My holiday season indulgence: A night of middle school music

I have many friends whose idea of self-indulgence during the holiday season involves pedicures, massages, or long lunches at fine restaurants.

Mine is a lot more low-budget. My yearly December indulgence is attending the middle school holiday concert.

Last night, just as with every year, someone I run into in the audience is bound to look at the stage, look down at their program, and say in a slightly puzzled tone, “So Tim is in the chorus this year…? Or Holly is playing with the jazz band….?”

Their puzzlement is justified. Neither of my kids is in any musical group associated with the school (or any musical group not associated with the school, unless you count Holly hiphop-dancing on her bed while blasting her iPod), and they can’t imagine why I’d bother to spend a whole evening during the busiest time of year attending a school concert if neither of my kids will be on stage.

But that’s just what makes it an indulgence: I’m under no obligation whatsoever to be there. I go just because I so enjoy hearing talented kids sing and play instruments, and I get such a kick out of seeing them all so dressed up and engaged in the moment of performance. As they file onto the stage, pick up their instruments, train their gaze on the conductor, bow to the audience’s applause….it’s such a different view of the same kids whom I normally see thundering in and out of the school cafeteria or swarming the soccer field or jostling each other in line at the ice cream stand. This is the side of them that foretells a different kind of future ahead: one in which they know how to carry themselves with dignity, dress formally, follow someone else’s lead in order to create magnificent results.

So I go to the yearly holiday concert because it’s such a pleasure to witness this, but also because in some small way, I feel like it’s an important exercise in conquering the tendency to rush through the holiday season. Yes, there were many things I could have been doing with those same two hours, many items that would be crossed off my To Do list today if I’d skipped the concert. I might have made some progress with holiday baking. I might have mopped the kitchen floor. I might have packaged the gifts that need to be mailed to Colorado by this weekend. Or I might have finished writing the couple of articles that are due today.

But it’s good sometimes to renounce your To Do list, especially during the holiday season. There was no reason for me to spend two hours at the concert, but I did anyway. I heard some good music, witnessed talent both great and still developing, and made it a priority not to be bustling around in the usual holiday season way. No, it’s not a pedicure or a fancy night out: just a free evening of music in the school auditorium. But I’m really glad I was there.

Time out for music appreciation

During what is perhaps the busiest week of the school year, I took time last night to go to a school concert.

This may not sound surprising, except that neither of my kids was in the concert. Despite the fact that the final weeks of school are always a madly revolving door of team banquets, school performances, classroom presentations, wrap-up meetings, and information sessions about next year, I shrugged it all off last night and spent two hours at a performance by the middle school choir, jazz ensemble and symphonic band.

Other parents who saw me there looked puzzled. “I didn’t know Tim was in the school band,” they said. It appeared that I was an anomaly, there just to hear the music.

But it seemed like the best antidote to all the rush of the past few weeks. Earlier in the week I’d attended Holly’s fourth grade band and chorus concert, but honestly, it just wasn’t the same. I was happy to see Holly and her friends on stage, but there really isn’t a lot of artistic depth at the level they’ve currently achieved. Yes, they’ve progressed a lot since they started their voice and instrument studies back in October, but it still doesn’t make for a great concert. We enjoyed their appearance on stage, but it wasn’t exactly an experience in absorbing fine music.

Hearing the middle school ensembles, on the other hand, is very much an experience in music appreciation. The sounds from stage were rich and melodious. The music was diverse and interesting.

True, I had no real reason to go to this concert. No young performer was peering out from the stage to be sure I was there. No one in my family even opted to come with me.

But sometimes when things get really busy, the answer is to opt out, even for just a couple of hours. I thought of Mahatma Gandhi’s quote about meditation: “I have so much to accomplish today that I must meditate for two hours instead of one.” There were a dozen things around the house I probably should have done last night between 7:30 and 9 p.m. Instead, I sat in an auditorium listening to music.

And it felt wonderful.

More to "Hot Cross Buns" than meets the ear

Back in September when my 9-year-old announced she wanted to start instrument lessons, I didn’t dare to look ahead to the holiday band concert.

Too much stood in the way of any expectation that she would reach that point: the idea that she’d follow through from saying she wanted to take lessons to actually attending the weekly instruction; the practicing; having to get up an hour early once a week in order to be at band rehearsals before school. Too much of it just didn’t seem to play to Holly’s strengths. Since preschool days, she’s avoided team sports – even the ubiquitous suburban soccer leagues – and quit Girl Scouts without ever proceeding beyond Brownie level. She won’t attend Sunday school anymore, and she admitted she’d much rather have free time for playing after school than be part of the kids’ book discussion group at the library.

So I didn’t really expect her announcement in September about trying percussion to turn out much differently from soccer or Scouts. And I certainly didn’t expect we’d get through the first three and a half months and find ourselves seated in the school auditorium waiting for the curtain to go up on a chilly Tuesday evening in December.

But Holly attended her lessons. She practiced between lessons. She learned to lug her bell set on and off the bus and up the steps to the music building at school. She even managed to wake up a half-hour early each Wednesday morning for band rehearsal.

And once we were a couple of months into the routine, I began to look forward to the December concert.

It’s not that I expected to hear fine musicianship or a compelling range of musical selections. The first band concert of the first year of music instruction, which at our school is fourth grade, is instead a showcase of abilities that it would have been hard to imagine some of these kids possessing a few months earlier. Holly, and the other 79 fourth graders, demonstrated throughout the course of the 45-minute-long program that they were able to sit quietly in their seats. They kept their eyes on the conductor. They stood when he motioned them to stand, and they took their places on stage. They bowed on cue.

They played music, too, but in the end, that was the least of what impressed me. Hot Cross Buns and Jingle Bells aren’t difficult compositions, especially for the percussion section, where Holly has indeed made her musical home. What impressed me was the life skills they’ve developed in just these first few months of band: their focus, their respect, their ability to function as a group.

Naturally, Holly still had a few hallmarks of her usual maverick self. While the other girls donned velvet sashes and taffeta skirts; Holly insisted on black ankle pants, a long shirt, a scarf and black boots. Her wardrobe vividly reflected that she’s still not what you’d call a conformist. And she doesn’t need to be. I understand why she’s never found her way with soccer or Scouts or afterschool clubs. She likes to do things her own way and plan her own time.

But apparently not always. By being part of the band and part of this week’s performance, she showed another side: a side that recognizes the value, sometimes, of getting with the program. And as I watched her move with confidence and agility from her bell set to the snare drum to the bass from song to song, I realized that she had found a group she felt vested in.

It’s a start. And maybe by the June concert, I’ll even succeed with the velvet and taffeta dress.

Another year's holiday concert reminds me of how much music matters to the holidays

I hadn’t thought much before yesterday about the role of music in the holidays, but at some point during last night’s holiday concert at church, or maybe earlier in the day when I was listening to liturgical Christmas choral music on the radio while driving, I thought about how music was once considered one of the holiest ways to mark the presence of the spiritual and the belief in the Divine. The early Christian choral music I heard on the radio was written out of a sense of profound celebration. Music isn’t merely an element of entertainment marking holiday gatherings, I then remembered; it is in fact considered a means of expressing witness to the Divine.

The church concert last night included some elements of early Christian music and some elements of the more popular forms of holiday music: standard carols, jazz arrangements, a run-through of Jingle Bells that included all the children in the audience shaking various forms of percussives. It was a wonderful program, just as it is every year, and as I sat there I was conscious of the ways in which the concert carries its own set of milestones and markers of the passage of time. Two 13-year-old girls sang a duet beautifully, and as I listened, I could remember one of them singing in the family choir back when she was a kindergartner, and her earlier solo performances when she was 7 or 8, but I could also remember the very same duet she sang with a friend last night being sung years ago by a young woman who now attends a performing arts college program in New York. I remembered choir members and instrumentalists from years past who have died or left town, and sitting next to our minister reminded me of her predecessor, who loved holiday observances including this annual concert and died prematurely soon after leaving our parish.

But I also remembered how my own family has changed in the years I’ve been attending this annual concert. When we first moved back to town, I took Tim to the holiday concert with me; he was just three years old and a little too restless for my comfort. Holly came with me for the first time when she was two; something about the candles and the music had the effect of putting her into a sound sleep on my lap for the duration of the concert that year. The year after that, she and I had to sneak in and out of the Sanctuary at least three times during the one-hour program because she was at the peak of toilet-training, and it wasn’t going all that well.

Last night, there were other babies and toddlers whose parents were like I once was: far too preoccupied with keeping their small children quiet and calm to enjoy the program much at all. I knew how they felt, though: in those early years it seems so important to expose children to the special spectacle of live holiday music that you try hard to make it happen even when all evidence points to the fact that they probably just aren’t ready yet to sit through a program not specifically geared toward preschoolers.

But I’m at a different stage now. Tim opted not to come at all; at 12, his own interest in watching football overrules the novelty of being out at night, not to mention any priority on having time with Mom. Holly did come with me, but shortly after we sat down she moved to sit with four friends of hers. Suspecting that five 8-year-olds sharing a pew during a performance might not be such a good idea, I issued some stern words about behaving well; but I need not have worried; the girls all behaved beautifully, listening with rapt absorption except during the audience-participatory Jingle Bells, when they shook their maracas and bells along with all the other kids.

Some things haven’t changed; Holly still needed to leave halfway through to use the bathroom. But unlike during the memorable season of toilet-training, she slipped out on her own, after whispering to me where she was going; and upon returning to the Sanctuary three minutes later gave me a cheerful thumbs-up.

The experience reminded me that holiday significance doesn’t always appear where you most expect it. I would have expected to be most reminded of the passage of time when choosing our Christmas card picture, perhaps, or in selecting gifts for my kids, or maybe even in what we chose to do on Christmas Eve. (Do we still have to leave out beer and cookies for Santa? Really? Even though it’s just more dishes for me to wash?) I wouldn’t have expected being an audience member at a concert to have so much meaning to me. But the concert was wonderful as always, and meaningful as always. And I will try to remember in the future that music deserves a prominent role in our holiday traditions.

Fifth grade spring concert night

Last night was Tim’s fifth grade concert. Because we’ve been so busy lately and because Tim wasn’t all that excited about it, I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it, but about an hour before it started I realized that if nothing else, it would be a chance to sit still and in silence for 90 minutes, and that was definitely something I could benefit from. I feel that way at church sometimes too: if I get nothing else out of the service – which never happens, but just if – at least I get an hour of quiet time to myself.

It was a moderately frazzling afternoon. Holly got off the bus complaining, as she often does. She’s not complaining about school: she’s just unwinding after being a well-behaved second grader all day. She wanted her friend Bella to come over and kept asking after I said it wasn’t a good day for playdates; she wanted a different snack from the one I offered; the usual kinds of complaints. I remind myself that this is how she unburdens herself emotionally after holding it together at school and on the bus, and it’s reasonable and healthy even if not particularly pleasant for me. Then the dog decided to go next door rather than come home, so I had to go retrieve her from the wilds of the weeds surrounding the pond; and then I went to pick up the dry cleaning Rick urgently needed for work today only to be told the shirts hadn’t arrived yet and I’d have to wait a half-hour. Naturally, I’d just cleaned out the car and didn’t have so much as a single section of newspaper with me, not to mention a book or my laptop: not a shred of reading material on me, which is rare. Instead, I waited around for a half hour, but the shirts never arrived, so the trip was wasted.

All of this was why once I stopped and thought about it, I was happy for the prospect of the ninety minutes of tranquility I could expect during Tim’s concert.

And I had that, but I also realized I had been overlooking how much I enjoy school concerts. At our school, the kids can start in the instrumental and choral program in fourth grade, so this is only our second set of semi-yearly performances. And this is the first one in which we’ve wrangled Tim into appropriate clothing. We’ve had a bear of a time getting him to wear anything except sweat pants and t-shirts for the past several years, whether the occasion is a concert, a church service, or a family party. In February, when Rick’s grandfather died we finally put our collective parental foot down and told Tim he had no choice but to wear a button-down Oxford shirt and pants with a zipper for the services; as a result, at least Tim finally has one decent outfit for special occasions, and back out it came for the concert. It was the first time Tim was not the worst-dressed kid on stage; I can triumphantly report that there are still two boys in the fifth grade behind Tim in terms of sartorial progress. They were wearing shorts and polo shirts. I glowed with pride at the mundane feat of getting my son to dress reasonably for once.

Even though Tim hasn’t had as much fun playing his trumpet this year as last, I really enjoyed seeing him in the concert, and all his classmates too. The girls all looked so pretty, with their swishy rayon skirts, their spaghetti strap tops and their hair brushed out shiny. The boys would have looked adorable to me if I wasn’t so envious as I noted they still almost all dress better than Tim: now that I finally have him in an Oxford, they’re wearing sports coats.

Almost every year, there are one or two chances to see each child in some kind of performance: class play, chorus, band. And every year, I find myself thinking that surely this is the cutest age. Oh, the Rainforest Play back in kindergarten was great, of course, but they’re cute just by definition then. As they get older, it’s almost more endearing to see them shed (most of) their self-consciousness to act like a toucan or sing an African hunting song. Last year, when Tim was in fourth grade, I thought they were at their cutest because they were still young but clearly so proud to be dressed up and performing in a band. This year they seemed even cuter to me, though, as they take on the physical manifestations and larger size of pre-teens but carry the sweet ingenuity of the children they still are. It was clear that the pride of doing an introductory reading or playing a trombone part meant a lot more to them than a pretty dress or a complicated hair-do. That will surely change, at least for some of them.

So the interlude of tranquility was wonderful, but the performance itself was even more so. Every year, I think the kids have reached their cutest point. Every year they surpass the year before. Only three more years until eighth grade graduation. God willing, we’ll be there and I’ll be once again thinking “Oh sure, the kindergarten rainforest play was cute, and the fifth grade chorale numbers were sweet, but this is their cutest stage yet.” And with any luck, we’ll have Tim in a tie by then.