Chances are if you walked into our apartment, you would sense that we are music lovers.   The prints that adorn our walls and the treble clef lamp on the table all hint that music might just be a little important to us.  Not just music however, but specifically music education.  Between the two of us we have spent about 65 years teaching students  from Kindergarten through graduate school, and have decided there’s really not much difference, no matter the age.  People of all ages love to make music.

There’s something special and slightly scary when both you and your significant other are musicians.  There is, of course, the tendency to talk shop but with just slightly more passion than others might talk about their professions because, after all, our profession is the most important.  In this case we have a soprano married to a trumpet player, two large egos, according to stereotypes, attempting to coexist in the same space and somehow it works.  And while I might be obsessed with melodic lines and lyrics and he might be obsessed with high, fast and loud, we are on common ground when it comes to the importance of a music education for every child.

Both of us are what we call “builders” in that we work hard at getting as many students involved in our groups as we possibly can.  Right now he conducts the largest ensemble on campus and I have over 50% of my 4th and 5th graders in choir.  Our strategy is to help students understand that music is more than just an art form, it is a way to build family with like minded people, it is an outlet for when the world gets crazy, it’s something they can do for a lifetime AND it’s fun to do something of quality.  When my students go to a performance and hear someone sing, I want them to say “I know how that feels”.  I also want them to understand that anything worth doing well takes work and that the word “work” is not a bad word, but something necessary when it comes to making great music.

Our backgrounds are as different as night and day – he’s a little bit country and I’m a little bit city.  He grew up listening to the pop music his young aunts and uncles were listening to and I grew up listening to classical and what my dad always called “belters” like Barbra Streisand and Judy Garland.  His grandfather played mandolin and my grandfather played strings as well.  We both had great elementary and high school teachers who got us excited about making music and passing on that excitement.

When we were younger and competition was  important, I think we could compete with each other in terms of what we believed we knew and what we believed was most important about music.  Now with some age and experience we tend to agree with each other on most things, occasionally agreeing to disagree about things like Josh Groban’s vibrato.  It’s a long story.

It’s a life I wouldn’t trade for anything else.  Two musicians, sometimes not the best at doing the sensible thing, sometimes struggling to make ends meet, sometimes having to juggle rehearsals and performances but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.  There’s nothing  like being married to someone who “gets it” when it comes to music.  Someone who understands when music brings you to tears and says nothing or cries with you.  Someone who remembers important times and events in your lives by remembering the music.  Someone who remembers just about every student they’ve ever had, if not by their name, by their instrument.  That would be him, not me.

Yes, ours is a tale of two musicians, working together to hopefully make the world a better place, one music student at a time.