Living Music

Right now, I am between services. I play two church services every Sunday.

The first service is played at a funky little Lutheran Church in the South Wedge of Rochester, NY called Peace Lutheran (I love that little church) and the second service I play is at an assisted living facility near Highland Park called St. John's Home.

Last week was Easter, and amid the transformation from Lent into the joyfulness of Easter, I am always amazed at the life and power of music. Between the dark and somber tones of Holy Week until the celebration of Easter morning, there is such contrast, and the music explains it all.

Today, as I was playing the service at Peace, I couldn't help but think about the life of music.

What is it about music? I mean, really? Whenever we hear a melody from beginning to end, it has a life. The music lives as long as it is heard, and if we repeat the life of the music, we recreate the feelings we felt the first time we heard it.

That is powerful, and yet ... it doesn't stop there. We can close our eyes and listen in the silence and hear it again, and it still has the power to bring us to the memory of what we felt when we heard it the first time.

I like to think that music is a living entity because living, breathing people breathe life and energy into it whenever they perform. And that when that happens and we genuinely connect to what the music is trying to tell us, we communicate something unspoken to others through another realm.

It's pretty heady when you think about it, and making music is addictive. I think this is why I receive so much joy in being able to bring something so wonderful to life.

When I play at church, I love to hear the congregation singing. With my joy, I love to rouse them to a place where they outsing the organ and the only way the organ can be heard is for me to improvise around their voices. I love to play at St. John's Home and hear the joy of old voices singing their favorite hymns, singing words that have bound themselves to melody and forever into their hearts ... and I think: Ah!! There is LIFE! That is LIVING!