Grown-up band

I just about cried on my husband's chest last night, I was so grateful to him.

It's because he agreed to help me with the children so I can participate in Grown-Up Band. I love my students to death, but truth be told, I really could use some Grown-Up Band right now. All day, every day, I work with students at various levels of musical competence and interest, and I hardly ever get to play the piano, much less my true love, the oboe.

In several of my classes, I have high school students working on independent things. They only need me to check in on them weekly, I trust them to work on their goals. With this minimal amount of what they see as interference, I can keep them on track and happy.

In the other classes, it's barely controlled chaos (see Chinese fire drill and The Covenant).

My fifth graders are working on opening cases and putting instruments together "slowly" and "carefully." These happen to be the same words I use with my three year old. These little guys are jumping all around, they're so eager to get their instruments, the problem is, you can't jump around with an instrument in your hand, especially when everyone else is jumping around too.

In the sixth grade, we are working on one song at a time out of their method books, and having to stop and learn new fingerings at the same time. It's such a big group that it's really hard to give any one student individual attention. What's most difficult is that at that age, they clamor for it. So I solve problems at the same time that I try to keep the rest of the thirty-five kids occupied, at a noise-level that is acceptable, and by acceptable I mean less than 100 decibels.

In the middle-high band, it's like pulling teeth, or, as I told them, brushing a three-year-old's teeth the hard way. I have to do everything I can in that class--firmness, frowns, humor, dances, self-deprecation--everything, to get them to do what I want. Even then, some students still struggle with the notes. Some students won't hold their trumpets properly even if I remind them every day. Some students take forever to learn the notes and by then we've moved on.

So my life, with regard to music, isn't easy. Kids with instruments. I love them all to death, but they drive me nuts.

Here is what Grown-Up Band involves. Adults and responsible high school students coming to rehearsal on time. They've practiced their music at home so they are familiar with it. They don't have gum in their mouths.

During rehearsal time of Grown-Up Band, these aforementioned responsible, prepared, non-gum-chewing individuals--gasp!!--stay quiet. They listen to what the conductor is asking them to do, and then--may the heavens open and shine forth a bright and beautiful light--they do it.

And beautiful music is the result.

No teeth pulling or brushing the hard way. No waiting for silence. No waiting for the trumpets to get with the program and participate. Nobody sitting in the back pretending to play. Best of all, no drummers messing around tossing mallets or poking each other with drumsticks.

It's a thrilling feeling, one I didn't know I've missed all these years, to be part of a living, breathing organism called a wind ensemble, where all the individuals who are a part of it work together, participate fully, are competent at their musical craft, and where the resulting whole is much greater than the sum of its parts because the individuals have laid aside their personal agendas in favor of the greater good.

In just two weeks, I get to be a part of that, once again. Aside from the worm of panic squirming in my gut wondering if I have any decent oboe reeds, I could dance on a cloud, because I'm going to get to go to Grown-Up Band.

Now, I have to go mop up the front of my husband's shirt.