My wife trained as a 'conductor'.

She had 15 years of piano, high end theory through the Royal Conservatory, and played the oboe.

At university she took 4 years of music and another year of teaching.

She can play, at least at a passable level, every instrument. How else will you teach? Every conductor knows the range of the instruments, what passages are hard or easy, and the 3 professional ones I know can take a full score, with instruments on every line, and sing you the part, perhaps not in the exact notes for say a high clarinet part, but even my wife, who never followed up her original dream and now is the administrator for a department with 70 employees, can sing me back parts of scores 30 years after her degree was finished.

You don't really get to hold that stick because you used to play drums and lost one.

John Conley
Musica est vita