I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends
by Alison Lund on 09/10/12
I suppose I've been a musician so long that I totally take for granted one of the most wonderful things about music: music friends. Aside from the probably unfortunate fact that musicians tend to inbreed for one reason or another (will no one else put up with us?), this evening I couldn't help but realize that almost all the friends I have made and kept over the last 32 years are people I have performed with in one capacity or another, starting with my very first musical in primary school.
As an aside, I cannot confirm nor deny if the first lines I ever uttered on stage were "come and lie with me, love", and whether or not my latent abilities in method acting practically gave my Grandfather a heart attack. In hindsight, "Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat" may not have been the greatest choice for a little kid musical, seeing as the only female role is a panting biblical seductress.
But I digress. Last week I recorded with someone I'd performed with exactly once, 12 years ago in college, and another someone I met at a yard sale last year who just happens to be a fantastic trumpeter, and with whom I had also worked exactly once. But they are definitely friends, not just colleagues. It was infinitely comforting to look out into the booth and know that a couple of people who in reality I barely know at all were speaking my language. This doesn't happen all the time, of course. Most musical collaborations are purely professional. Quite a few are profoundly dysfunctional. But some, however brief or over however many decades, are irreplaceable. In the words of one of my heroes, Burt Monroe, (whom you will just have to google): "mate, in that one minute I lived more than most people do in a lifetime". That's what one moment of pure musical communication feels like.
Experiencing even just one of those moments is enough to make a person go to extreme lengths to develop the skill and vocabulary to find the next. Now, it may seem a little bizarre to suggest that even the most average beginning pianist of, say, the age of 8, can experience such a moment. But they can, and do. Language, after all, has to start somewhere, and it is my job to facilitate the conversation.
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