Let the Music Play

You don't know what you've got till it's gone. Or so Joni Mitchell sang a few years ago. For the past two years I have missed an important part of my life that I didn't realize was so important until I didn't have it.

Between June 1985 and August 2005- 20 years- I played in a community or municipal band for every year but one when I was finishing up my doctoral work. I didn't realize that in those twenty years I had become deeply attached to making music. Unless you are an active musician (amateur or pro- it makes no difference) you may not understand what I then lost when my work schedule changed and I couldn't play in the band anymore. I would not have said I was a musician - until I didn't have it anymore.

Into the gap I put my guitar playing as I went to - and then helped start - a Bluegrass Jam Camp. It was helpful and fun but it wasn't the same. (My friend John- a top-notch musician and guitar player, tells me that if I would practice regularly it would get to be more like it.) I missed the trumpet and the band and the joy of making music with a group of other musicians. Very little can compare with, for example, the concert a few years ago when we did an all Gershwin program and I played music for the first time that I have loved for years.

Making music is truly one of the most remarkable things we humans can do. It is a way of getting in touch with something that is far deeper than feelings and far wider than our simple individual lives. When music fits together and blends into a concert performance or a symphony or even just a trio or quartet getting in "the groove" together, it is an inexpressible and transcendent experience.

Well, with the move to a new job and a new city - I'm back with the music. There is a community band here and last week I went to my first rehearsal. It was wonderful! It was a spiritual moment- a moment when again I was in touch with the spirit of the soul. I even have a lead on the possibility of playing with a second, smaller ensemble.

A job that's exciting- and a place to make music every week-
what more can you ask for?