The Quarterback and the Lineman

I’m not a huge football fan, but after yesterday’s 8^th grade concert at the school where my mentee Yari teaches, I came up with a new way to talk about this complex profession called music teaching. 

 

The first, and most notable job, is the quarterback. You decide the plays, communicate to the team, take the hike and hand it to the running back or throw the ball down the field. If all works well, the children take it or catch it and run to make the touchdown. You get the recognition and glory of throwing it, they get the recognition and glory of moving the ball downfield and/or scoring the touchdown. All well and good. 

 

Yari had chosen many of the pieces I’ve arranged and at the beginning of the Fall, had me introduce them to the kids. So I’ve certainly had my quarterback moments with them and delightfully so. But as mentor, my job was to train the next quarterback (Yari), so he did the lion’s share of practicing the pieces with the kids. I came in periodically and adjusted the plays as needed, helped the kids learn to catch the ball and so on. 

 

But yesterday coming to assist in the concert itself, I was more like the lineman. My job was to make sure everything in the field was in order to protect the quarterback, halfbacks and ends. Before the kids came in, I found and placed all the correct mallets on the instruments, found the stools for sitting at the instruments far superior to the chairs. I searched the school to find a rug so the drum set wouldn’t slide (and found one in a hallway), decided where the guitarists would sit, organized the kids to set up chairs for the audience, figured out how to compensate for a missing D bar on a xylophone, searched for and found a missing brush for the drumset, found a group of kids to fold the program, etc. etc. and yet again, etc. All those invisible details no school administrator or audience member will ever know about.

 

During the rehearsal, I advised the kids to freeze and hold their mallets up dramatically at the end of one piece, played conga alongside a kid who needed some support, sat next to another kid on the bass bar who needed some guidance. In short, I spent the entire long day there through five rehearsals followed by the concert, seeing what was needed and how I could be useful without anyone needing to know what I was doing. 

 

I share it here not to get credit for it with you, the reader, but just to paint the portrait of all the hidden details (and more) that go into putting on a concert that appears effortless when all flows smoothly. I’m fine being in the spotlight as the quarterback when the occasion calls for it and equally fine being the invisible lineman. Whatever is needed to bring happiness and joy in a music performance. At the end, Yari did publicly acknowledge my work and that was fine, but no administrator was acknowledging his (or the kids’) work, so that wasn’t fine. So the only words I spoke to the audience were “And let’s hear it for Yari!!!” They applauded and whooped and shouted, as well they should have.

 

Now I’m off to walk back to the school to help out with the 7^th grade concert. Happy to be the lineman again and predicting that the kids will score many touchdowns.