I’ve been navigating change lately. Which, of course, could be true of any day, and any season of any life! June started with my oldest daughter, Lila’s high school graduation, and ended with MCMC’s first house concert of a new series we’re introducing this year. Music became a steady thread through it all. The place I returned to, amidst all the changes, was the piano bench.
I practiced a Schubert G-flat Impromptu over the course of May and June, the piece that opened up the first half of the house concert. It’s technically demanding, with constantly shifting arpeggios beneath a slower, resonant melody. Over and over again, the piece seems to come to a final conclusion only to continue with another interlocking idea. It’s musically demanding as well, asking the performer to make the unfolding of the piece feel natural and continuous even though it’s full of closure.
Sometimes the note that ends a phrase is also the very first note of a new one, bridging intersecting ideas that close and open at the same time. Dynamics, tempo, expression, and tone are all connected elements forming that transition, and they all contribute to the meaning we feel when we hear it. Music mirrors life this way. When a chapter like raising children in the house comes to a close (we still have two more years with Carina around!), how many layers of memory, meaning, and love come together to mark that moment?
On a Tuesday evening last month, I was in the kitchen chopping vegetables and heard singing upstairs. Lila and Carina were harmonizing, getting ready to perform at an award ceremony, and at graduation soon after that. Hearing them together, in an ordinary moment, my heart swelled with a feeling of connection and love from the other room. No words were exchanged, no interruptions to get closer to the magic, just a quiet moment taking in the independent artistic voices collaborating, making something strong and beautiful together.
Listening to them I realized, their musical lives have become completely their own. That is a given. What happens next is completely up to them. I feel so grateful for the ways music has woven into our daily rhythms and I’m amazed by how completely it belongs to them now.
MCMC is 12 years old this month! Looking back 12 years ago when Lila was six and Carina was four, the founding of the center came at a time of clear creative vision and hazy, busy days getting lunch boxes ready and the frenetic swirl of caregiving young kids.
One of the things that has been true about MCMC from the beginning is that people have always been drawn to the supportive way we hold, nurture, preserve, and present music together. Our environment supports individuals in their becoming, and recognizes the power and importance of the audience as witness in making transformation real.
I’ve watched this unfold as my own family has grown alongside the center, and in the lives of hundreds of other students and families.
As the month went on, our separate rehearsals shifted to the three of us rehearsing together for the house concert that marked the beginning of a new series. The whole afternoon was intimate and unhurried. We’re sensing that the way we gathered, and the kind of connection it invited, is something that we’d like to continue exploring and sharing with others.
I’m so grateful to every one of you reading, and for the community we’re building together around our creative pursuits. Wherever you are in your season of transition, or whatever form change is taking in your life, I hope this finds you well, and inspires you to stay close to your own creative practice. It has a remarkable way of carrying us through change while quietly preparing us for what is next.
Lila, Carina, and I rehearsing before our Sunday Concert