23 April 2023

A heibun poem: Listening to Beethoven's 3rd Piano Concerto performed by Isata Kanneh-Mason and her family ensemble

 


 

I'm listening to the Youtube video the Mason family created when Covid virus cancelled a Royal Albert Hall concert.  The music soars, and I'm soaring with it.  I notice the absence of trombones in the ensemble because it is “my” instrument.  Recently I opened my beginner’s trombone to re-learn everything from embouchure to breath, stance, and key signature.  Truly I am starting over, but loving even the struggle to find a reasonable tone not garbled by lip and lung inadequacies.  But it’s useless to begin again, I realize, when it's unlikely I’ll be able to take it with me to the retirement home where I plan to be in the next year or so.  My practicing sound would make quite a disturbance.  And I sigh, but then brighten up.  For a moment here I get to do something with no plan for a future, just because I want to and no other profit, reward, or praise.  Just because.  Imagine that!  And I’m listening to a concerto posted on line for the enjoyment of players and listeners—no other motive.  Yes, I identify.  And then Joni Mitchell’s song rolls at me “For Free," all about a clarinet player on a street corner, and I feel privately in the company of a host of musical spirits—yes, Beethoven included—who can’t not “do” music.  I have no delusions of anyone hearing or reading about my attempts in some obscure future.  And that makes it even better.  I can enjoy the learning unencumbered by hope or sorrow.  I feel air filling me and lifting into sound.  

Bright clouds witness us
join the spring birds in
musical language.


April is poetry month day 23.





My blog poems are rough drafts.
Please respect my copyright.
© 2023 Susan L. Chast


2 comments:

  1. I love that you are playing the trombone. Fill your present with song, my friend. I have always wished I played classical violin. But I never began, even when I miht have, as I wanted to play like I had been playing for 20 years and not start out with Twinkle Twinkle. That likely was defeatist thinking. Smiles.

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  2. There is beauty in that- to do something just because. That perhaps, is the secret to joy.

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