Day 12

1. Discuss a significant experience or achievement that has influenced your life.

Near the beginning of the school year, a little piece of paper was tacked up to the bulletin board outside the music department building, announcing auditions for a pit orchestra to accompany the school musical Brigadoon. I was instantly curious, but wary of signing up as I didn’t know anyone else participating and I thought the weekend rehearsals would leave no time for other activities.

However, I signed up anyway, writing my name down apprehensively. I knew the school didn't have many horn players, and I knew I could be a valuable member of the orchestra, as I was the best horn player there.

 The first rehearsals were tough. Three-hour practices on Saturday mornings... the strings were out of tune, the woodwinds couldn't play their runs and technical passages, the trumpets couldn't count their rests, no one even knew their parts. I wondered with a sigh how we would ever be able make beautiful music. I just wanted to quit.

But I kept at it, because I had made a commitment and I didn't want to break my promise. Finally, after many frustrating and grueling rehearsals, things began to come together. The woodwinds could play their runs, the strings listened for intonation, and everyone knew when to come in. We still weren’t making beautiful music yet, but we were getting there, and I realized that we could get there.

The week before the performances of Brigadoon came, we started to put the pieces together with the singers of the show. It was difficult and new, for even though we had mastered our own parts, we now had to worry about the singers’ fluctuations in tempo and poor counting of rests! However, we didn't sound bad anymore, and we could actually play together cohesively. We rehearsed for so many hours that week before the shows, staying past when rehearsal should have been over, reading long pages of things to improve on that our conductor emailed to us. As that week progressed, we began to sound good. Really good. We had one unified sound. We were all listening to each other. And we could start to make music. All of the orchestra members that I didn’t even know the names of at the start of rehearsing had become friends. When the time for the performances came, I realized how exciting it was to play the music. Everyone in the orchestra was making music, worrying about phrasing, dynamics, and mood. The sound was beautiful. Playing in Brigadoon taught me to take new risks, try things I didn’t know whether I would like. We are still improving, sounding better and better as we perform more and more. And we aren’t the only ones who notice. When the actors on the stages raise their hands to acknowledge the orchestra playing in the balcony during the curtain call, the audience claps louder and louder every night.