Playing as Well as You Can - Far from Perfectly

 A while ago the New York Times ran a story about a woman who plays the euphonium, not an instrument that it's easy to make a career with. She decided to try out for the US Army Band, a good home for a professional musician, and she went through a demanding series of auditions before she was accepted. The story was actually about the way the army made her go through basic training, during which she didn't have a moment to touch her instrument, before she could actually join the band. I was less interested in that aspect of the story than in hearing about the intense scrutiny that her playing received during her auditions.

I've been playing recently in a band that aspires to be a big band, but falls far short, and, frankly, we're not very good. But we have fun. We almost never play for an audience, but, when we do, the pleasure we take in playing comes through. That's important. In fact, I joined the band because I went to one of their performances, and it was clear they were having a good time. It was also clear that the musicians were all giving it their best effort.

I've also been playing in a sax quartet for quite a few years. We play pretty decently, but we're not professionals. We only rehearse once a week, and we often have to cancel rehearsals because one of us can't make it. We don't play demanding music, but our repertoire is pretty varied. We have performed in schools, old-age homes, and even inmates in a mental hospital. It's rewarding for us to bring music to those audiences. We know that our audiences aren't the most discerning music lovers in the world, and they probably don't notice it when we make mistakes. But we try to play accurately and musically, to the best of our abilities, and the challenge of putting together an interesting program and performing it makes us better musicians.

With a friend of mine who is a very musical person and once played flute on a professional level, I have been playing duets for her mother, who is nearly 100 years old, physically weak but mentally on top of things. We read through duets, stopping when we get off, going back, working on them, not with the idea that we're performing, but that we're keeping the old lady company. We all enjoy it.

That's what music is for.