The night I knew

Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 18; Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini, Op. 43; The Cleveland Orchestra; Vladimir Ashkenazy, conducting; Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano

One day, in the early summer of 1982, Mom happened to see an announcement in the monthly publication of the American Lutheran Church (ALC). Concordia College in St. Paul, Minnesota, was sponsoring an organ camp for young organists between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. It was the first of its kind offered in the ALC and young people at all levels of organ-playing competence and experience were welcome to attend the five-day, camp-like event. “I think you should go,” Mom said. Okay.

So, we sent camp registration off in the mail, bought a Greyhound bus ticket to Minneapolis and called Uncle D. to see if he would pick up and drop off a nephew from and at the bus station downtown. “Yup,” he said. “Just let me know what time.” We had to wait about twenty minutes at the bus station in Brookings, South Dakota, for another bus coming from Watertown. The agent kidded the anxious bus-driver about being twenty minutes behind all the way to the Twin Cities. “Oh, no,” said the bus driver, a particularly animated and charismatic African-American woman. “I’m gonna’ make up that time, buster, because I’m going boogieing with my sisters immediately after I park my bus.” I had a very fast ride to Minneapolis.

The powers what be at our camp kept our days filled with lessons, masterclasses, choir rehearsals (we had just enough for a choir), personal practice time, repertoire sessions and field trips to area churches with outstanding pipe organs. I know, you’re right, it sounds pretty geeky, but when you are an organist in your teen years, you’ve already calibrated a relatively low fixed point on the universal scale of all that is hip, phat, funky, fly, happenin’, tony, now and groovy. So, you might as well revel in it. We had a blast.

Oddly enough, though, they didn’t think to plan things for the evenings and they mostly scrambled at the last minute to find ways to entertain us. One night they set up a projector and showed us Mel Brook’s “The Producers”. On another night they took us to the Como Park to visit the zoo. We had heard rumors of a Twins game, but that never materialized.

Instead, on Thursday night of that week, we boarded a bus for a trip to Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis to hear the Minnesota Pops. I was excited. I had never heard a professional symphony orchestra before. They gave us our tickets, sat us down at our tables and gave us our programs. That was when I saw the guest conductor of that evening’s performance: Mitch Miller.

The program started with Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” and moved to a suite from Offenbach’s “Orpheus in the Underworld”. After the intermission, they rolled a Steinway concert grand out in front of the orchestra and a young pianist named Moses Hogan emerged from the wings with the Maestro to perform the first movement of Peter Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 23, and then the final movement of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 18.

At some point, during those forty-five minutes of majestic pianism, underscored by lush orchestrations, a light bulb came on and never went off. This – this – make no mistake – THIS – was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Before this evening, music was a fascination, a hobby, a special talent that I could run to when activity slowed and I needed amusement. But, this, … I knew that I had found my calling and vowed, right there and then, to step everything up about twenty degrees hotter and fifty gears faster.

My favorite question to other musicians: When did you know? Where were you and what were the circumstances when you figured out that music was the answer to virtually every vocational query put to you? Almost every musician I’ve asked, even if they’ve never received the question before, knows the answer and replies with a twinkle in their eye.

At the end of the concert, Maestro Miller led the audience in a ten minute long sing-a-long. It was a grand evening.

Credits: To Mitch Miller, for your unique connection with your audience: the old fashioned sing-a-long. R.I.P., my friend.