Play on!

Last Monday I had the most wonderful, life-affirming, uplifting experience I have had since arriving in New York.  I attended the first rehearsal of the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra, a local community orchestra now celebrating its 40th anniversary.  It is filled to the edges of the stage with humble musicians, some of whom use music to pay the rent and many more who don't.  They aren't payed to be there; in fact, there is a membership fee to play in the orchestra.  It just goes to show precisely how dedicated they are.

When I arrived, people were immediately friendly.  Hi!  How are you?  Are you new?  Welcome!  People welcomed me, pulled me into their conversations, allowed me to sit in the middle instead of on the outskirts, noticed me and wanted me there.

And then the music started.  Oh, what rapture!  We sight-read a Brahms symphony (replete, of course, with the kinds of melodies that only a cello section can pull off with affective grace and depth of feeling), the first major symphony I had performed in two years.  Through our instruments we sang, we hummed, we soared, we crawled, we lifted ourselves in rising, swelling melodies, forced ourselves through the cramped and jagged spaces of dissonance, then resolved with harmonious consonance upon the conductor's subtle cue.

Sometimes I forget I'm a musician.

In the world of music education, I have always considered myself as a teacher of music rather than a musician who teaches.  It is not that I doubt or downplay my musical talents, but rather that I put more emphasis on my talents as an educator who happens to use music to teach children.  Among the music education majors in college, though we started out with nearly identical musical course loads as those of the performance majors, by our senior years we had distanced ourselves from our musical peers.  Once we had completed the requirement for performance with the orchestra or band, many of us devoted our energies to learning pedagogy, methodology, conducting, and the basics of other instruments.  By our final semester we were rarely on campus, spending all our time instead in schools where we taught as student teachers.  There were plenty of education majors who continued to perform, but once I was out of the orchestra the only performances I cared about were those of my students.

I've never wanted to be a soloist.  I might have had fleeting dreams of such a life when I was younger, imagining myself sitting at a Steinway 9-foot grand on some stage, but I abandoned such flights of fancy once I realized how badly I wanted to be a teacher.  It wasn't an either-or situation, mind you.  It was simply a realization that a classroom is a far more exciting venue than a stage.  Besides, I never would have cut it as a professional performer.  When I was a young musician in a small town, I was pretty decent at my variety of instruments and didn't think much of it.  But once I started comparing myself to other musicians at statewide summer music camps and at college, I realized I just couldn't quite compete.  Conveniently, I had no interest in doing such a thing.

However, despite my aversion to performing a solo in the cello Master Class (the unsavory memories of which linger in the back of my mind like the smell of cigarettes in an old hotel room), I loved performing with the orchestra.  Loathed the audition process, despised the sectionals where, try as I might, I would inevitably be heard, but I loved the feeling of playing with so many other musicians.  I didn't care if I was last chair.  I just liked the experience of making music with a group of like-minded individuals.  It was like a group project that actually worked, and we all know the success rate of those in school.

The last time I played with the university's symphony orchestra, we played Tchaikovsky and I remember thinking as we neared the end of the piece I don't want this to end, because this may be my last opportunity to play such wonderful music with such talented musicians. I figured that any community orchestra wouldn't quite measure up to the caliber of music we performed regularly, because the only community orchestras I knew were good but still very amateur.  That performance, in December of 2010, was the last time I performed a concert with an orchestra.

There aren't many things I can say I absolutely love about New York, but one of the things I've discovered is that not only is there a community orchestra, but there are many.  And not only are they plentiful, but they're good!  

But the greatest part for me? That it is somewhere I am invited to belong.  Maybe it was just this particular ensemble, but I truly felt they were happy I was there.  People checked their personal bubbles at the door in favor of the more inclusive embrace of the orchestra, a refreshing change of pace from what I have experienced thus far.

I can't wait to go back.