The Solo

I am spending part of my week recording the band festival at Cairo High School.

A few minutes ago, I was listening to one of the concerts playing this slow, mournful piece and knew what was coming.

The solo.

I have been around band festivals and this kind of music for more than fifty years and am expert at knowing when somebody is about to play the dreaded solo.

The piece starts off energetically but somewhere in the middle, it starts to slow down. There are these long, mournful chords. A lot of French horns and trombones holding those long notes.

It sounds like something from the Game of Thrones soundtrack.
And then, just when the band members start to turn blue and you think everyone is about to pass out from holding their breath so long, the soloist starts playing.

This is the most dreaded part of the festival performance.

The difference between getting all ones or your reputation being forever smudged with a two (band people know what this means) comes down to whether this boy or girl can actually get through their solo without cracking up.

And it’s hard.

Imagine you’re a 17-year old kid. All eyes and ears is the entire band- and everyone in the 1,000 seat auditorium are on you.

It’s your turn to be a star. Or to be forever branded as the loser who ruined festival for everybody.

It’s a lot of pressure on a young kid and it usually shows. When it comes time for ‘the solo’ sometimes it rings out true and clear. But more often, you can hear a quivering in the notes as the poor kid playing it is shaking with fear so hard that his mouthpiece is banging against his teeth.

When I was back in band, being given ‘the solo’ by our band director, Mr. David, was both exciting and terrifying.

You instantly became a star among your peers. And you also instantly had a target painted on your back.

Most of the people who got ‘the solo’ pulled through on the day of the festival performance but during my years recording festival, I have witnessed many poor students who have crashed and burned.

Squeaked notes. Out of tune phrases. Starting too soon. Starting too late.
You couldn’t hear it from where I sit way in the back of the auditorium but I am sure that some of their band mates were whispering “we’re going to murder you on the way home” as the poor unfortunate soul lowered their horn at the end of the butchered solo.

Back in my days in the Cairo High Syrupmaker Band, I was like every other person in the band. I desperately wanted to play a solo at festival.

And I also desperately didn’t want to play one for fear that I would bring a blight on our band’s unbroken record of superior ratings going back to when Warren G. Harding was President.

When Mr. David passed out our festival music every year after Christmas break, you could hear the pages rustling all over the band room as we all desperately searched for the notation in the scores that read ‘solo.’

We wanted to play one and be the hero. That was until we played it that first time in rehearsal and made it sound like two pigs having sex in a cardboard box.

Then we just prayed to be run over in the parking lot by a runaway school bus.

Typically, unless you were some kind of child prodigy, you didn’t get a solo until you were a senior. Or played oboe.

Nobody wanted to play oboe. It’s a notoriously difficult instrument to play and sounds like a goose dying of cholera but there are always oboe solos in every serious piece of festival music. It’s a law or something.

You could be a 9-year oboe player and if you were any good, get a solo with the New York Philharmonic.

When my senior year rolled around and Mr. David passed out our festival music, I didn’t even bother to look and see if there were any solos for saxophone.

I was too scared.

But I didn’t have to look. As we were sight reading the music during class, there it was.

Solo: Alto Saxophone

Oh, yes Lord, please let it be me, I prayed.

And then I saw all of the sixteenth notes and the sharps in the key signature. And I prayed again.

Lord, please let me run over by a bus.

I did get the solo and for the next three months, it consumed my life.
I told Mr. David I couldn’t do it- it was too hard. He just smiled told me to keep practicing.

So I did. I practiced it at home a hundred thousand times. I took my saxophone to work and played it during commercial breaks. I played it during recess and after school in the band room while Mr. David sat in his office.
When I stopped, I would hear him say, “Do it again.”

And I did.

I played the solo in rehearsals with the rest of the band. Sometimes it was perfect. Most times it was not.

I told Mr. David I was going to mess it up. He should give the solo to someone else.He told me he believed in me and knew when festival day came, I would do great. So I kept practicing.

I was getting used to the cold stares from my classmates. And the subtle death threats like the notes left on my music stand.

‘Blow that solo and you’re a dead man!’
Well, maybe they weren’t so subtle.

The week of festival came and I was so nervous I couldn’t eat or sleep.
I took to sucking on my reed around the clock. For you folks who never played a woodwind instrument, the reed is the thin piece of wood attached to the mouthpiece that vibrates and makes the sound. The softer the reed, the easier it vibrates and the less chance it will squeak.

By the time festival day arrived, my reed was softer than a baby’s earlobe.
We put on our uniforms and took the stage. The first song, a Sousa march, was perfect. The next one would have my solo.

As we started it, I could feel my bowels cramp. Here it was. After this day, I would either be hoisted upon the shoulders of my bandmates and be paraded through the streets like a conquering hero or spat upon every time I entered the band room.

The part up to my solo went beautifully- the band was prepared and could have played it with their hands tied behind their backs. And then the music softened and the long, forlorn notes began.

It was time for my solo.

I felt the eyes of the trombone section boring into my back. Other than the tubas, the trombones were the biggest and meanest guys in the band. If
I messed up, it wouldn’t surprise me if one of them didn’t pull a switchblade out of their sock and gut me like a fish right there on stage.
I could feel the sweat running down my back as I took a deep breath and began.

I had played this 16-bar solo at least 100,000 times. Probably more. And miraculously, under all of this stress, my mind just shut down and my mouth and fingers took over.

Without even thinking, I played it- every single sixteenth note, every sharp- perfectly.

When my solo was over, I breathed a huge sigh of relief and looked up at Mr. David. For a tiny second, he allowed himself to smile and he winked at me.
He had been telling me for three months not to worry. I could do this.
And I did.

I sat in the back of the auditorium this week and I listened to the young man play his solo. It was flawless.

I wondered how much stress he must have been under these last few months.
But more than that, I wondered if he had a mentor who believed in him like I did.

I hope so.