Tuning Slide: 4.1- Why I Play Music (1)

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

If you play music for the right reasons, the rest of the things will come. The right reason to play music is that you love it. That's why I play music.
— George Benson

Music is- and has been since third grade- one of the centers of my life. Sometime between ages 8 and 9 I started taking piano lessons. I wasn’t particularly good at practicing so after two or three years with the wonderful Miss Palmer my mother thought it would be good to stop. It wasn’t going to happen. She played the piano as did my Dad’s sister, my Aunt Ruth. I enjoyed their music as well as the many old 78 rpm records that they had.

I did learn how to read music in those lessons with Miss Palmer and, from time to time would even pull out a piece of sheet music and play the melody line. Music intrigued me. Playing music intrigued me, but I was more interested in reading than playing music.

In 8th grade, age 13, I decided I wanted to play trumpet. I have no memory of why. I probably saw the trumpets in the high school band marching in a parade and liked it. Maybe I saw Louis Armstrong on TV. Herb Alpert’s first single, The Lonely Bull, was a year from being released and Al Hirt’s Java was three years away. So nothing remains of the first memory- except the trumpet and the never-ending desire to play it- and play it better today than I did yesterday.

As many of you know from previous posts, I have never stopped playing in these soon to be 57 years. There were lean times when playing for Christmas or Easter at church was the extent of my playing, but the horn was always nearby. The last three years since my first Shell Lake Adult Big Band Workshop has been a whole new world of music opening for me. Some of this has been chronicled in the earlier posts in the Tuning Slide. As I get started in the fourth year of the Tuning Slide I sat back and reflected on why I play music. Over the past weeks a number of moments have occurred in various places that have reminded me why I continue to do so. To get Year Four started- here’s the first half of what came to mind.

My Experience of Playing Music (part 1)
✓ Band members smiling in rehearsal as we practiced Holst’s “2nd Suite.”

The two Holst Suites may be the greatest concert wind band pieces ever written- and the 2nd is at the top of the list. We were rehearsing it for a summer concert and I looked up during a long rest in the fourth movement and noticed that almost every musician in the band who was in the middle of a rest was also smiling. I couldn’t believe how my whole body, mind, and soul responded immediately to it when we hit the first notes. Yes, it is that great! Every time.

✓ Carmen Dragon’s “America the Beautiful”

Our director called it perhaps the best concert band arrangement of any time- the Dragon arrangement of America the Beautiful. I have long lost count of how many times I have played this. I have never forgotten the first time. I was a senior in high school and was at our district band festival playing first trumpet (not cornet, since I didn’t own a cornet.) The band arrangement was only three years old at the time and not well-known- like it would become. I was overwhelmed and inspired at that point. I still am today. Even writing this gives me goosebumps.

✓ Remembering my daughter’s solo in “A Copland Tribute” when I’m playing the piece

My daughter played clarinet in Middle and High School. In her senior year the band played the wonderful music of Aaron Copland in the piece, A Copland Tribute. As both her father and as a musician myself I enjoyed that piece when it came to the section known as the Shaker Melody (or Simple Gifts.) It begins with a clarinet solo- which she played beautifully. Every time a band I am in plays that piece- and it has been at least five times in the past 20 years- my mind lights up in joy remembering her.

✓ Falling in love with new pieces

At our spring concert our community band played a new piece by composer Jay Bocook, Down in the River (Hal Leonard.) It is a series of variations on the gospel song, Down in the River to Pray. It was fun to play and I loved the way the theme came in and out from the background. It also happens to be one of my favorite gospel songs. Yes, people are still writing music that can move me!!

Then at the recent July 4th concert I was introduced to another song I had never played before, an arrangement of the hymn God of Our Fathers by Claude Smith written in 1974. I am surprised I have never heard it before and fell in love with it in spite of mangling the trumpet trio in the first three measures during the last rehearsal. (I played it spot on in the concert!) It was a wonderfully challenging and inspiring piece. There will always be new pieces to play for the first time and fall in love with!

✓ Learning Al Hirt’s “Java”

It was my first favorite trumpet song. Released in 1964 it captured my imagination. I bought a transcription in the late 60s and tried to learn it. No luck. I didn’t take the time to really work on it and by then I was heading into my career and let the advancing of my trumpet skills slip. About six or seven years ago I found a transcription online and began working on it again. I can now play most of it and sometimes even up to tempo. It may be 54 years late, but it is why I am still playing music.

✓ “1812 Overture”- as exciting as it was 50 years ago when I first played it

• College band, 1969, in Carnegie Hall. We even used the cannon the football cheerleaders used at games. What a kick!

• Every Fourth of July, just before the Stars and Stripes and the fireworks. It never gets old! It is new every time! That is what music can do!

That’s why I play music!
What’s your reason?

(More next week as we continue into year four of The Tuning Slide.)