And so it was that three weeks before the performances, I received the sheet music for the first clarinet part and took it home to look at it. I was shocked to open it up to find 107 pages of music to learn in such a short time! I assumed that maybe Tim was so confident in our ability to do this because the music was easy, and I started plowing my way through it. But no, it turned out not to be particularly easy music. After about 30 pages of shifting through every imaginable key signature, counting dizzying numbers of leger lines, and working out the logic of the page turns, smoke started pouring out of my brain, and I just had to close the book. I couldn't help but to wonder what was responsible for Tim's apparent confidence that we could do this, but I wasn't ready to give up on the commitment I had made.
When I went to the first rehearsals, Tim gave us the very wise advice to focus just on "the big numbers" without worrying about the little stuff in between. The little stuff, he said, was a lot of repeated themes from the big stuff, so it would come together on its own. So I was able to reduce my workload by about half, which still left me with a lot more than I thought I could do by myself. So I looked to other clarinetists to help me with the first clarinet part. Ultimately, though, Tim decided that the other two clarinetists were needed more on the second clarinet part and that I could handle the first clarinet part on my own. I wasn't sure what I had done to give him the impression that I am that talented a musician, but I also didn't want to let him or the kids down. So I continued to give it my best effort.
By the first rehearsal with the actors, I was feeling the pressure of the situation, with every wrong note and missed cue feeling like a disaster. I had never played in a pit orchestra before and was not prepared for the on-the-spot improvisation that often is necessary with a live performance. So I spent a lot of time lost and mentally beating myself up over my mistakes, which then translated into physical tension that interfered with my playing, which caused more mistakes and more beating myself up and more tension, until I was barely getting any sound out of my clarinet at all. I wasn't about to back out of the commitment I had made, but I knew something would have to change for me to be successful with this.
I decided to get myself some "fairy dust" in the form of new reeds and a better ligature, and to take Peter Pan's advice to "think lovely thoughts." Of course, that meant letting go of the not-so-lovely thoughts. I told myself that if Dudley Voigt had wanted perfection, she would have hired professional musicians, or at least given us more than three weeks to learn the music. I realized that any parts of it that I could play would add to the kids' experience, even if I couldn't play it all, and that my best efforts really would be good enough. So I started really consciously making efforts to enjoy the parts I could play and to make them as musical as possible. When I would make mistakes, I would just pencil in notes to help myself the next time around and then let go of it. Usually the next song was starting anyway, and it was much more productive to stay focused on making the new song good than on how I had screwed up the last song. Suddenly, every rehearsal got better and better. I started to surprise myself with the difficult things I was actually able to play. When I didn't entertain not-so-lovely thoughts about how impossible certain key signatures were and just stayed focused on trying, they became possible. And the more things I got right, the more my confidence and enjoyment grew, which caused me to get more things right, until by the final performance I was playing far more of the music well than I had ever expected that I could! And in general, my skills as a clarinetist were far sharper than they had been in decades! I still made some big mistakes in my performance, but they just didn't mean as much as the really good parts.
Playing in the Peter Pan pit orchestra really did turn out to be a great way to support my community, as I had expected, but it also unexpectedly reminded me of some of the important lessons that I need to keep learning and re-learning throughout my life. It challenged me to be a better musician and to grow as a person. This is why I am, and always will be, a musician, even if "only" an amateur in a community band.
