Just survive til intermission

I don't know if I've said this yet here or not--at times, I fancy myself somewhat of a musician.  In fact, though you can't always tell by the way I play it, I've studied trombone for about ten years.  As a capstone to a decade of study and four years of college, I decided to give a trombone recital this past weekend.

Preparing an hour-long classical recital is quite an undertaking.  On top of finding and securing a performance space, hiring and paying stage- and house-managers, you have to find, rehearse with, and pay a pianist; research, write, and print program notes; and most likely host some manner of reception (free food draws a crowd).  I've worked on the literature for this recital for about three months.  The performance, which was attended by my entire family, a lot of my friends, and several special professors, was generally pretty lackluster.  Given the chance, I'd like to erase the entire first half of music and take a second swing.  After intermission, with relaxed nerves, a bit of attitude, and a healthy resignation to my fate, the music actually came off much better.

From a performer's perspective, though, the printed program is a serious, and unforgiving, mandate.  I wrote and I prepared and I printed the programs myself.  I chose the order.  I told the audience that the show would progress in a certain way-- like a contract not to be broken.  When, as I started the second of three Schumann Romances, I wanted to run offstage with my tail between my legs and an ice pack on my tired lips, the paper program that every person in the room held in their hands forced me to remain onstage.

Now that the show is over, that piece of paper exists as the only physical reminder of a fairly significant day in my life.  It's an artifact for which I gave up at least three months and at most ten years of hard work.  It represents a day that cost me a great deal of money and a greater portion of emotional energy.  And it certifies an occasion that was for me an opportunity to gather and thank several groups of otherwise disconnected people; my family, my friends and roommates, the professors who have shaped these four years of my life.  They all came together, bound by no particular love of the trombone, but rather by a common association with me.  And they all left with full ears, with my sincerest gratitude, and with a printed program to remind them of that hour we spent together. 

Those many groups of people in the audience were not at all related before the performance, and indeed many of them will have no greater interaction than a shared listening experience on an April Saturday.  Even so, they all carry a common artifact--the printed program which once sealed my fate, and which now exists as the only tangible reminder of a very special day.