Music to My Ears

Life on the Other Side of the Pandemic?

In an effort to make room for a new teacher next year, I’ve divested the classroom of six years of materials, math lessons and worksheets all recycled, dozens of now empty binders marched to the front office for repurposing, the paper- and binder clips that once tethered them now sorted and rehoused in the supply area. I’m my own recycling enterprise, teetering into OCD territory when it comes to saving the planet.

“We’ll never have to order binder clips again,” one staff member exclaims.

Eventually there is a moratorium on any more three-ring binder returns, so I start hauling them off to Goodwill. I can’t stomach knowing they will end up in the landfill.

I’m trying to do the right thing here.

This year, feeling that you’ve done the right thing has been elusive. Teaching has been a trial, and standardized test results were, in some cases, nothing short of a bloodbath. To end the year and my elementary teaching career on such a low note felt like a kick in the pants, despite knowing that this year’s tests didn’t count.

In an effort to boost my morale, I left the classroom earlier than usual one May Friday, filling a bag with empty binders and loading them into the car for a trip to Goodwill. Mission accomplished, I then drove to a nearby pizza place to sooth myself with a couple of slices.

Sliding the tip of a cheesy triangle onto my tongue, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, an old geezer in a straw hat approach. He asked if I lived locally and started telling me about a nearby outdoor concert that evening. My pizza reverie interrupted, I balanced my New York stink eye with my kind teacher self and avoided saying anything untoward, although I shuddered to think he might be trying to pick me up. Instead, I opted to conclude it was God Himself telling me to just get out and listen to some live outdoor music.

So I did, and yes, I went alone. It was a beautiful evening, and it had been 15 months since my last live show.

Cathedral Brass Small Ensembles

The Cathedral Brass, based in Vienna, Virginia, did not disappoint. The program featured small group ensembles, starting with a brass quintet performing a movie music montage, moving from the East to West Coast with New York, New York, The Adams Family theme, the Music Man’s ‘Then There was You’, and finally, the theme from The Magnificent Seven. The quintet followed with the Canadian Brass version of W.C. Handy’s Beal Street Blues.

How could one not feel uplifted?

It was actually the trombone quartet that stopped me in my tracks. They started with Brahms, shifted into Chicago’s Make Me Smile, then the William Tell, and finally, a medley from Frozen. The lady trombone player absolutely captivated me. In close to six decades of music loving, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a female trombonist in a professional ensemble. Plus, she was a doppelganger for my assistant principal.

To top it all off, the trombones sported bell covers, which made them look like instruments wearing masks. It didn’t take much digging to confirm that they indeed served the exact same function, helping prevent the spread of aerosols.

Cathedral Brass Trombone Quartet

Next up was the jazz combo, guitar, keyboards, drums, tuba, trombone, and trumpet. The combo led with, of all things, the hymn How Great Thou Art, then Blackberry Winter, and finally, Duke Ellington’s Beal Street Blues, claiming Washington, D.C.-born Ellington as a local connection.

The performers later channelled Benny Goodman in a version of Europe’s Final Countdown, and there were even whiffs of one of my current favorite groups, Post Modern Jukebox, in another selection.

There is something magical about music performed in the outdoors. I can remember standing up close, swaying to Natalie Merchant at Summer Stage in New York City’s Central Park, enfolded in the arms of my then love as Merchant sang Kind and Generous decades ago. I remember racing my bicycle up the East Drive in Central Park, and hearing Bobby McFarrin singing Don’t Worry; Be Happy with the New York Phil.

Once the Cathedral Bass show wrapped, I explored the adjacent grounds only to discover a plaque honoring the onetime Washington Post gardening columnist. I didn’t know of her, but I bet I would have liked her. Gardening and writing, what could be wrong, especially when they are playing music in your former backyard?

Hearing live music in person was like a hospital patient getting a transfusion. In fact, the musicians were so good that I sought out their performance the next night, cajoling friends to join me. We sat in lawn chairs within a socially distanced square spray-painted on the grass, right behind straw hat man, who did not detect me.

How have you started to dip your toes out back in the world?