Tonight Noah had his first concert as trombonist in the 5th grade band. A proud moment for this dad as he followed in my footsteps and the footsteps of my dad. And he's playing the same horn that grandpa and I both played. He chose the 'bone all on his own. His teacher says he has natural talent.
Of course the music wasn't great by standards of musical excellence. There was no dynamic variation, mostly right notes, relative tuning, robotic time keeping, and all unison.
But, there were broad smiles all around, major gigabytes of photos taken, enthusiastic waves, and raucous moments of applause. The kids and their director did great! The criteria for appreciating the meeting didn't have much to do with "musical excellence," anyway.
It did get me thinking, though, about artistry and how it is developed. The first building block of artistry is passion. The second building block is competence. These kids have the passion. They don't have the competence yet, though. The challenge will be to keep the passion intact enough so that once they develop more competence they can enjoy becoming artists.
For now, though, the passion of playing the slide trombone in the 5th grade band is more than enough to make this dad smile!
Welcome to the fun of blogging!
ReplyDelete