This week I attended a band concert in which my grandson was playing. It was a district level band for which the players had competed for a spot. The guest conductor was a distinguished college professor of music. What was interesting about the evening, in addition to the excellent performance, were the comments made by the conductor before each piece. There was a great deal of emphasis on how the students had to listen to one another and learn to play together rather than as individual soloists. The drills they had been put through in the day and a half they had practiced before the event were described, including playing without the conductor so that they really had to adjust to those around them to produce the results that were good for the musical selection.
I watched all those eager young faces, intent on their instruments, the man leading them, and the music they were producing. I thought we adults could learn something from them. They were in concert, each giving up a piece of themselves for the whole, and happy to do so. According to the adult faculty in charge they had been open minded, willing to learn new things, and committed to producing the best possible results.
Perhaps if we could invite the quarrelling, self-centered, every-man-for-himself adults who are populating our headlines and our country to a high school band concert, maybe things might change for the better and we could all be in concert like these young musicians.
