In a newspaper interview a few weeks ago, the reporter asked me, "What got you started in music?"
People. Adults who sang to me.
1. My mother, who sang "Itsy-Bisty Spider" and "In My Heart There Rings a Melody."
2. Sandy Twigg, who played piano with gusto at our Christian Reformed church and had such a big smile and gave me my first piano lessons with flat black stickers of music notes as prizes for learning my pieces. Two notes, begin on middle C, alternate with D: "Here we go, to the zoo; funny monkey, how-de-do?"
3. Chris and Nancy Hansen, who started a children's choir at our next church and asked me to sing alto instead of soprano: "Just think of it like another melody."
4. Sister Eucebia, at the Catholic school where I was sent for punishment in fifth grade, who put a plastic recorder in my hands and told me I was going to learn to play it.
5. Sister Juliana, who saw the recorder in my hands and asked if I would play it next to her at the organ during weekly mass. Recorder and organ! Tooting ten-year-old and expert musician! I learned all the songs, and still know them by heart.
Last month, while directing a rehearsal for a community musical, I told one of the altos, "Just think of it like another melody." The next week, she told me this one remark had changed how she thought about singing: "You're the first person to teach me how to sing." Last night, she gave me a Mary Kay brush set in thanks. I am able to apply my eyeliner with precision because of Mr. and Mrs. Hansen.
Our hearts are full; nobody ever really leaves.
So—not WHAT got you started in music, but WHO?
1 comment:
It was my father that opened up the music world to me: Peter, Paul and Mary taught me harmony; Bob Dylan taught me that music was more than a perfect voice but a message; and then later, after he came to know Christ, dozens of scriptures set to music that he would play(8 track!)throughout the day while working from his home office! Those scriptures are forever in my heart and "spring up" in melody as I read God's Word and stumble across them, sprinkled throughout the Psalms, mainly...thanks, Dad!
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