Music Lessons

F. Anthony Ames
principal, percussion

I know I play way beyond my gifts. I have mastered some aspects of this -- playing percussion -- but it is so unbelievably hard. Sometimes it's mysterious exactly what I'm afraid of. When I came here to the NSO, I used to stand when I played. Then, during a concert one night, something started to move along my lower calf, up my right leg, into my back, along my shoulder, down through my forearms into my wrists, and in seconds I lost control. Instead of tiny taps with the sticks, I made scrambled eggs, mush. It came from nowhere, this shake in my wrists. I went home that night and changed how I play. In 24 hours I changed. I changed the way I hold the stick. This is one reason I'm still here after 38 years: I survive. Can I still do it? I worry.

If it were possible I would resign from the position of principal percussionist and get out of the limelight, but it's not possible. There's nothing below me, nowhere to go in the orchestra, and no one here who would want the pressure of this position. If they were 25 years old, they might. I used to. I practice at least two hours a day, sometimes five. The younger players, they don't need this -- it's their vitality. It's different when you are old. I'm always exposed. Even if I have just a very few notes to play, they are always solos.

I've been with this orchestra since 1968. The sheer wonder of the combined sound of a symphony orchestra, when you are sitting in the middle of it, is totally intoxicating, a sheer pleasure. [But] it doesn't get easier each time you perform. It gets harder. It's not about the music, it's about the sport, the body. It's an act of faith for a drummer: Your hand is in the air; it's an act of a faith the mallet will go where you want it to and hit the note. When I was younger, I played like I had nothing to lose and everything to play. Now doubt looms -- the jitters, adrenaline rushes, a surge. It can make me shake.

I don't look forward to playing a concert.

Desimont Alston
second violin section

The conditions I come from were extremely pernicious growing up: the inner city of Philly -- the Badlands. I grew up there amidst heartache, carnage, death.

There were 25, 30 kids in my class in the fourth grade, and in walks a gentleman who says, "Who wants to play the violin?" It could have been the chin fiddle, the glockenspiel -- I was going to play and get out of the classroom. I followed a few paces behind him down the hall wondering, "What's a violin?" So we went to the teachers' lunchroom, and there was a young lady. She says: "Everyone who wants to play, play. Give it a try." She was halfway through her student teaching, and this must have been one of her first assignments. "Each of you have the privilege of learning the violin. Here's a test." It was a hearing and rhythm test. I flunked it miserably. She was about to march me out, and I burst into crocodile tears. I was the only child crying. "This is unfair. I didn't even know what I was being tested on. How can I be tested on something I don't know?" So she allowed me to learn the violin. I remember looking at her and saying to myself: "I'm going to prove it to you. I can learn this." If it wasn't for that first rejection, I wouldn't be here today. I was an 8-year-old that had something to prove. The violin became my ticket out, and as I became more serious I had to survive the gangs, survive the police. You can imagine them saying, "There's a little black boy carrying a violin case?" The police thinking, Hey, what's wrong with this picture? I learned how to survive the game of life. When they threw me up against the police car, I always kept my mouth shut. They were hoping you'd say something --pushing and shoving me, provoking me -- but I never did. I didn't tell my violin teacher that this happened to me. More than once, on my way to a lesson, just a half-hour earlier, I had my nose up against a police car. I just went into my lesson as if nothing had happened. All I knew was: I had to be as good at the violin as I could. It was my chance to get out of this mess.

I can count on my hands the number of times my parents made it to one of my concerts. It didn't matter to me. They loved me, they supported me in their own way. The violin just wasn't their cup of tea. They gave me shelter, they fed me. They gave me that kind of support. I had the violin.

Luis Haza
first violin section

A cousin of mine, he had a violin, and he didn't want to play. I begged for that violin. The other kids said it was a sissy instrument. I didn't care. So my father, he got me the violin. The day I was going to start violin lessons I rushed home so excited. Then I found out we had to leave Santiago and go to the other side of the island, the outskirts of Havana. We had to leave everything, even the violin. This was November 1958. My father was part of Castro's [revolutionary] pact. My father, who was [Juan] Batista's chief of police, helped Castro overthrow him. [My father] wanted free elections. Castro guaranteed my father our safety. You see, Castro fooled him, he betrayed my father. My father was taken in the middle of the night. There was no trial. Four days later, he was executed. Dumped into a ditch. There were executions en masse.

Our house, our car had been taken by the government. My mother, she had five children. As children of an executed man, we were in danger. So my uncle had a house. He helped us move there, to Holguin. Some nine months after, I found the violin on top of my mother's chifforobe. One of my uncles had brought it. I was dying to play. A teacher came to the house for three hours each time -- he came three times a week for $5 a month. I would rush home from school to play. I would resist coming to the table for dinner, and my mother would pull me by the scroll of the violin.

Music was my sustenance, my strength. By the time I was 12, I had a certain amount of notoriety as a child performer in Cuba. Castro was trying to convince the nation that the new government was good for the nation. So I walked a difficult line. If they could convince a young performer to incorporate himself to play his musical instrument in certain ways, that would make them look good, the government -- Look, even the child of an executed man can have the chance to have something to say, to perform here in Cuba. For instance, we were rehearsing, I was 12. I was assistant concertmaster of the Lyric Theater orchestra in Holguin, Cuba. I was paid by the ministry of culture, by the government. It all belonged to the government. We are rehearsing one night when several militia, Castro's militia, they come barging in. I mean, they come barging in carrying machine guns, rifles, very bold. I'm sitting there in this chair in the front, in the middle. They are looking around at each one of us. "Why are they here?" I am wondering, we are all wondering. "Who do they want?" Then the soldier in front, his eyes stop at me. He points to me and says: "Hey, boy. Play something for us." Hey, boy. It was a command. Of course, I was scared. The orchestra musicians were wondering, "What the heck is going on?" Prior to that, Raul Castro [Fidel Castro's brother] had held in that town a televised event, and I was supposed to play. I could not possibly play for Raul Castro. They sent an official to my house to bring me. I refused. I was holding my breath. A few days later nothing had happened. I knew something would happen, but when? That is when they burst into our rehearsal. I played. I played "The Star-Spangled Banner." And the more I played, the more I got into it, and the quieter it got. Everyone shut up. They were thinking, This is the end of Luisito -- they called me that, Luisito. I finished. Dead silence. A guy, one of the musicians, broke it: "Hey, that is supposed to be in C major, isn't it?" "Wasn't that B-flat major?" said another. They tried to protect me with all this talk the military didn't understand. They created movement and commotion and talk, and got me moving toward the back of the orchestra.

I couldn't contain myself. I had to play it. I was shaking when I played "The Star-Spangled Banner." I was shaking over the anger about my father's death, the neighbors who were executed, the friends who were gone. I was saying there is something you cannot take from me. I wanted them to know I am a free man. I will speak through my violin, my instrument. When I play, I feel my father on my shoulders, my sister, my brothers. All the musicians in the orchestra standing behind me, we play for all our ancestors.

Patricia E. Dempsey is a frequent contributor to the Magazine.