Before we begin with the meat of this blogpost, shall I just set the mood by saying that tonight Liam mushed my heart to goo by blowing kisses at me. It only took me smacking one across the table to him before he was a kiss blowing fiend. Miss you, Liam, you and all your crazy words and sentences!!
So, back to the post:
Tonight, at the Evanston Symphony Orchestra's Christmas Concert, we played music from Tchaik's Nutcracker Suite. There was a parade of young dancers on the stage in front of the orchestra, glittering in their tutus and jester leotards. They reminded me of my Grandma taking me to see the Nutcracker Ballet at Christmas time as a family tradition (and, wow, is on-stage a bad place for misty-eyed nostalgia). We went to the show when I visited her in Phoenix, and for years, I kept and treasured the tickets from those performances. I felt so much like a grown up when I went to the ballet, got dressed up, and had everyone treat me like the adult that I was certain that I was (at that ancient age of 8...). I even had my own rosy red nutcracker for years, before it, like the velveteen rabbit, went on to become Real.
As I watched the pomp and glitz on stage, I saw how many children were with us tonight, how many dancers had come to perform with us again this year, how many new dancers were on stage that we did not have last year, how many kids were in the audience with the families, and how many kids were backstage, waiting for their mommies and daddies to finish with the first half of the concert so that they could inhale intermission cookies. I was thinking about my student, Ben, who, when he was told that Santa and his elves would be at our Christmas concert, lit up the room with his glee. I was wondering if he made it there to see Santa. AND, what I realized was that there were hundreds of kids who were having that same annual tradition that centered around the Christmas holiday and the arts. Hundreds of them. All having their own Nutcracker with their parents, their grandparents, watching their aunts and uncles, and just generally feeling like the world is made of stardust for an evening.
As I was having my misty-teary moment, this dawned on me: This is what I really love about music, this is why I want to be a musician, this is why I want to go to grad school: because I went to the Nutcracker as a kid and it changed my life. So, thanks, Grandma. Love you. :)
PS. We played Leroy Anderson's Sleigh Ride. It has become one of my favorite Christmas songs EVER.
