Something a little different and quaint this week: a little story.

If I told you that I was a band geek throughout my high school experience, would you be surprised?

If you’re a regular reader of mine, then probably not. My personality alone kind of exudes “geek”.

Growing up and having my public education entirely through the Turlock United School District, I was really fortunate to not just have music programs at my schools in the first place, but to have ones that were actually pretty good. While I was at Osborn elementary school when I started to learn and play the saxophone, my first real performance was at the CMEA solo ensemble, held at none other than Stan State.

The CMEA, California Music Educators Association, hosted an annual performance “contest” where the focus wasn’t on winning but on self-improvement and collaboration. Students that voluntarily signed up would work for months and months on learning, practicing, memorizing, and performing solo pieces, typically with piano accompaniment.

It was terrifying. It wasn’t just the first time I had walked inside the buildings of the college (a place for big kids, not little old I), it was also the first time I had performed in front of judges, and it was the first time I had performed as a soloist.

If I close my eyes now and think really hard, I can still hear that first, very easy, piece, and move my fingers along with the invisible buttons on my air-saxophone. We have a video of the performance, and it sounds exactly like you would expect a nervous ten year old playing the saxophone would sound like. It’s off-tempo, out of tune, and I think I messed up my end-of-performance bow too.

But in the moment after I finished the last fermata of the piece, it was glorious.

The judges, who were collected educators from around the Central Valley, including staff from Stanislaus itself, were super kind, encouraging, and forgiving. They gave me a collective “Excellent” rating which puffed up my ego for the subsequent three months, and gave me advice on how to better control my embouchure and tone.

It was a stressful and a great experience. So much so that I continued to perform at the solo ensemble off and on for the next seven years, eventually dragging my high school friends along with me and subjecting them to listening to my “Superior” and “Command” performances. Many of which I’m still very proud of!

I didn’t continue music education after high school, attending exactly two class sessions of Stanislaus jazz band before I realized that it was way more intense and time-consuming than I was able to commit to as a non-music major, but when weird internal politics between the Music and Spanish departments kept me from being in regular band in junior high, I still had the solo ensemble to look forward to.

Stanislaus, long before I was a college student here, was giving me opportunities for growth and performance. And I remember and am thankful for that whenever I find myself walking around the Music Department.

There are tons of small and large music events at Stanislaus, in non-pandemic times there would be a performance of some sort every single week. If you happen to be looking for something to do and support, then maybe you can hang out at Snyder Hall and stumble on a baby-Nathan-performance-equivalent and cheer them on in their first ever “big kid” performance too!