Mira pointed to a Glenn Miller collection, and Celia wanted more piano music for her room. I went ahead and grabbed a Benny Goodman disc as well, and for Celia grabbed my little selection of the Phillips ‘Great Pianists of the 20th Century’. Tonight, Celia went to sleep with Rosalyn Tureck playing Bach Partitas.

Big Band music has a special place in my heart… when high school marching band would finally slow down in Fall, concert and jazz band took on a focus. Midway through freshman year, I FINALLY got to switch to saxophone, and we got to play ‘Sing, Sing, Sing’ (a la Benny Goodman rather then Louis Prima). After years of playing clarinet I was finally playing sax, and when I hear ‘Sing, Sing, Sing’ I immediately go out and buy a Benny Goodman record and hear … his clarinet. And I suddenly realize how cool clarinet could have been. I sold the instrument short. I remember thinking ‘I should go back to it!’ but then I hear John Coltrane shortly afterwards and am hooked on sax. So while I stuck with the saxophone (and still get my alto out every now and then) it was that first year of jazz band that finally made me appreciate the clarinet, and it is still one of my favorite instruments. And it works so well in modern music as well… such an amazing range of timbre within single notes, and across the whole instrument.

All this of course reminds me when I first started learning how to play in instrument in 6th grade. I’d had a guitar for some time, but never learned how to play it really. And when there were music classes in 6th grade, I really wanted to play alto sax. I wanted to play ‘Tequila’ like the 6th graders the year before me did… but the school didn’t have any left. My parents took me to the local music store, and again, no alto saxes were left. ‘But we do have clarinets’ said the clerk at the store, an guy in his 60s or so. I came wanting an alto sax, and a guy in his 60s tells me all they have is clarinet… I go from thinking I can get a cool alto sax to a stodgy clarinet. Well, that was just how my 6th grade mind thought. Still, I learned how to read music and learned how to play well with others. By the next year in junior high I auditioned into the second best band in the school, and was set to be in the top band the next year when we moved. By that time, I had started to learn guitar as well and I was hooked. Not having a band at the K-8 school I moved into when I moved to Roseville didn’t stop me, and I kept practicing on my own because I really enjoyed it.

I am often asked by other music friends when we are going to start music lessons for Celia (or, a few times, I receive looks of shocked horror that Celia isn’t already in lessons). I don’t think it was my parents intentions to not force lessons on me so I would enjoy making music more, but that is how it worked out. In the over twenty years of playing music, I have always enjoyed it. I’m sure I could be a better musician in many ways (especially a better instrumentalist) but I don’t know what the price I would have had to pay is. What I do know is, right now, Celia is listening to a wonderful pianist play Bach in her room as she goes to sleep. She will probably listen to this CD for a number of weeks, or switch back to Beethoven or Miles Davis. During the day, her and Mira want music on so they can dance. They have instruments all around them. They play on toy pianos and real pianos. Celia has bowed my violin while I practice cello, and has sung along with her toy accordion. If she asks for lessons, we’ll find a way to get them for her. And if Celia or Mira DO play instruments later in life, I look forward to practicing scales with them, then playing duets or trios. But for now, no pressure. Just lots of good music playing in the house.