Today is one of those days when I don’t feel like writing about anything important, anything serious, or anything cool. It’s just the day before Friday. I did go to our local community concert band tonight, I haven’t played with them in years. Some were old friends I haven’t seen in fifteen years or more, who were teaching music when I was a kid. Others were young enough to be my kids.
It always makes me smile when I see cross-generational interaction on this kind of level. We had guys in their 60′s playing alongside junior high schoolers. And they were all there for one reason: making music.
This is the kind of thing that just makes me happy. Instead of just having fun playing music in bars for money, this is a chance for me to share my 25 years of music experience with people who are just learning the craft. Plus there were some of my Sinfonia brothers there, it is always a pleasure to hang out with fellow men of music.
If we aren’t impacting people around us, and teaching the next generation, then what good are we doing? I don’t expect a kid to learn everything they’ll ever need to know about music from only 3 band directors… there’s so much more out there to learn, if they would care to look. Public school systems aren’t geared to teach children about music more than it takes to play at football games and the occasional Christmas concert. Where will they learn about music’s life-changing power?
It starts with us.
So, okay, I did come up with a decent post after all! 
January 30th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
I used to play with the Bayou Community Band. The alto sax section was typically Jennifer Foret (Vandy ’98), me, Julie Gilfour (EDW ’99), and that skinny lady who gave sax lessons in Thib. (I can’t remember her name). Other people came and went.
January 30th, 2010 at 2:00 pm
I think that lady was Karen Diket, she’s still around. I haven’t seen her in a while, though. I certainly missed it.