The Concert

A musician plays a concert at a small venue.

Here they were in another odd little venue. They had been playing together a long time. She on the harp and he on the accordion. They were not a standard combination and it wasn't always easy to book places for them to play. And it wasn't like they expected to earn much. They each had day jobs. It was more the pleasure of playing for an audience. Even a small audience created that energy, that community of people joined together in the music. And, honestly, they'd have played for free, but then no one would take them seriously. Who'd hire a harp and an accordion that gave away their time? If they didn't put a price on their work, then people thought it couldn't have any value. She smiled at that.

Tonight they were at a medical facility. Lots of old people, which wasn't bad. They often liked classical and jazz music. Not that what they played was really either. They did a mash-up of folk melodies with some church music thrown in. As a harpist, she knew everyone expected the celestial music of the spheres from her, so she leveraged some of the most well known hymns into their pieces. The stuff that everyone over 25 remembered from the times they'd gone - or been dragged - to church. The accordion, on the other hand, had the whiff of a street festival or a dance on a hidden plaza in the old part of town. The old countryside tunes came naturally. One of the pieces they did, Arc en Ciel, nicely married the reedy earthiness with the plucked strings. The two instruments working together shifting from the ground to the heavens.

She loved playing the harp. The solidity of the frame, which she pulled to her to start playing. The strings crossing the space, ready to ring out when she stroked them. Even the intricacy of tuning every day was a pleasure. To turn the peg and hear the note come true. OK, she wasn't that fond of changing strings, but even that had its charm. In general, she wasn't very handy, but with her harp, it was different. She was meticulous. Strings had to be knotted properly and the right length. Classic Goldilocks stuff - not too long, not too short, but just right. All the little tasks were done on time and well.

As she looked out at the twenty odd people sitting at waiting for them to start, she wondered what they were in for. She giggled to herself. It's not like this was a prison. But, sobering, she realized that these people too would rather be elsewhere, back in their homes with their lives. Yes, her first thought was more apt than the ambiance here would suggest.

Her partner opened the set, introducing the two of them, touching on the whole earth/sky comparison as a paradigm around which their collaboration turned. She could feel the audience was skeptical. Their first piece was swirls of notes, starting with the accordion and you could almost see the fallen leaves circling the ground. With an upwards flourish, he passed the melody to her and she took it even higher, spiraling upwards. The notes flew like a flock of starlings, first one way and then the other, shifting into different configurations, each flowing from the other, but always different. Then the flock wheeled in the air and dove down to settle in the field, where the accordion came back in and slowed as the night fell on the sleeping birds. She'd felt the audience tuning in to the music as a formed. She'd seen heads swaying and even one lady in the back moving her hands towards each other like she holding and shaping the music. They'd even applauded with some vigor.

Their second piece was much more back and forth. One did a phrase, then the other, notes jumping like rain on a roof. The harp's crisp plucked notes contrasting with the flow of the accordion. Then both together like a swiftly running river with splashes kicked up from rocks in its midst. And the river moved faster and faster until it waterfalled down into a lake where the foam soon turned to a gentle flow out to the sea. She released the harp, enjoying the smattering of claps.

They continued through the usual repetoire. The piece that evoked the cold of space with sparkles of starlight. The piece that moaned in the fear of being left behind in the cold ground while the soul flies to heaven. And they ended on the piece that begged the audience to tap their feet to a jig in a field. The audience had stayed with them, more than she'd expected from this group of people resting and recovering from various illnesses and accidents. As she and her partner stood, she felt that they'd knitted the audience together with them, connected by the music, even for just an hour. And the glow of it stayed with her as she packed her harp and drove home.