Photo by JIUN-JE LIN on Pexels
I just came back from almost two hours in a stuffy middle-school gym. It was the annual all-town band concert. The acoustics were terrible. Parents, their heads bent down to their phones, walked up and down bleachers and searched for seats. Little kids were antsy and shuffling around in their chairs. Although the evening was cool, the gym had no ventilation. The benches were packed tight and hard to sit on.
But, despite all of that, the music was beautiful.
My daughter is now in high school, and it has been pure joy watching her progress musically through the years. From the squeaky off-key renditions of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” all the way to a near-professional sounding “Rhapsody in Blue,” it has been such a privilege to get her to watch her grown up playing her flute. I can't begin to express how lovely it was to listen to my daughter along with hundreds of other students show off their hours of practice.
Our school district has put in quite a bit of money into its music program, and, with a dynamic and passionate teacher/conductor, I can see that the students are being taught musicianship at the highest level.
Here we all are, enjoying the jaunty melodies of young fingers dancing across the piano, the brass section wailing, and the flutes and winds hopping around all coming together in a crescendo that makes us all forget that we’re sitting on uncomfortable bleachers as we wipe the sweat away from our brows and rapidly fan ourselves with folded up paper programs.
Music is beautiful, and it brings an entire community together from the youngest child clutching their music stand to keep it from toppling over to the oldest grandparent watching their grandchildren through tired eyes.
It is a beautiful thing.
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