On The Mark: Music is elixir for gray spring days

It’s been a chilly, damp, dark stretch, from early March through April. The beautiful winter ice for skating melted months ago. Snow for skiing disappeared in bits and drabs. Purple finch and white-throated sparrows have returned, ravenous for sunflower seeds and peanut butter, along with the resident chickadees, woodpeckers and nuthatches. The trilling red-winged blackbirds are turning up too.

How have we made it through those dismal weeks? Besides trying out lots of new recipes and listening to Minnesota Public Radio while I cook, I’ve leaned heavily on music for inspiration.

For me, music is a kind of magic. I’m grateful to my parents for encouraging me to learn piano. They rented one for us and paid for lessons. I spent many hours at my Aunt Dot’s, a mile away, playing on her baby grand. When she moved to Florida after her husband’s death, she gave me the piano, one of the most beautiful gifts I’ve ever received. My Cromwell-reared father loved music, a gift from his pianist mother, and carpenter and fiddle-playing father. In his workshop in our basement, he’d often be listening to opera. One Saturday, we drove to the Minneapolis Public Library so he could show me what an orchestral score looks like.

Over the years, I kept playing. During college, living with three women friends off campus, I rented a piano. On it, a sailing club friend of mine from Milwaukee, Tom Stehling, introduced me to four-handed piano. We had a lot of fun. Years later, when I was interviewing for my job at Berkeley, he invited me to stay with him and proposed that we spend the evening, to calm my jitters about the interview, playing Haydn symphonies for the four-handed piano. Of course, I played bass, and it was very challenging, but after each few pages, Tom would lean back and just laugh hilariously. I got the job offer, and took it.

Listening to music has been a lifelong delight. During college, a friend introduced me to jazz. I learned to love many of the jazz greats: George Gershwin, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone. Sometimes, I listened in person in small clubs: Miles Davis in Seattle one college Christmas break; Chet Baker with his combo in Chicago at the Blackstone one wintry night; Antonio Carlos Jobim in a small café in Rio De Janeiro. And then there’s opera, a strange and rarified music with extraordinary demands on its singers. Composer Kurt Weill’s “The Threepenny Opera,” set in 19th-century London, was my first encounter. His song, “The Ballad of Mack the Knife,” remains one of my favorites. I also, like most postwar teens, loved the Everly Brothers, the Beatles, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell and Billy Joel. Still play their recordings. Am trying to master Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” on the piano.

During the decade I lived in northern New Jersey, I went to operatic performances in New York as often as I could. It was expensive and strange, so distinctive from any other form of music. The storylines, mostly tragedies, deliver power, intrigue, passion, exploitation (e.g., Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”). One Christmas, I went to hear the Rutgers University student/community choir sing Handel’s “Messiah.” I said to my friend that I’d love to sing with them. She encouraged me to audition — the bar was very low. I loved it. We sang Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, including its “Ode to Joy,” with its “Alle Menschen werden Brüder ….” Translation, “All mankind are brothers.” We had three marvelous directors over the years I sang, each with a major New York City choral directing job. One of them encouraged me to work on my voice — “You could be a soprano,” he said, to my great surprise. I stuck with the alto section. I still situate myself there at the annual Messiah singalong at St. Scholastica, in hiatus during Covid, but hopefully returning next December.

During Covid, the American Association of Retired Persons sponsored free live jazz performances via Zoom. I watched and listened every Thursday evening, when husband Rod was off bowling. Closer to home, we’ve been enjoying the in-person four-man combo jazz performances at the Duluth Depot, set with those huge railroad engines as their backdrop. Alas, they are done for the season but will be back again next year.

I also am a committed fan of jazz pianist Chick Corea, who died last year. I enjoyed seeing him in person many times during my years in Minneapolis, playing alone or with Bela Fleck on banjo or with Gary Burton on vibraphone. Fortunately, YouTube has many wonderful videos of his performances in the U.S. and Europe. Closeups, and they are free!

Accompanying our Cromwell-Wright High School singers has been a joy. Don’t miss our spring chorus and band concert Thursday, May 19, at 6 p.m. This week, I cleaned up the piles of sheet music that were on the floor and dusted my sweet baby grand thoroughly. I found so many lovely pieces of music that I’ve accumulated over the decades. Before Covid, we held music nights at our home, inviting neighbors who play instruments and like to sing. We hope to begin again.

Columnist Ann Markusen is an economist and professor emerita at University of Minnesota. A Pine Knot board member, she lives in rural Cromwell.