A Shinning Afternoon of Horn and Heart

    It is a great afternoon that sunlight likely turns everything it touched into honey, thick, golden and slow. Our Jazz band had piled into senior's activity room, instruments in tow, we tuned and lined up to provide live concert to our senior friends whose faces held life times of stories. I clutched my French horn, its coiled shining brass was warmed in my palms, as I scanned around. Afternoon sunbeams drifted through lace curtains, dust motes dancing in the glow,  and the air hummed with the soft chatter of wheelchairs squeaking, teacups clinking and the rustle of shawls being adjusted. I was there to play Franz Strauss's Concert piece for Horn and Orchestra, Op.8, this is a beautiful solo that I had already practiced for months, its tricky runs notes and lyrical phrases that I have familiar as my own heartbeat.

    To be frankly, I still have little nervous at beginning of concert each time. Even for this chamber live concert, when I sit on my chair and make ready to play, my knees trembled. The horn felt heavier than usual, its weight a reminder to me the piece's demand. When I lifted it to my lips, the room fell into a quickly silence that feels like reverence. As the first note spilled out, the rich, rounded tones seem to merge with the sunlight.  I played the cascading arpeggios, the tender melodies, the stormy crescendos Strauss had penned over a century ago. And then, mid-phrase, I noticed her.

    A lady in a black sweater sat in a wheelchair just beside me, her brown hair catching the light like a halo. While I play solo, her hands knotted, rested gently on her chair, and her eyes, brightly, alive never left my horn. When I reached the cadenza, that notorious passage where the music spirals into a flurry of sixteenth notes, I know this part full of trick notes and magic melody. Her lips moved faintly as each notes flow. I stumbled, just slightly, on the final trill, it was not as perfect as I practice at home, I messed a few notes but I still handled it and make it through. There was warm applause come to me just like I finished my major test, I take a rest breath. "You play very good," she talked to give and give me a warm hug. "That part just like trying to catch sparrows, isn't ?"

     I laughed and also startled, obviously, she knows this piece well. She introduced herself as a retired music teacher and an orchestra conductor. "I taught this piece every part ten years ago," she smiled, her finger tapping the air as if pointing to the note sheet,  "The cadenza part, Strauss wants it to sound effortless. Let me show you." She mentioned for my music sheet, and I knelt beside her wheel chair, the music sheet spread across our laps, her hands have little trembled, but her mind was precise. "See these accidentals?" she said and tracing the notation. "Think of those notes as stepping stones, not hurdles. Lighten you lip muscle on your mouth piece when you play here, dah-dah, not duh-duh." I use my pencil marked those notes just like highlight right answer for the tough question. She sang those notes in a fragile, off-key warble from her mouth. With my pencil marked went through, all of these tough notes parts rearrange themselves. We disserted and discussed this piece like detectives, her insights threading through the magic notes like a map, make it a clear view in my head.

      My other team members are packed up round us,  the time had dissolved. She told me about her years teaching in the cramped classroom, from our conversation, I feel how music was a language that outlived memory. "You'll forget many things as time go," she said, and her eyes glinting, "but the pieces that you love will never leave, they have become a part of your bones."

     When I stood to leave, she pressed a peppermint into my palm, she joked, a teacher's old habit. I slipped the candy into my pocket just like I received a Christmas gift. Yes, I learned a lot from the conversation, not only the performance. As I walked out into  the fading sunlight of the afternoon, the cadenza looped in my head, it is no longer a tough note to me, but a conversation bridge between an old generation musician and a young musician that I might become, just like our other jazz band members. I feel like we weren't so different, two generation musicians, decades apart, still learning to let the music rich our life.