Firebird? Sweet!

Describe one of your favorite moments.

This is one of the seminal moments in my teaching career. I was taking Music Appreciation with Lou Silverblank at Temple University; the class was required for my Theatre major. One of our assignments was to attend two live music performances.

I hated this idea. I was in the class, so why did I have to go to something outside the class? I managed to find two performances on campus so I didn’t have to venture anywhere else (and they were both free).

The first concert was the Temple University Orchestra playing in one of the campus buildings, an old church converted into useful office and other spaces. They had retained the open space of the original seating area so they could have events such as the orchestra playing there. I arrived, found a seat not too close to the front (typical undergrad move!), and waited for it to begin.

And then it did. And I was amazed. I had never heard a symphony live before, although I had listened to some classical music during my “reading year,” the year between my high school graduation and the start of my first real job, where I visited the library almost daily. This, though, was different than those recordings. It was…right here in front of me. The sound in that acoustically excellent space overwhelmed me.

They were playing Stravinsky’s “Firebird Suite,” which I knew from the start of the YesSongs live album. But again, it was right here. I was present in this beautiful moment and I was transported to a metaphysical, noumenal world of pure Art. I wept (secretly; men didn’t hug or cry back then), and at the end left transformed by the experience.

Years later, as a college professor, I would assign a live theatre event to my students. And they would balk, using the same arguments I did. And I would tell them that story, and urge them to be open to the idea that they might in fact like it. Some still refused, but a few would later tell me that yes, they saw Theatre in a new way, as I had heard Music in a new way, all those years ago.