What Happened After I Said Yes
Sometimes the best rewards arrive disguised as anxiety.
About six weeks ago, my good friend, Constance, let me know something she was doing: she had been invited to play alto sax with the Houston Symphonic Band for their upcoming concert. She and I play in our church orchestra as well as another symphonic band. She said yes, but told me how challenging the music was. I told her she would definitely be up for the challenge and, jokingly added “Better you than me.” I thought nothing of it other than putting in a mental note to ask her when the concert was with an eye to attending.
Cut to a week or so after that when, after church service, she related how her rehearsals went and reiterated just how challenging the music was. Then she dropped the bomb: “Would you be interested in playing tenor sax in the Houston Symphonic Band?”
Now, a few things ran through my head upon hearing the question. The first was her words about the challenging music. Next came the timeline: if I said yes, it would be a three-week commitment involving three rehearsals and then the concert. Then there was the idea that I hadn’t played tenor sax since my Longhorn Band days back in 1991. But the biggest obstacle was simple: I didn’t have a tenor sax.
“That can be arranged,” Constance said. There’s a member of the sax section, Laura, who would loan me her tenor. Gulp. It’s one thing to own your own horn. It’s quite another to be responsible for someone else’s. I would have to re-learn how to play tenor sax (same fingerings but a different style of breathwork and embouchure) in three weeks and then actually perform said challenging music. I would have to practice at home.
All of these factors swirled in my head and the easy answer would have been “No.” But I also heard the very words I tell my twenty-four-year-old son when he is confronted with a new opportunity. And I am wholeheartedly embracing midlife not as a winding down but as a ramping up to new experiences and challenges. I said “Yes.”
The Job Interview
The first step was actually taking possession of the tenor sax. Laura and I arranged to meet at her condo the Tuesday after Memorial Day. I made sure to make myself as presentable as possible because I was about to meet the woman who was going to allow me to borrow her horn and leave it at my house for three weeks. Would you do that for a perfect stranger, even if the stranger was vouched for by a new-to-you person (Constance) who had just sat in for a pair of rehearsals? Seriously, would you?
We met and hit it off pretty fast. There’s a vibe we sax players have that translates no matter the age or the stage in life. In fact, Laura and I ended up talking for nearly forty-five minutes about music—yes, we talked about Chicago because I’m me; shrug—her job (band director at the end of a school year), and my writing. It was very pleasurable. We could probably have talked for another forty-five minutes!
Then came the moment, when I got home, where I pulled out the tenor sax. I put my newly purchased reed on, assembled the instrument, and put the mouthpiece in my mouth and blew.
And squeaked.
When you play a tenor sax (any sax, really), you use a different type of embouchure, that is how you actually position your mouth around the mouthpiece and blow. I didn’t expect the squeak, and I certainly didn’t expect multiple squeaks. You can imagine the dread that began to seep into me. What had I gotten myself into? How is it that I, after playing sax for forty-five years (!) was, at my age, suddenly squeaking like a middle school kid?
By Wednesday, the day before the first rehearsal, I came home from work and played again. The squeaks were fewer, but I frantically texted Constance’s husband, John, a tenor sax player, and asked him for tips. He gave me a few and the squeaks lessened. Whew! But they didn’t go away entirely. I did the only thing I could do to prep for my first rehearsal: I went through every piece of music, playing along with the playlist Constance had compiled from YouTube. I think Constance had downplayed her definition of challenging. Some of these tunes were super-hard, with odd time signatures I had never even played before. I mean, seriously: 9/8 to 8/8 to 3/4 to 4/4 to 3/8 to 1/8. Yeah, the music sounds good, but to play it?
My anxiety grew, easy to do for a guy who can dwell in his own head too much for his own good. But I know several professional musicians and they’ve told me their own version of gigs like this, when they’re presented with music the day of the performance and are expected to perform at a high level. Yes, they are pros, but that doesn’t mean they also don’t have knots in their stomachs.
I prepared for that first rehearsal as best I could, but there was one more thing that I never, in my wildest imagination, could have predicted.
The Substitute for the Substitute
This is the way I came to sit in with the Houston Symphonic Band. The regular tenor player was traveling so they needed someone to play. They brought in a guy, but the very same evening of his first rehearsal, the directors learned he could play both bassoon and English horn. So they asked him to do that and he did it. Back to a tenor sax vacancy, which is where I come in.
First rehearsal arrived and I walked in with Constance. I reiterated how anxious I was to do this but was actually calm about leaning into the fear of playing. In listening to her playlist, I heard a few passages where the tenor was exposed and made sure to focus on those.
We separate in the band hall and I’m off to one side assembling the instrument. One of the directors introduces himself and remarks how good it was for me to sit in after the first tenor substitute was moved to bassoon and English horn. I told him I was glad to be here and that was that. Back to getting the tenor ready for rehearsal.
And that’s when he walked in the door.
I looked up and very nearly didn’t believe my eyes. If it were a movie, there would have been a camera zoom on my face, my eyes getting wide. The person in question was none other than Dennis Beaver, a sax player with whom I was in the Longhorn Band for four of my five years—he graduated on time 😉 Dennis is a genius sax player. I first saw him was in our senior year in high school when I tried out for regional jazz band, worked hard to get the music ready for try-outs, and then heard this guy from Angleton completely blow away everyone else. Didn’t make the band, but was actually fine with it considering just how good that guy was. Cut to the Fall of 1987 when we both made Longhorn Band and got to know each other.
It had been over thirty years since I had even seen Dennis much less played with him. But then my anxiety skyrocketed. You mean I’m substituting for Dennis Beaver? Universe, you have got to be kidding me. And he’s going to be in the same room? Within a sightline of me? And I’m squeaking.
Recognition was instant when we saw each other. Smiles and handshakes and a brief catchup before rehearsal. But the dread was just waiting at the back of my head, so I did something about it: I asked Dennis for advice. He is a band director, after all. Told him my struggles with the horn, where the squeaks were happening, and he suggested a particular place to position my upper teeth on the mouthpiece. I thanked him and rehearsal began.
I’d like to say I didn’t squeak at all. I’d like to say that I played wonderfully in that first rehearsal. Nope and nope. I missed notes, got some encouragement from Laura who sat next to me, squeaked some, but you know what? I squeaked noticeably fewer times than I had since I got the horn.
The Performance
By the time we got to our concert this past Sunday, I had been practicing on the tenor sax regularly. I even took to playing along with backing tracks on YouTube on the song “Europa” by Gata Barbieri as a warm-up before I worked my parts. I asked Dennis for a selfie and we got it.
Despite all my anxiety, worry, and dread, I acquitted myself fairly well. No, I didn’t play perfectly, but I did way better than I imagined a mere three weeks ago. And I got to perform with a friend that I hadn’t seen in three decades as well as my current partner-in-sax playing, Constance. I got to meet some wonderful people who were, to a person, very welcoming to Constance and I. The sax section of five players played well together.
In the end, despite everything, I am really, really glad I said Yes to Constance’s question. It proved something to myself. The music was great. And I got to play with Dennis again.
One More Reward
Oh, and the bonus? I got a short story out of my experience. I’m always thinking about ideas for how people meet and what better way—and what better source material—than something like this. It’ll be in my new collection of meet-cute romances out this fall. I already told Dennis about it (including how I “made” his character female) and how I wove everything into a story that ended up being more about time, distance, and the memory of our former selves than strictly a meet-cute.
I thought I was saying yes to a concert. I didn’t realize I was saying yes to all of this.
Sometimes when you lean into fear, unexpected rewards follow.