Breathe.
The disagreements, however, began when we all tried to break down how it was he got there. He was known to spend twenty hours a day practicing before he made it to the Pops. Sure, that’s fairly typical, I guess. But, what wasn’t typical, were the rigorous hours he put in on a regular basis. Ten, fifteen hours every single day was the rumor, and it was only slightly less on performance days. Work, work, and more work was definitely his reputation, and my excitement about music theory this semester bottomed out in an instant.
“If you’re all quite finished and ready to act like the adults the government insists that you are, let’s get started.” He set his cello case on the floor by the podium and began the driest introduction to an upper level music theory class in the history of humanity. He didn’t even introduce himself. He didn’t have to, but that he knew he didn’t have to really got under my skin.
Nathan wrapped his arm around my shoulder once again. “Get comfortable, beautiful. It’s going to be a long-ass semester.”
By the end of the lecture I was watching the seconds tick by on the clock, certain it was slowing down on purpose. I bounced my knee anxiously as Gregory spent the lecture discussing why musicians should learn certain scales in certain orders, and how that translated into certain classical pieces. He stepped away from the podium and the students began to shift in their seats, collecting their bags, some standing up. He grabbed his cello and headed for a seat in front of the podium. I looked up at Nathan, and he just shrugged his lean shoulders and turned back to Gregory. Without addressing the class, without asking anyone to sit back down or be quiet, he started playing.
It was Bach’s Cello Suite, No. 1 in G major. Everyone knows it. Even people who aren’t musically inclined would recognize the piece within the first measure, if they didn’t already know it by name. I scrunched my forehead, trying to figure out why he would be playing such an easy piece, given what I knew he could play. Hell, if I had a little bit of time with a cello, I could probably play it.
By the third measure, it was shockingly clear. Suddenly there weren’t any other students in the class, and I could barely register that Nathan was standing, unmoving, next to me. I was locked on Gregory’s hands. His face. The way his body swayed each time his bow moved seductively across the strings. Inside ten seconds, he was a musician. Just like the rest of us. Screw that—he was nothing like the rest of us. He was perfect. It was perfect. His eyes were closed, and as the song slowed before the last twelve seconds, or so, he hung onto the pause with his eyebrows pulled together. I held my breath, my throat tight with anticipation, and with tears stinging my eyes at the absolute beauty of this seemingly elementary song he’d just taken to a level I didn’t know existed.
Exhaling only when he carefully ran through the end of the song, I cleared my throat and looked up at Nathan, who was still standing and completely slack-jawed. It wasn’t that we just watched some groundbreaking performance, and that was the cause of the dead silence in the room. It was that we just watched a musician with one of the sternest reputations live up to it in a classroom full of students who could only dream to play with a fraction of the greatness he possessed. Right before our eyes.
Resting his bow against the top of his thigh, he opened his clear blue eyes. “Class dismissed.”
Gregory
Just one semester. That was all I had to deal with ... one semester of dealing with arrogant, disruptive teenagers bent on wasting my time in a class I didn’t want to teach in the first place. I was hoping Madeline would be able to pick the class back up before the end of the semester, but given the extent of her wrist surgery, it didn’t seem likely. She would be spending her free time in physical therapy to get back to playing. That I could understand. Turning the corner to walk down the long hallway of practice rooms, I shuddered at the thought of not being able to play for a few months, as was going to be the case with Madeline.
The practice rooms are mostly soundproof, so it took me off guard to hear the high-pitched melody of a flute floating through the hall. The tone was solid, the sound itself was beautiful, but the notes were disorganized. It didn’t sound like jazz—which I could appreciate on a technical level, if not a sound and composition level—it sounded like rock music of some sort. Suddenly the notes stopped and the hypnotizing melody of Entr’acte from Carmen took over my senses. While this was a fairly simple song, note and rhythm-wise, to be able to play it beautifully was the challenge. It was largely in the upper octave and played between piano and mezzo-forte—especially challenging for under-trained throats that tend to lean toward blaring through the upper-most octaves as though they’re in a marching band.