then present the analysis of unstructured ethnographic interviews conducted with Latin American early and mid-career composers, focusing on their artistic and professional trajectories. Findings show that they hold conflicting views of the globalized language ideologies of linguistic and communicative competence and awareness of the complex repertoires and networks they must develop to make it in the world of art music. While they do recognize the importance of linguistic and communicative competences, particularly in the English language, they also emphasize the importance of other factors such as deep disciplinary knowledge, interpersonal skills, and institutional connections as equally or even more vital for advancing in their careers. Concludingly, I argue that though these professionals often find themselves obliged to comply with linguistic and communicative competence demands they also develop critical and agentive positionings towards ideologies of language competence widespread in globalized professional industries. Extensively, I advocate for more language for work research in industries where language is not centralized as the primary medium and product of labor to develop a more nuanced understanding of its symbolic and material significance for diverse workers in our contemporary world.