It took me ages to figure this out. My special skill in music can be summed up in one word: Collaboration. I’m really surprised that it’s taken me this long to figure it out, even though it’s been obvious for a very long time. Whether I’m performing with other people, or performing a solo organ concert, I’m still collaborating. In the latter case, I’m collaborating with an instrument that I’ve had to come to know. Every organ is vastly different, just as is each room in which the organ is placed. We, the organ and I, work out how we want to make music together. It’s certainly not about exerting my own will.
The beauty of collaboration is that, like improvisation, I never know exactly where it may lead me. Tonight it lead me down a path that could prove tremendously enriching.
Getting out the door before a long trip is always exhausting for me. Starting my day with virtually no sleep, being picked up by the shuttle at 4:00 a.m., finding San Francisco airport bursting at the seams and verging on chaos at 5:00 a.m., then finding that my plane had broken down wasn’t the most ideal way to begin my day. But by 6:25 p.m. EDT, I was happily ensconced in Anderson Auditorium on the lovely retreat grounds of Montreat, NC. There I met David LaMotte, a singer/songwriter right out of the James Taylor tradition. I had heard that he would be performing tonight, so I took the liberty to write to him and ask if he’d be willing to do a piece or two together. He had never performed with an organist before; and I had never performed with a single guitarist/vocalist before. We had 20 minutes or so to rehearse a lovely song called “Mi Luna,” based on a poem from Nicaragua, then sat down to get to know each other before I had to check into my room, shower, and get back for the evening concert.
This was one of those situations of grace, where deep sympatico of intention is met between two people. He, like I, is committed to performing, but also to work, actively, for world peace. He’s started up a non-profit and has fingers all over the world in his endeavors. I immediately started telling him about my grand project (a future blog to describe this), using music in international conflict resolution; and we knew that we needed to continue this discussion at length.
The concert came off beautifully, and people seemed quite moved by our musical collaboration. I can only consider it grace as I discover, at a rapidly increasing rate, people in my path that are eager to help me develop my international peace project. Music makes such a comfortable bed-fellow with social change!