A Poem
When I was a boy
I was fascinated by my dad’s old trumpet.
He played until he was in college
And had his own band in the 40’s.
I’ll never forget the smell of the case –
A unique combination of dusty attic-valve oil-old brass.
It was a Martin Committee Model,
Like Diz and Miles played.
I liked the sound of the trumpet
Because I had heard records of the greats –
Louis Armstrong, Harry James, Al Hirt, Doc Severinsen.
I wanted to give it a try.
So I did, in the fifth grade;
But I was NOT a “natural.”
It was hard for me to make it play the notes I wanted to hear.
At first, I had trouble getting any reliable sound at all.
And I learned it wrong:
I tongued between my lips — thu-thu-thu…
It took me a year to fix that.
But I did learn the fingerings
and the sounds of the notes that went with them,
but I couldn’t name them –
not until I had played for many months.
I wanted to quit after the first month,
But dad talked me into sticking with it.
“The greats didn’t get that way overnight,” he said.
Two years later I joined the band –
I marched as a sub until late in the season.
But I kept working –
County, district, region band, jazz band, orchestra…
I took lessons
And I learned
To hit the right notes
( most of the time)
and that my perseverance would pay off.
But mostly I learned
The value of hard work
And practice
And following directions
And self-discipline
And warming up
And tuning up
And showing up
And working together
And, above all, humility.
No matter how much I learn about the horn
There is always more to learn.
So, I keep playing
And teaching.
I have been teaching more than half my life.
The more I teach,
The more I learn.
The more I learn about music,
The more I learn about myself.
If we do it right
Music teaches us to be real.
An arrogant player is a person who has not learned enough.
Even if he plays well,
He is not truly a musician
Because he is not truly aware of the music,
Only his own ego.
So I keep listening;
First to be more aware of the music,
Then to realize how much more there is to do.
There are no perfect performances;
There is only striving.
Music teaches us to strive,
To do our best,
And to keep trying, no matter what.
Music is a metaphor for the truth,
Because those who have learned to listen,
To truly listen to music,
Can tell the difference between what is real and what is not.
I still play the trumpet
Because music is important
Because I love it
And because I want others to love it as I do.
May 2002
MurrayWorks 