When I was a boy, as far back as I can remember, my
family would all get into our 1938 Plymouth every Sunday morning and go into
the center part of Los Angeles to the very large church, which my parents
attended. I didn’t like church much but I loved the music. Other than the boys
choir, which I joined when I was seven years old, I spent most of my time avoiding
the Sunday school classes and instead, exploring all the many secret passages,
rooms and towers that were part of that huge church. Among those secret places,
I soon discovered the organ pipe room.
I found this pipe room while exploring various hallways
in the area behind the front of the sanctuary; I heard the powerful sound and
followed it, it was coming from behind a thick dark wooden door. I didn’t
hesitate opening it, going in, and my world changed forever!
It was a new world of beautiful, intense and tangible
sounds, from the agile, sparkling, fast moving timbres of the smaller higher pipes
to the thundering, ear tickling, massive beauty of the largest contrabass
pipes. It was probably unhealthy and the ear damage possibilities were real,
but I had no idea of such things at that time. Certainly, it was an extremely
high decibel sound experience for the ears, it was also sound that could be
felt in every fiber of my being. I went into that pipe almost every Saturday
morning for a whole year, before and after choir rehearsal when the organist
was practicing, until one sad day that magic door was locked. I was never able
to enter again. I missed those wonderful weekly encounters with sound.
I also vividly remember it was at that same church
where I heard live music for the first time. My mother and father told me on
that crisp cold Christmas time Sunday morning that they had a surprise for me.
I was sitting on my father’s shoulders in front of the church when the clarion
sounds of a brass choir playing Christmas carols poured down on us from the
church tower. I can remember so clearly between pieces, seeing the musicians
with those shiny silver and gold instruments looking down from the tower to
where we were standing; how I wanted to see, touch and try and play those instruments!
A little more than a decade later that was to be the venue of my first paying
job as a tubist. And even today, somewhere in some box stored someplace in the
world I have a copy of those extraordinary arrangements. Maybe someday I will
find them.
I wish there was some way I could find the words to
formulate the question on an online poll: “What was your first live music experience,
and did it open that magic door for you into the world of music and sound?”
There must be many beautiful stories that would be fascinating to hear.
April 11, 2006. Tokyo, Japan
Revised December 21, 2012, Tokyo
