When Dad died, “in lieu of flowers” (seriously, who would ever want that many cut flowers to stink up the place and drop petals on the floor?), people sent donations to the St. Alban’s music fund.
I just wrote the last thank-you note. I’m so passionate about handwritten correspondence that it was natural for me to volunteer for that job, but it was dang hard. Oh, I have cried and cried at my desk. But I’m glad I could spare my mother having to write them all.
And of course I’m so grateful that so many people made donations. Even if everyone gave a teeny tiny amount, the church is going to have to start paying their choir or buy a Baroque pipe organ or something. It’s pretty great.
One of the best things about going anywhere in the car with Dad was the conducting. For a while, I commuted to work with him, and we’d wave our arms the whole way there. My brother would join in when Dad was driving him to school. I would like to think that Dad was “conducting” one-handed, but he may also have been driving with his knees.
Tangent: When I was 14, I announced to my piano teacher that I wanted to be a conductor when I grew up. “No such thing as girl conductors,” he said. (I would like to go back in time to [a] kick him in the junk and [b] kick my young self in the butt.) This is also the person who told me when I was 16, “if you hadn’t got distracted by theatre, you might’ve been a decent musician some day.” I presume that his business card read, “J.D. – piano teacher, DREAM CRUSHER.” (His name was not Jack Daniels, although that is also an effective dream crusher.)
Dang. Wouldn’t it be awesome to make a living as a conductor?
Anyway. Dad didn’t play any instruments and couldn’t hardly carry a tune, but he always had music going. He filled up a succession of ever-bigger iPods with classical music and classic rock. If you’d pinned him down to make him choose between Beethoven and Lynyrd Skynyrd, he might have split in half.
In the same vein, there aren’t any black conductors either, but I’m glad my Iowa State University Symphony conductor (Kirk Smith) wasn’t having any of that. He was awesome, and introduced some extra culture to us with works by black composers and special performances by the likes of Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and Simon Estes (who is actually Iowan).
To be fair, there are women conductors now, 25 years later – girls who likely heard the same thing and said, “screw that, jerk, I’m doing it anyway.”
Very cool of your conductor, though.
And there are black conductors too, including one that toured Japan with my sister, when she was the rock-star soprano.
Oh the line of people who are due for a kick when time travel becomes possible.
Bah, he ain’t worth kicking. But I surely do wish I had had more of a backbone with myself back in those days.
One of these days, I’ll take music lessons again. Piano’s probably easiest, but I would jump at the chance to go back to pre-Baroque woodwinds.
Anne Dudley. Bill Bailey’s Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra disappointed me a bit, but Anne Dudley conducts the orchestra and that’s good to see. Plus I love her for all time because of The Art Of Noise.
In the same vein, there aren’t any black conductors either, but I’m glad my Iowa State University Symphony conductor (Kirk Smith) wasn’t having any of that. He was awesome, and introduced some extra culture to us with works by black composers and special performances by the likes of Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and Simon Estes (who is actually Iowan).