Your best is good enough
I was invited to the MSU New Horizons Band (NHB) end-of semester concert. No holiday music was played. But it was the most joyous music making I’ve heard in a long time.
New Horizons is a different kind of community. Regardless of ability, it accepts any adult who wants to learn to play or sing and improve making music. Though I’ve researched and written about New Horizons before, and know several MSU NHB members, this was my first close-up of the group. Before the concert I talked with several members. They all described the group as a welcoming and accepting, mutually supportive community that encourages each other. There’s a strong sense of camaraderie. Here are a few stories.
Joan Lippincott has two NH stories. After not playing for twenty-five years, she joined another community band and sat at the end of the trumpet section. Playing was a struggle; improving nearly impossible. Retired trumpet professor Byron Autry, a member of the band, admired her King Silverhorn and agreed to give her lessons. She joined the NHB, gained confidence and is now the lead trumpet.
During the Depression her grandfather, a poor Idaho farmer, bought and made monthly payments on the Silverhorn from a traveling salesman – shades of Music Man. He hoped it would help his daughter, Joan’s mother, find a better life. She passed it on to Joan. Byron overhauled it and, wearing white gloves to protect the beautiful instrument, Joan played it at the concert. She’s thinking about who she might bequeath it to someday.
Art Seagull’s story is very different. A master ballroom dancer and retired Psychology professor, he decided to learn to play French horn – not knowing it’s the most difficult brass instrument to tackle. He took lessons from a retired colleague and French horn professor, but was getting nowhere; his teacher said it was futile.
Art didn’t mind the transition from always being successful to novice. The NH group accepted him as is. Everyone is working on improving their own playing and nobody cares about his ability. He said he enjoys being an equal citizen of the group and took it as a compliment at practice recently when the conductor told him he could play a particular part better. He feels that the NHB is a perfect fit.
Maribeth Fletcher has played piano since childhood, but hadn’t played the oboe for 45 years. Her husband, a trumpet and baritone player and self-appointed NHB recruiter suggested that she might like learning to play percussion. New Horizons has been a Godsend for her since his untimely death a few months ago. She plays a variety of percussion instruments and is teaching herself to play accordion and violin. She loves also playing in the NHB German and jazz bands at outreach gigs in retirement venues. At the concert on Sunday a dear band friend gave her a book on grieving.
Melanie Rosin, a twenty-something director of one of the bands, was arguably the happiest and proudest person at the concert. She loves the group’s attitude and temperament. She said that everyone is dedicated to learning and improving at practice. Then at breaks, they have snacks and socialize. She helps them learn music. In turn, people who are peers of her parents and grandparents give her gifts of life-lessons.
Professor Roy Ernst of the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester developed the initial New Horizons band in 1991. Everyone enjoys listening to music and, he says, has the capacity to learn to sing or play. Of today’s seniors, one in five received some musical education in school; the rest need help developing their innate musical ability. New Horizons serves as an entry portal to learning and relearning music.
Roy told me there are currently 217 New Horizons bands, orchestras and vocal groups, with twelve more in the planning stages, and 9800 active members. New Horizons is not a franchise, but all have local sponsors, like schools, churches, bands or service organizations.
A community where your best is good enough is a welcome refuge in a world where anything less than perfect isn’t acceptable.
What I really like is the mutual support, so that even a novice can recognize that they are contributing to the group’s music making. Well done; thanks for sharing, Jim.
If your best is good enough for the band, you’re completely free to have a good time and socialize. That’s good at every age and especially good for seniors.