have you ever been to a school assembly where classical music is on the program? It can get ugly.
Back to Life
A man with an ill-fitting toupee shuffled down the aisle between the pews, turned to face the audience, and then read aloud from a clipboard: "And now, Mr. Slazman will play the violin." He shuffled back up the aisle and out of the chapel.
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The silence in the room so unnerved me that I failed to see the raised platform on the stage. I walked right into it, stubbing my big toe and careering forward. I narrowly avoided a fall by using the cello as a ski pole, planting the end-pin into the dais and pivoting toward the audience. I hadn't intended to enter like Buster Keaton, but that's how it came across, and the inmates rewarded me with laughter and a round of applause.
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I stalled for time, explaining to my audience that almost everything they saw on the cello, except for the metal strings and end pin, had once been part of a living thing: the spruce top, the maple back with its tiger-stripe grain, the ebony fingerboard, the snakewood bow with hair from a horse's tail, and the pieces of ivory from the tusks of a mammoth preserved in frozen tundra for tens of thousands of years. When we play the instrument, I said, we bring these pieces to life again.
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About then I ran out of little-known facts about the cello, so I told the boys that the first piece I was going to play, "The Swan" by Camille Saint-Saëns, always made me think of my mother. Then I started playing. With its high ceiling, bare walls and hard floor, the chapel was as resonant as a giant shower stall. The cello sounded divine in that room, which excited me, but then a rustling from the audience brought me back to reality. The kids were bored, as I had feared.
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The rustling grew in intensity. It wasn't quite the sound of fidgeting and wasn't quite the sound of whispering either. I glanced at the audience and saw a roomful of boys with tears running down their faces. What I had heard was the sound of sniffling and nose-wiping -- music to any musician's ears.
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I played the rest of the piece better than I had ever played it in my life, and when I finished the applause was deafening. It was a mediocre cellist's dream come true. For my next piece, I chose a saraband from one of the Bach suites. The boys rewarded me with another round of applause. Then someone shouted, "Play the one about mothers again." A cheer rose up from the crowd. I realized then that it was the invocation of motherhood that had moved them so deeply.
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I played "The Swan" again, some more Bach, and "The Swan" a third time. When the man with the toupee signaled that my time was up, the inmates booed him. Then they gave me a final ovation.
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