A few weeks ago, I wrote about the experience of singing in a choir during my pre-teen years. It was formative and fun, and because I eventually got pretty good at it I was given a lot of solos, which made me feel like a big deal.
But while all that was going on, I was having an equally formative, yet in many ways entirely opposite, musical experience in a separate part of my life: at school.
Nobody at school knew I was singing in a choir. I was somewhere in the middle of the popularity bell curve, and if word got out that I was a boy soprano, it would have been a long and painful plummet to the bottom of said curve. So I kept it under wraps.
I didn’t pretend to dislike music though, and didn’t mind participating in the school band. By “band” I mean the kind that all students are required to be part of: you are assigned an instrument, and you learn it as best you can by the time the spring concert comes around.
My instrument was the alto saxophone, and our spring concert piece was “Ruby Tuesday” by The Rolling Stones.
Now I don’t mean to imply that playing the alto sax in a school-mandated band of 11-year-olds is some kind of sublime or transcendent experience, but in a certain way, I enjoyed it just as much as singing Bach in a semi-professional choir.
In my choir life, I was carrying the melody, singing descants, enjoying whatever big-deal feeling that church choir solos can provide. But in my school band life, I was playing an alto sax line that required no more than a five-note range, and that had neither the melodic glory of the trumpets, nor the bass line oomph of the tubas.
I loved it. I loved hearing other instruments belting the melody above me, and still others holding down the bass line below me, while my modest instrument filled out those middle tones that probably no audience member cared to notice.
In short, and what I couldn’t grasp at the time: there’s a certain “part-of-something-bigger-than-yourself” feeling about being a member of a large musical ensemble.
Kenny Wheeler probably knew that feeling very well.
What makes this a beautiful song:
1. I love the way the cover of Wheeler’s 1990 album, “Music for Large & Small Ensembles” includes the names of all the players sprinkled within the text of the album’s title.
2. I love the way the tempo is a bit loose, yet all the instruments move together. It’s like those flocks of starlings that give the impression of one large creature that’s more than the sum of its individuals.
3. I love way there’s a voice hidden in there, singing along with the melody. Probably not a boy soprano, but I’m going to pretend it is.
Recommended listening activity:
Picking an instrument in the middle of the pack and trying to follow its line throughout the whole piece.