Casa Browne Recorder Festival

Once upon a time I was in the third grade.

Third grade is enchanting.  I'm not sure what's changed these days, but back in my heyday, third grade was for cursive, multiplication tables, spending the night at Sea World San Antonio in the penguin house, and learning how to play an instrument.  For many of my classmates, this opportunity was their first at creating music with a formal instrument other than their voice, and for a little girl who had a love/hate relationship with playing the piano and piano lessons, this was my first opportunity to learn to play a woodwind instrument, a certainly thrilling moment for the ever-curious student I was.

There are a few beautiful things about the recorder. I think we all brought three dollars to school and came back with an instrument. I love the accessibility of an instrument that costs relatively little and provides a child with the opportunity to learn to read, play, and appreciate music. It also weighs hardly anything at all, which is a bonus when you're eight or nine years old and your trek to the bus stop is a grueling quarter of a mile (Go ahead, Mom, it was probably less than half of that).  Most kids had black and white school issued recorders. In typical (maybe?) overachieving-middle-child-syndrome fashion, I, on the other hand, owned an all-white recorder that I didn't know how to play, but was gifted after much pleading for an occasion I cannot remember, probably around the same time that my older brother was just cutting his teeth on his school issued recorder.

Poor Paddy.  My brother Paddy, two years my senior, put up with a lot from me as a kid. I very truly realized for the very first time only when I was in college and nannying for a family with similar birth order dynamics, that a four year old girl cannot expect to have the same skill set as a six year old boy in kindergarten. FYI: said four year old asked her parents to give her spelling tests anyway, and yes, they obliged.  This complete misinterpretation of my own abilities led to a long list of mostly funny examples of me trying to keep up with someone who was more advanced intellectually and physically than most kids his own age, never mind his pesky kid sister.

Now, there are certainly a few things that are, well, not so beautiful about the recorder. Namely, its shrill squeakiness amplified by an inexperienced musician's ability to read music. Multiply that by twenty kids in a class, and let's just all say a prayer right now for sweet Mrs. Erck, who had to listen to classes upon classes of recorder squealing kids every day.

Once each year there was (and, according to a little Google search, still is!) a district-wide "Recorder Festival" held at a big basketball gym in South Austin where students from all over the city got together to play a few songs they'd been polishing.  I don't think you were allowed to participate until fourth grade, but I remember showing up in my purple Hill Elementary School t-shirt with my hair curled (yes!) scanning the vast gym floor covered in folding chairs for a glimpse at my cousin Seana, who was in attendance, but from a different school.  I think we met for a hug, and then sat in our respective school sections.  We were so excited to play all of these songs we'd been perfecting at home with our families, who even loved us enough to sit through an hour of hundreds of school children squawking and squeaking the night away.

Seana and I still laugh at what transpired next.  Our conductor, a man whose stature in the music community I have no recollection (his regard was clearly esteemed if he was able to have landed this gig), spent the full hour leading us through a gut wrenching "may-sure"-by-"may-sure" rehearsal.  We were all  a little pretty disappointed that we hadn't been able to really show off our skillz to our poor parents.  It was comical, memorable, and a little sad.

All of this to tell you that we had our first recorder recital at the house today.  A present that Santa brought, and I sort of laughed at for seeming far too advanced for our little P.  Wrong again, Mom.

What a beautiful sound! Now I know why my parents didn't mind.