Wow, I thought you guys were in some respects ahead of us classically trained musicians! The benefits of not having conservatory training (in general!) is that you don't have certain habits bashed into you that you need to unlearn.
Sadly, this sort of skill (and others like improvisation) is lost to the majority of the Classical music world. Call it the the avoidance of risk in a field that is more and more marketed as something other than music....