It has always been the music.  It has always been the place to go when I haven’t known where else to go.  It’s the place I go to be with people of like minds, all of us speaking a language that is not the proverbial “universal” language that so many others refer to but that language of giving in to and expressing emotions of all kinds.  The idea that vibrations at certain frequencies put together in a certain order can illicit such life changing thoughts and feelings is nothing short of a God thing for me.

It’s music that can literally bring forth agony and ecstasy in someone’s heart.  It makes the heart flutter and sing, it brings forth memories with all its laughter and tears.  We put certain hard working musicians on pedestals because there is something about the way they play or sing that can be surreal,  possessing an other worldliness that we somehow can’t put into words but it finds a way to pierce our hearts and minds.  Notice I didn’t say talented because being a musician myself, I know that I am only as good as the work I put into it.  I sing on pitch because I grew up listening to a lot of different kinds of music and I mimicked it.  I keep a steady beat because I worked on it.  That part is no big secret.  It’s when this work ethic meets letting yourself go and not being caught up in what others think that creates the magic.

There is nothing more magical than making music with others.  It stretches you, makes you better than you thought you could be.  I love singing with people who are better than I am because it pushes me to work harder and then the music explodes.  I’ve been fortunate to play and sing with some of the best, no name dropping intended here, but when you work with these people you work or die.  Names like Revelli, Painter, Fennell, and Robert Shaw.  I was clueless as to who these people were until much later and have marveled that I had the opportunity to work under them.  I mean, what are the chances?  I think it was meant to be.  I was in the right place at the right time.  I had a teacher who encouraged me to do things even when I wasn’t sure what I was getting into.

Music theory began at an early age, with my dad at the kitchen table to my band director encouraging me to be in a small theory class to finally having college professors who were patient with my lack of natural ability in the subject.  I loved learning stories about great composers and I love telling these stories to my students.  The kids sometimes ask why musicians are so weird because it seems like these historic figures tend to do some rather unorthodox things, but it’s only because they’re fearless.  To create great music I’m convinced you must be fearless.

Maybe fearless isn’t the right word.  Maybe doing something despite the fear is better.  Many of those famous composers and hard working musicians shake in their boots  before the magic kicks in and they just surrender to the music.  Despite my introversion, even I’ve experienced this musical high that is hard to describe.  I’ve experienced it singing alone, or playing or singing with a group.  I’ve experienced it conducting a group and have seen it on their faces and in their eyes when the magic takes over.  I tend to think I love this even more than when I experience it myself.  I believe that’s one of the main reasons I became a teacher.  The feeling brought about by my teachers was something I felt I could pass on.

Now after many years of learning, teaching, singing, playing and conducting, I spend a lot of my time talking with others who share the same passion I have for the subject.  I get the opportunity to encourage new and experienced teachers to remember why we decided to get into music education and who we’re doing it for.  Invariably they are reminded of someone who opened up the magical doors for them and the passion returns for some who have been worn down by time and all the seemingly unnecessary things attached to education these days.

This past weekend that magical feeling happened again but it was not from a musical encounter.  It was a different kind of magic, the kind of magic that happens when a group of people who have like minded purpose work together to make things happen for others.  The same training that made us musicians in the first place, taken to another level. I pinch myself every time I work with these great teacher musicians and often wonder why I’m so lucky.  One of my wonderful colleagues reminded me of the story of Esther in the Bible, quoting “Perhaps you were born for such a time as this”.  Perhaps I was.  And I’m grateful.