Wordless Wednesday
Tag Archives: music
Holiday music is everywhere
My mom used to say she wished the radio stations continued to play Christmas music after Christmas day. Back then you had to be in the same room as the radio in order to hear and she didn’t have time to listen before Christmas morning. She had four kids to shop and wrap for and a big holiday dinner to prepare.
She didn’t have time to enjoy the season until it was over.
I wish she could have attended the concert our Clarkston Community Band played last Friday evening. Pretty lights and lush music shaped our theme of “Let there be Peace.”
I don’t think there’s a better way to get in the spirit of the season than to go to a live concert, right in your own community, performed by your friends and neighbors. The musicians might not be professionals (though sometimes they are) and the performance might not be perfect (though sometimes it is) but the spirit is real and the motivation is pure.
Friday night songs like “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, “White Christmas” and “I’ll be Home for Christmas” got us all into the right mood. When the audience sang along on a medley of Christmas carols I had to stop playing for a moment and just listen to all those voices joined together.
Pure magic.
Yep, Friday night we filled that auditorium with love. Toward the end of the show lots of children came up on stage to ring jingle bells as we played “Here Comes Santa Claus” in the hope they could convince Santa to stop in for a visit. These kids were very convincing, and Santa showed up right on cue. Their faces, when they realized he was standing right behind them, were priceless.
More magic.
And then Santa conducted our last piece of music, “Sleigh Ride,” because it’ can’t be a holiday concert without a ride through the snow behind prancing horses, even if it’s all only in our imaginations.
Friday night we all came together for a moment of celebration and peace, even knowing the world is filled with unrest. We all left that night smiling and you can too. This season, check your local high school’s web page. There’s likely a holiday concert or two near you this very week. Please take time from your preparations to support those musicians. They’d love to see a full house and you’ll be glad you went.
I guarantee there will be magic bouncing off those walls.
Happy Holidays to you all.
Impersonating a violin
I’m playing with our local community band again this season and we’re coming up on our first concert. This is not the first time we’ve played Danzon #2, nor the first time we woodwinds have been told to pretend we’re plucking a stringed instrument.
You know, that gentle, short little ping sound the strings make when they put the bow aside and pluck the strings with a finger tip.
As I practice, trying to make that light sound on my clarinet, the reed and my tongue feeling heavy, I wonder. When was the last time a string player was asked to pretend to be a clarinet?
Aha. Didn’t think so.
Walktober update: So far we have 11 posts collected, with a few more in the works, including mine. Let’s see if we can get them all in by Monday November 6th. Let me know if you need more time than that! 🙂
PS: Enjoy the Danzon Piece, played by an orchestra with strings as it was probably meant to be. At 3:21 you’ll see an example of string plucking. But watch it all, it’s guaranteed to make you smile.
Benediction
Last October my aunt died at age 87. She was the woman that shared her beloved Ann Arbor Symphony with me for more than 30 years, who took me to see musicals and concerts, even the opera. This past week I learned another woman who mentored me in art and work had died at age 86. I watched her memorial service online and wished I’d had more time with her.
It seems the women older than me, those I looked up to and learned from, are moving on and now, when I look around, I realize I am the older woman.
I was struck by this concept last night before our Community Band spring concert while talking to our first chair clarinet who would be conducting a piece for the very first time in his young life. He was nervous and excited and kind of jumpy. I told him not to worry, that we as a band wouldn’t let him down. He smiled and nodded and skittered back to his seat.
He’s just completed 10th grade. I don’t even remember 10th grade.
Last night as we played Benediction by John Stevens I thought of my aunt and my friend and hoped they were somehow listening. I said a silent thank you to them both.
Later, on the drive home, and after a pounding rainstorm had slicked the roads with a shimmer of water, the brilliant orange sun emerged from the clouds and lit the wet pavement in front of me. For a few minutes the road led directly into the setting sun, a ribbon of rose gold, seeming to lead right off into forever.
It was a perfect ending to a good day, and this older woman from a previous generation knew enough to notice and appreciate it, thanks to all the good mentoring I’ve received.
I guess it’s time to pass it on.
A musical weekend
I’ve been lucky, not just because we have a new little puppy chewing our feet, but because my sister has been here for the past couple of weeks, and because we got to experience 3 different concerts over the weekend.
On Friday night my community band performed our concert, “Spring Potpourri,” directed by a guest conductor and featuring several of our members as soloists on assorted pieces.
We’ve grown a lot over the years, both in numbers and musicality, and it was fun to play together, under the lights on a stage with a pretty decent sized crowd applauding our efforts.
I’ve said it before, and it’s still true, as adults there are few opportunities to receive applause. No one claps when we make supper or do the laundry or go off to work or mow the lawn.
Most people have never had the thrill of accepting applause for anything.
Applause is one of the many rewards for playing in a community band. Friendships are another. And the joy of playing music is the best reward of all.
Saturday evening my sister, husband and I went down to hear the Ann Arbor Symphony play Debussy, Prokofiev and Dvorak. This concert was played at the historic Michigan Theater, built in 1927.
It’s a beautiful building and we had fun, prior to the concert, taking pictures of the ornate architecture. I liked the Dvorak piece, Symphony No. 7 in D minor, but my favorite was Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, with the beautiful flute in the beginning and woven throughout.
The principal flutist talked prior to the concert about what a responsibility she had playing this piece, the work is so famous and the expectations are so high. Of course she played it absolutely beautifully. My sister plays flute, so it was special to listen to this work on Saturday night.
Then on Sunday afternoon she and I drove about 45 miles to Imlay City to listen to the Belle Valley Community Band play their spring concert, which was filled with Irish and Scottish music, and featured the Alma College Pipe Band.
You don’t get to hear a pipe band every day, and since my sister also plays bagpipes this was a very special concert as well. The community band was so fun to listen to and when you add in bagpipes, well, it was spectacular!
I was thinking as I looked at the crowd almost filling the gym bleachers and seated in rows of folding chairs down on the gym floor, that it was pretty cool to see a community come out in such numbers to support their local musicians.
And I wished that every community band or orchestra, every community theater group, every group of artists putting together a show would have such support. It’s a win/win for the artists and their communities. Everyone leaves smiling, no matter the venue, no matter what type of art.
Please go google the words community band, or community orchestra or community theater in your town. Odds are you have one near by. They’ll have a website and you can probably find their spring concert or their spring production, or their spring art installation.
Mark your calendar and then show up. You’d be amazed at the talent all around you.
And they’ll be thrilled to have more people there, enjoying their work and applauding.
Don’t see how you could go wrong.
Misty-eyed Christmas Pops
Friday night we attended the Ann Arbor Symphony’s Christmas Pops at Hill Auditorium where I’ve enjoyed many AA Symphony concerts with my aunt. Friday my husband sat on one side of me but there was an empty seat on the other side.
I was lucky enough to hear Sleighride and Christmas Festival again, pieces I play every year with my own community band. I have to say I think CCB’s whip instrument was more effective than the one used Friday night, but having strings really makes those pieces extra wonderful.
At one point Silent Night was filling the auditorium, voices and instruments singing softly, the sound rising up to hover near the ceiling and I thought about my aunt and how she would have loved this concert. I wished she could be there, I could imagine her, dressed in holiday red, grinning back at me as we silently acknowledged just how good it all was.
I got sort of misty-eyed.
Then I noticed some movement in the lights up near the stage. One of the big round lights near the ceiling was flickering faintly. And, as I watched, it blinked. Twice.
And I grinned.
Because I knew right then and there that my aunt had figured out a new way to grin back at me. Merry Christmas, Aunt Becky, I think you had the best seat in the house.
Wordless Wednesday
It’s not goodbye
I’ve been thinking about the best way to share this, some eloquent words that capture the loss our family experienced this week. But there is no easy way.
My last post, Wordless Wednesday is an image I captured in May when my aunt and I were walking through Hudson Mills Park. She was looking for dogwood and trillium. I was trying to capture as much of the experience as she’d let me.
Which means most of my images were taken from behind.
We walked slower this spring than we had the year before, took the shorter trails, gauged whether a hill was too steep or manageable. We stopped to rest on convenient benches more often. There was, after all, no hurry. In fact there was more savoring the moments because we both knew it was our last spring together.
She’d been diagnosed with a terminal cancer and she had chosen not to take any treatment. They told her she’d have a good summer, and, right on schedule, she did.
My sister and brother came up, then my sister came up two more times. We visited her as often as we could. We attended her last symphony, brought her simple suppers rather than expecting the elaborate meals she has made for us our entire lifetimes. We swam with her at her community pool, walked in her beloved Mathi gardens and the University of Michigan Arboretum.
On our last visit, she sat in a wheelchair, pulling sheets of music for my sister and me to play, music she had written when her children were small. She sang along. We played music until she seemed tired, and then we talked just a bit. “Say Hi to Dad,” my sister said, “He’ll surely be waiting for you.”
It was a gift, she said, that she had these past months to spend with her children, with us, with her friends. And so that she could plan and arrange to make things as easy as possible for her family to carry on without her.
We all cried a bit, and then had a long, last hug.
This past Monday morning she left us to say hi to her brother, my dad, and to her husband, her mother, my mother, and so many other family members who had gone on ahead. And on Saturday we all said “see you later” at the most beautiful funeral I’ve ever attended.
She had, of course, planned it all, including her own words to all of us, the hymns to be sung, the prelude and postlude played by the incredible pianist, and the bagpipes played by my sister.
The time she spent with us was our gift as well. She was a gift to all of us, her family, her friends, musicians in her beloved symphony, her neighbors, the students she taught, the community band in which she played.
I can’t be sad, though I will miss her so much; she had a wonderful and joyous homecoming on Monday morning. And, as someone said at the funeral, she’s probably up there organizing heaven right now.
Thanks for all the good times, good meals, good conversation and good company, Aunt Becky. I’ll see you on down the road.
And then there was music
The Ann Arbor Symphony playing in Hill Auditorium on a beautiful Friday night in Ann Arbor. Those of you that have experienced it know what I mean without me coming up with the words. Those of you who have never been so lucky, I’m sorry, I don’t have the words to adequately describe it.
But I’ll try.
It was opening night of the new season last Friday, a new season in so many ways. Our first evening since the beginning of covid when we could choose to attend without wearing a mask. The first time hearing a beautiful piece by Carlos Simon. The first time pianist Inon Barnatan performed with the Ann Arbor Symphony. And the first night Ann Arbor Symphony’s new Music Director, Earl Lee, conducted this brilliant group.
It was all stellar.
Sometimes when a contemporary piece of music is on the program my husband and I will look at each other in trepidation. We must be old school because if the work is full of dissonance and freakish rhythms we don’t always understand it. So this time, as we were listening the the preconcert lecture and they invited the composer onstage to discuss his piece we glanced at each other and sighed.
But we were wrong.
Carlos Simon’s This Land is beautiful. Sure there were moments of discord, it was written, after all, about immigration and the conflict it often creates in America. But listen to it, just under 10 minutes of beautiful and interesting music. I think you’ll fall in love with it just like we did.
Next on the program was Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. I don’t think you can go wrong with Rachmaninoff, but this was beyond anything I could have imagined. I was lucky enough to be sitting where I could see pianist Inon Barnatan’s hands. Or if I’m honest, not see his hands, they were moving so fast. He was simply wonderful and obviously having so much fun playing the piece. His enthusiasm was infectious and the audience fell in love all over again. In fact we were all on our feet applauding even as the last note faded.
I wish you could see and listen to him do this work, but since I couldn’t find any video of him playing it, watch and listen to it here, the pianist is Anna Fedorova, and the camera angle gives you great views. This one is about 25 minutes. Grab a cup of coffee or tea, put your feet up and enjoy! There’s a part of it, near the end that you’ll recognize. And if you ever get the opportunity to hear this piece or see Inon Barnatan play anything, just do it!
After intermission we heard Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. To be honest, I was so happy with the first half of the concert I didn’t need to hear more, but I’m glad there was more. The music was beautiful, the symphony was responsive and our new Music Director was fully engaged in it all. We are so lucky to have Earl Lee conducting. He very obviously loves music, the musicians and his audience. I’m betting he’s going to love Ann Arbor too.
Thank you Carlos Simon and Inon Barnatan, and welcome to Earl Lee and his family! It was a beautiful night of firsts and I feel lucky to have been there.
Generational music
I play in a community band and I haven’t talked about it in a long time. Probably not since we did the pop-up concert on the grassy circle of a cal-de-sac in September of 2020!
People who play live music suffered withdrawal during the covid pandemic. And when, in the fall of 2021, the community ed department said we could hold rehearsals at the school again we were happy even though we would have to wear a mask at all times, even when playing, and the bells of our instruments would need to be covered as well.
We sent out a survey to our members, asking who and what instruments felt they would be able to play with these restrictions, while knowing covid was a risk. About 50% of the band felt they wanted to play, and so we began, last fall, to plan our season.
Instrumentation was rough. We had, in the beginning, only one percussion player who lugs his personal drum set to and from rehearsals and another to play all the rest of the instruments back there. We had a handful of clarinets, some came most rehearsals, some came some rehearsals. Sometimes it was just one young man and me. We had no trumpets to speak of and only two trombones.
But as the weeks went by we began to fill in the vacant parts. Tenor sax players played the trumpet and cornet music. The tuba players wrote timpani parts into their own music. Everybody played all the cues written, to cover what would normally be played by someone else.
Individuals stepped up. People who never before played first parts gained confidence with practice. Often I’d say to the young man seated next to me in the second clarinet section, “It’s just you and me tonight, but we’ve got this.” and he’d give me a thumbs up and it turned out we did.
And a benefit of being short handed? You get to play really loud most all the time.
In the end band members and other people recruited musicians for us, and with only a couple rehearsals left before our concert we gained two trumpet players, both of whom play beautifully, a baritone player, and some high school students to fill in on clarinet and percussion parts. We even got a community band alumni, now a music major away at college, to come play timpani for us the night of the concert!
So, how did it go? Did this cobbled together group of retirees and working adults and busy students pull it all together in time? Well, we played fun music, music from old television shows like Gilligan’s Island and Perry Mason and MASH and Dragnet and Leave it to Beaver. We played music from the Beatles, and from movies like Chariots of Fire and The Way We Were and Gone with the Wind and Star Wars. We played bits of Send in the Clowns, Another Op’nin, Another Show, Let Me Entertain You, You Oughta Be in Pictures, Hooray for Hollywood and more. And of course we threw in a march or two, because what’s a community band without marches? We did Red Skelton’s Red’s White and Blue March. We ended with the original Overture to West Side Story, and for our encore we played The Stars and Stripes Forever, because, as our conductor told the audience, we needed to hear it.
Yes we pulled it together. And what a fun concert it was to play! Not easy, it’s never easy when you only rehearse once a week and the cast of musicians changes every time you meet. But fun because we were together.
And, in fact, that’s the real purpose behind a community band. Playing in our concert Tuesday night was a man in his 80s who hadn’t played in decades and who considered not preforming that night, worried that he’d make a mistake (he didn’t) and a freshman in high school who stepped in to help us and who got to play his very first concert solo, who did a beautiful job.
That’s the age spectrum, in a community band, people who love to play, from 15 to 80 something. Making mistakes and flubs and blats and ringing tones and harmonies beautiful enough to make your eyes water while you’re playing, a community band is a bunch of people pulling together, even when it’s hard, to make each other smile, and to make our audience smile too.
“That was so much fun to listen to!” I heard one woman say to her musician on our way back out to the car that evening. Yep. And if it was fun to listen to, just imagine how fun it was to play.
If there’s a community band in your town, make a point of attending their next concert. They’ll have a website, you can find out times and dates there. And if you play, but just haven’t in a long time, dust off that instrument and go see how it feels to be in the middle of something pretty amazing.
It’s been a long time since most of us felt amazing about anything. Go listen. Go play. It’s bound to make you smile.
Guaranteed.
Change Is Hard 