In tune

I remember that freshman band director for something else: he believed in me. He helped me adjust to playing a French horn and was unfailingly encouraging. I was old enough to compete in solo instrument playing, and the song chosen for me was a movement of Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 4. I didn’t know the song at all; this was before Youtube. So this young band director recorded the entire concerto on an audiocassette and gave it to me. He didn’t just put number 4 on it; he added enough other horn music to fill the tape. I loved it. I listened to that tape over and over and over, for years. Besides introducing me to Mozart’s horn music, gloriously played, it introduced me to the concept of recording my own mixtapes.

My brother played Billy Joel’s music endlessly on the piano; my older brothers played Kansas and Journey and a variety of other artists on the radio. My little sister and I had access to my parents’ record player; I went through my parents’ small music collection and found several things I liked. My favorite was Scheherezade, directed by Antal Dorati; beside the tremendous music, it had a colorful geometric illustration on the cover. To this day I remember the opening of that orchestration, complete with small pops and hisses from the record player.

I’m pretty sure the band director intended me to get good at playing the French horn. He succeeded in broadening my horizons, but I only played adequately. Since this was Wyoming, few people, few bands, even fewer French horn players, I did pretty well. But the moment I played in groups with other hornists I was only average, and not practiced. I did play in tune.