Something really cool happened yesterday in the most ordinary way.  Friday mornings are our 4th and 5th grade choir rehearsals and I currently have 54 energetic students who are willing to show up an hour before school starts once a week to sing together.  Unfortunately for them, I do not play piano well, so I tend to use recordings as accompaniment.  They are usually great arrangements, but are obviously inflexible so I have to go with the tempo of the recording rather than interpreting on my own.  However, at our last concert, one of the parents at my school approached me and said he would love to accompany for us if I was interested, so I said yes.

So yesterday, he came to our rehearsal to help us get ready for our concert which is a little over a week away.  One of the pieces we’re doing is an Italian aria/chorus from one of the operas we’ve studied in 5th grade but the students had never sung it with the accompaniment before.  When the piano began with the downbeat from my student teacher, I watched my students’ faces as they heard themselves accompanied for the first time. At a particularly dramatic point in the music as the piano played a couple of loud, dramatic chords, my students grinned and their energy matched that of the accompaniment.  I found myself smiling with them, so happy that they were having this experience.  When the piece ended, the students broke out in spontaneous applause.  It wasn’t perfect, and we went back and worked on a few things, but all in all, a challenge and a success.

So, why so extraordinarily ordinary? Well, the parent accompanist just happens to be a Steinway Artist and the Director of the School of Music at the University of Nebraska.  I happen to teach his children and he came to the concert because he son plays in the 5th grade band.  He is a busy man, just finishing up his first year at the University and it would never have occurred to me to ask him to accompany a bunch of 10 and 11 year old students.  However, he didn’t hesitate to ask if I would mind if he did.  So, if you could imagine the musical diversity in the room yesterday morning; a PhD Steinway artist working with my student teacher accompanying a bunch of kids preparing for an elementary concert.  All working towards the same goals, all doing their best at whatever level they had attained so far, all of us taking turns at making mistakes – and I mean ALL of us.  (I won’t embarrass my guest by telling you what they were : ). All of us, making music together.

As music educators, when we say Music Making by All, so many times we talk about diversity in terms of things like culture and race, but there is also diversity in experience and age and none of it matters with music.  Making music is making music, no matter your background or level of expertise and everyone is working towards the common goal of creating something beautiful and exciting, something that is never the same way twice; art created in the moment.  Musicians at all levels, encouraging and applauding each other.  It is really an example for all in terms of how to work collaboratively with everyone working towards a common goal.  Pretty awe inspiring actually.

I have to admit, that it was so ordinary, that the extraordinary didn’t hit me until later.  Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t always see this kind of collaboration in other academic areas outside of the arts, the kind of opportunity where kids and adults work together on a creative project, all of us responsible for doing our jobs, and where not only are adults leading but actually participating in the music making with the students.

So, in about a week and a half, we get to share our collaboration with an audience.  My hope is that they will begin to see and understand that music is something that transcends all areas of diversity and is truly FOR ALL.