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Sometimes, something happens that sort of pulls it all together, and lets you see where what you’re doing makes sense.

It’s been an incredibly busy week. David and I got back from Nashville on Sunday night, and went right to work teaching on Monday morning. Then I started on some article writing while he drove up to Pittsfield to pick up some guests from England. 

David knows Alan from the guitar website he manages; Alan is a classical guitarist and a volunteer moderator for the forums at www.guitarnoise.com. They met once before in New York, so when David learned Alan was going to be in the U.S., he invited him to come and visit. And then he decided that we needed to put on an open mike. The husband of one of David’s students owns Crissey Farm, which is not a farm at all, but rather a hall — it’s the venue where we played an open mike a few weeks back. She agreed to let us have the space and David invited some of our friends and some of his students to come play. Tonight, after getting done with my piano students, I rushed over to the hall to join in. 

Looking around at group, I felt instantly grateful to have found my way into the creative community here. There was Fred Schane, a singer-songwriter, recording engineer, and radio host who just had a bit role in the new movie being filmed about Woodstock. There was Joel Schick, who we first met at the hootenanny way back when we first moved here; Joel is a designer, an artist, and a singer-songwriter (You’ve probably seen his visual arts work, since he worked for years drawing popular Sesame Street characters). Tony owns the photo shop down the street and plays a mean harmonica, Lisa has been taking guitar lessons with David and is now writing and performing her own songs; she sounds better every time we hear her. John plays blues guitar and writes songs; his wife Karen was videotaping the whole show for public access cable TV. Darra, whose husband owns the Crissey Farm hall, has a gorgeous voice. Shaun and Todd have been taking guitar from David at the community college; Shaun has a great singing voice, as well. And last but certainly not least, there was 15-year old Molly Kate, who has been taking piano with me and guitar with David; Molly Kate plays both classical piano and rock keyboards; tonight, she played guitar and sang three songs, once of which she wrote. The first time I heard Molly Kate sing, I could barely make out the words: She had her head down and almost whispered into the mike; tonight, she was smiling at the audience and singing right into the mike, and she knocked everyone out with her voice and poise. I was so proud of her!  And Alan brought the show to an nice end with his classical guitar playing. The encore was an open invite to all to join in on “Angel from Montgomery.”

It wasn’t the easiest day in the world: I had two students who can’t seem to remember where middle C is, and the teaching today seemed to involve a lot of cajoling and refocusing. But when I got to the hall and saw the group assembled — students and friends — I really got the feeling that we are doing exactly what we are supposed to be doing: Helping put music into people’s lives.