If I told you that I rolled out of bed (quite literally, I might add) in the general vicinity of 4am to drive down to the beach to see the total lunar eclipse, you would probably think I was crazy.  If I added that there was the distinct possibility that I might be a bit tired from said lunar gazing on a day that I have to teach five lessons to eager students who are trying to make careers in music, you might take issue.  But if I added that I only managed to practice an hour and a half on a day that started at 4am you would probably dice me up and sacrifice me on the altar of your local trumpet deity.  Well, so be it.  Get out that oversized, seldom-used kitchen knife and get to work.  That is the day I had and I am not ashamed to admit it.  How, you might wonder, can any self-respecting musician sacrifice so much precious time gazing at shadows on giant rocks floating around the universe?  After all, I could have been practicing, or studying scores, or teaching, or…

Yes, there are many ways that I could have been investing my time, many ways that are generally accepted, tried and true, and worthy of merit.  Perhaps you wouldn’t include watching a lunar eclipse in that list.  After all, what musical benefit could come from watching such a thing?  If you are thinking that perhaps I have been able to mine the darkened moon for sources of range and endurance, you are, of course, sadly mistaken, but I do maintain that there is merit in watching the shadow of the earth pass over, and then engulf, the light of the unsuspecting moon.  Confused as to how that could possibly make you a better trumpet player?  You should be.  However, if your question is how can that make you a better musician, then there is something to discuss.

In life there are few opportunities to have extraordinary experiences.  There are chances to brush up against things that make you feel the essence of your own existence and the existence of those around you: things that make you feel significant and insignificant, strong and weak, loved and forlorn.  These experiences are the essence of life, and consequently, the essence of music: the one flowing directly from the other.  When these opportunities present themselves they must be seized, if at all possible, because those experiences cannot be recreated; they cannot be extracted from the past or future; they are here and now, right before our eyes.  It is up to us to take them or leave them, but once left, they vanish from our grasp.

As musicians it is important to experience these things: to be in touch with the world around us, to feel who we are and where we belong.  Too often, though, musicians are cooped up in practice rooms, too burdened with gigs, too consumed by the business of music itself to be able to look outside and see the world they live in, the world they occupy, the world they express.  This behavior allows us the possibility of living a life dedicated to the art of making music, while lacking the essence of life to breathe into the music when it is time to actually perform.  How can you feel the tragic Tchaikovsky, the joyous Rossini, the yearning Mahler if you have never experienced those things on a deep and intense level?  How can you play unrequited love if you have no idea what it feels like (it hurts by the way)?  There is a famous story about Bruno Walter going to visit Mahler at his summer cabin in the mountains. When Walter looks out the window at the surrounding mountainside Mahler tells him, “There is no need looking out there, I have already written all of that.”  This makes a nice anecdote, but it also implies a lot if you take a little time to think about it.  Mahler poured his world into his music.  To be able to do that required an immense amount of time immersing himself into the craft of writing music, but it also required an immense amount of time immersing himself in those mountains, learning their every contour and mood, their very essence, an essence that he captured and poured out onto the empty staves of his manuscript paper.

As performers it is just as important for us to expose ourselves to the world around us.  It is those experiences that will give life and breath to our phrases and allow us insights into whatever experiences the composer might be pouring into his music.  This was not at the forefront of my mind when I rolled out of bed this morning to go gawk at the miracle that is the shadow of our own planet soaring across the face of our moon, but it will be there in my mind when I perform: the sensation of being but one tiny speck on the surface of a giant spinning rock, the simultaneous thrill and fear at watching the inextinguishable light of the moon be taken, if only for a while, and the deep realization that all of this, all of our world, is so fragile and delicate in spite of its enduring presence.  These experiences cannot be discovered in a practice room, they cannot be gleaned from scales and etudes, yet this experience is exactly the kind of thing that composer’s write, as in the Mahler story mentioned above.  We must be in tune with the world in order to have any chance of expressing it, in some form, through our instrument.

The truth remains, however, that in spite of whatever enormous value life experiences may offer to us as musicians, we must obtain and maintain the mastery of our craft. Without highly refined skills our music will fail to effectively capture all that we pour into it: a potion with all the wrong ingredients and all the wrong amounts.  So before everyone throws down their instruments and marches out into the world seeking these kinds of seminal experiences, it is important to remember that a balance must be kept.  One cannot express music effectively with little to no life experience, true.  But it is also true that no matter how rich and intense your life experience, you will not be able to communicate anything unless you have the skill to communicate it effectively.  This is the purpose of those countless hours of practice; this is why we play those scales and work on those hellishly difficult etudes.  We are musical interpreters, musical magicians.  We must be able to speak the languages of music and life with equal skill and dexterity.  If one of them is ignored, then our interpretation breaks down, and the magic that is music is lost.  It wasn’t music that drove me to seek the eclipsing moon this morning, but it is through music that I will be able to express -- on some subconscious level, in some abstract form -- the sheer beauty and wonder of lying on the sand, waves nipping at the beach, the great eclipsing moon disappearing behind the clouds.

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