I've been doing a lot of playing this weekend. I was asked to play with the Westerville Community Orchestra in their production of Roger's and Hammerstein's Cinderella, so I've been up there quite a bit. I had to miss today's matinee, however, because I was playing Bluebells of Scotland with the Gahanna Lincoln Gold Band at their annual Prism Concert.

Please excuse the blurriness of the photo - it was a quick snapshot Katy took on her phone.

This was a pretty significant event for me. I played the piece with Gold Band my senior year of high school, so I really appreciated the opportunity to come back as a professional and do it again. I missed some notes, of course; very few people can get through a showpiece like Bluebells without missing something. But, overall, I was pretty happy with how the performance went.

In the best performance situations, there's a tangible communication between the audience and the performer, and I was lucky enough to have that environment today. I could feel the audience's reactions to the music and was able to respond to them, generating a tremendous feedback loop. We musicians spend a lot of time working toward technical perfection, but an exhilarating performance like this - regardless of perfection - quickly puts things into perspective. The sound waves we produce are merely a medium; it is the communication between performer and audience that has real value.

Filed in category: work