Before I was born, my dad got 26 scholarships in trumpet performance to places like The Julliard School, Tanglewood Institute, Eastman, etc. He’d just gotten first chair all-state, meaning that his senior year of high school he was literally the best young player in Texas.
Before I was born, my mother was a piano performance and pedagogy major, often accompanying my father. She’d played piano at her church since she was a kid, and was a middle school choir director back then, transferring to elementary school music when I was older.
My mother tried to teach me the piano. My father tried to teach me the trumpet. To this day, I play the radio better than either.
When my father was in the ministry, the music programs at our church were unmatched. Therefore, my music education was twofold. I took trumpet at school and sang in the choir on the weekends.
I am a much better singer than trumpet player, because I don’t get stage fright when I sing………….
Once, after a particularly misguided attempt at a solo, a parishioner said, “I’m sorry your trumpet misfired.” So, you see, I was TREMENDOUS.
I’ve been able to read music almost as long as I’ve been able to read books- with the caveat that I’m golden as long as it’s not bass clef. My mother’s piano lessons did not take on me. I still can’t read bass clef and it’s been 40 years.
“Leslie, could you read the bass part up an octave?”
“No. No, I cannot.”
My mother was giving a piano lesson when her water broke. So when you ask me what my life would be like without music, I can only give you a blank stare. I’m steeped in it, performing for the first time when I was three. I stood on the chancel with the rest of the children’s choir (with my mother conducting) and my mother couldn’t get me to open my mouth. When everyone was filing off stage, that’s when I decided what the people could really use was a solo.
I AM A PROMISE! I AM A POSSIBILITY!
I am not sure whether my mother or my father stopped me.
My imagination is not good enough to unweave mental material this thick.
Stories That Are All True 