Band Performance: April 28

I'm first flute, fourth chair in the concert band of the local university here, and we had our last performance of the semester last Thursday. Here is a more comprehensive account than you ever wanted.

After supper, I got dressed in sleek black slacks and black top. Dr. P, the conductor, has made a big deal this year about the girls being modestly attired in the band. Apparently, last year, there was a big problem with people wearing strapless dresses and dresses that didn't go below the knee. Not, of course, that I would ever try to wear one of those sorts of dresses to a band concert. Anyhow, while I daubed that peculiar substance called "make-up" on my face, I listened to an NPR report about how unbiased they are. It was enough to make me want to laugh aloud, but I couldn't for fear of smearing the mascara. :)

I drove myself to campus, my feet in their black ballet shoes (I always wear ballet shoes on stage because the don't clomp or squeak the way normal shoes do) pushing down uncertainly on the pedals of the car, unused to the feeling of vulnerability through the thin soles.

Families were already gathering in the entry area of the concert hall, buying tickets, socializing, taking pictures. I pushed my way through the crowd and padded down the hall of professors' studios to the band room, where everyone was gathering to warm up. Meredith, one of the principal French horn players, swished around in a flattering black dress. Three of the other flutists and I admired her, and she grinned at us as though she were a little girl. The dress had a gauzy over-skirt, with a swirl of silver sparkles flung about her knees so that it looked as though the Milky Way had descended onto her gown.

We warmed up on the familiar B flat scale, Dr. P leading us carefully, calling us on, as a hunter calls on his dogs. In a sense, we were his dogs: a pack sent with our noise and our music to hunt down Silence.

At last, the chafing of the waiting was over. We filed onto the stage. I was one of the first ones through the stage doors, gliding past the copper-sheathed kettledrums and forcing my way through the semicircles of black chairs. I clutched my flute in my right hand as though I were a warrior grasping his sword. The stage lights threw a hazy silver veil between the stage and the audience, but still as I peered into the darkness beyond the light I could recognize members of my family and a couple of my friends, Princess and Marigold, sitting in the audience, grinning at me.

Presently the full band had assembled on stage. Behind me, I could hear the trumpeters warming up, the percussionists testing their various instruments, the clarinetists running their owl-hoot scales. Sitting on the front row between a flutist and the one oboist in the band, I dangled my feet above the floor and ran chromatic scales, trying hard to concentrate on the sound from my flute, trying hard to make sure that I wasn't out-of-tune (sharpness has been my bane for the past semester :). The oboist gave us our tuning note a couple of times, and after each time, we sat in uncomfortable silence, waiting for Dr. P, and when we realized that he wasn't coming, the flutist sitting beside me would giggle, and one of the trumpeters would whack out a note, and we'd start warming up again.

Dr. P did come at last, though, and the concert started. We played "Courtly Airs and Dances", a set of four Renaissance dances, each with its own definite character- the "Intrada" and "Allemande", first and last, both regal, buoyant movements; the "Basse-Dance", with its carefully intertwined melodies like French lace; and the fiery "Sartarello". Then came "Down Longford Way", a soothing arrangement of an American folk tune, and after that "Crystals", a piece designed to show just how many weird sounds a band can produce. It's full of harmonics and peculiar trills and all sorts of percussion tricks- not a lovely piece at all by my standards. Last, "Tricycle", a sweet, jazzy little piece running on three melodies.

After our part of the concert was over, I hurried out to pick up my instrument case, then quickly went to join Princess, Marigold, and my family in the concert hall because the symphonic band was up next. The symphonic band played the usual sort of band pieces- loud and brassy. I must admit that I liked our half of the concert better, even if we are considered the lowest-ranked band at the university here. Our part of the concert had much more variety. There were a couple of nice interludes in some of the pieces- poignant clarinet/flute duets and the like, but other than that, it was all the same noisy, marchy stuff. Doubtless more technically difficult than the concert band's music, but perhaps not as interesting to listen to.

When the concert was complete and after all the clapping, I waited with Princess and Marigold until their father came to pick them up. They sat on a bench outside the concert hall, and I stood with them, shivering in the cold wind. When they were gone, I hurried between the English building and the Visual Arts building to the parking lot behind them. I drove home past the massive bulk of the football stadium. The tunnels beneath the tall tiers of seats reminded me of the old passages under the Colosseum. Electric lights cast garish shadows on the stark concrete walkways and steel supports. Futher down the road, three Indian men hurried across the crosswalk. A young man and woman strolled down the sidewalk, the woman's shadow under the streetlights sliding behind her like the train of a wedding dress. The street lights glided along the expanse of road, strung on the gleaming-gossamer wires of the telephone lines. When I turned into my own neighborhood, I glanced up to the sky. Spotlights from Tumbleweeds, a bar and dance hall on the edge of town, freckled the folded face of the clouds above.

I was thankful to be able at last to strip off my concert gear, swab out my flute, and go to bed.