Another busy weekend off of work... Lately, my days off have been so crammed full of things needed to be done, I end up feeling like I do more work on my days off than I do when I am at work. Needless to say, I usually need a few days to recover from my "days off" but I always need to head back to work....
Yesterday was the Dondero High School "Last Bash" for the alumni band and orchestra members. Since they're closing down my high school, or turning it into one massive middle school rather, a bunch of band and orchestra members got together to celebrate, or mourn the end of an era, so to speak. For a lot of us, priviledged enough to have been a part of the music program at school, those four years never leave you. Those four years of intense involvement and dedication really stick with you, and it showed at the performance last night. Anne, a girl I never took the opportunity getting to know [until the past year or so through her journal] despite having sat next to her every day for an entire school year, describs this feeling far better than I could, and so, I will quote her....
i don't mean to get all band nerd, but band really defined high school for me. it was what i did--i was in the marching band, the symphony band, the symphony orchestra, the pit orchestra for the spring musical, and the metropolitan youth orchestra on the side--the band room was the first place i went in the morning and the last place i visited before i left for the day. for a few moments, surrounded by band people again, i felt a little of my old energy come back. i'm a far cry from the manic teen i was four years ago and that's largely a good thing, but i didn't even realize how much i miss feeling vibrantly alive like that.
the whole band experience itself was fantastic to have one more time. wandering around warming up and talking, filing up the stairs holding your skirt, confusedly trying to navigate to your seat through all the chairs and no aisleways; lights, giddiness, nervousness, standing afterwards and looking out into the audience and not really being able to distinguish specific faces. i was glad i got to play for mr. perkins one last time. he was there at the very beginning, showing me how to make donuts on my fingers when i pressed them to the holes on the clarinet, and he was there at the very end, as i played my last note in the dondero auditorium.
Over one hunderd people between the band and orchestra came out to perform one last time on the Dondero auditorium stage.... just like old times. Decades of dedication to the music program spanned the stage as musicians from as far back as the graduating class of 1960 and as recent as 2006 performed.
Now that its all over, I'm disappointed for letting this even pass the way it did....
I was one of two representatives from my graduating class. There were 17 graduating seniors in band that year....
I didn't take the music as seriously as I should have, with as much as this performance supposedly meant to me. I practiced the music twice in the month and a half I had it. I couldn't play half the music, I just faked it and caught up during the parts I could actually play. I was third chair, third to two very serious players, who out played me twelve times over and danced circles around me while I was trying to get my fingering straight...
I never got a chance to say thank you or good bye to my band director. He was the one who organized this whole thing. He has been the prominent music figure in my life...he was my first band director way back in fifth grade and he was my band director the day I graduated. I've never really been able to show my gratitude for everything, in part because I don't know what to say, and because he always seemed to have this unapproachable quality to him, where the most you could do was give him a quick smile and nod and that was it....
Pictures of the event, and the random gathering that followed, can be seen here.