Overture and Jazz

Yesterday, at around Super Bowl half-time, I went to pick up my parents at the airport. They went to San Diego for the weekend and had a wonderful time. But this is not their story. Nor is it my commentary about the Patriots and the Giants. It is the story of my drive to the airport.

It had snowed the day before, which quickly turned to slushy dirty wet stuff. The weather had been wet and miserable for most of the week. Add to it the fact that it was another week in my so far fruitless job hunt, and I was feeling down. I'd been feeling down all week, all January, in fact. But, weather-wise, by Sunday afternoon the clouds had scattered a little and the sun cut through enough to light up the world just a touch.

As I drove up the freeway I had the radio tuned to the classical music channel. I make no excuses for listening to the classical music while the super bowl was going on, I simply was. And then a marvelous thing happened. They played what could possibly be the greatest recording of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture ever performed. I didn't recognize it at first. I'll admit I'm not well versed in the classics, and have never recognized anything I've heard on the classical station. But that never stopped me from listening. The music began to built on itself and the horns played the famous melody of the 1812 Overture. That sounded familiar and it reminded me of Frank Capra movies. Then a children's choir started to sing. By this time the music hooked me. The freeway flew by under my feet.

When the music reached its climax, just at the moment of the first sound of canon to fire, the sun hit just the right part of the sky to shoot its rays in between the clouds and illuminate everything from a gray world -- the road, trees, other cars, the sky -- in golden light. What a glorious moment. Canons fired, children sang, and I felt as if I were soaring as I drove over an overpass.

After it ended the announcer even said it was probably the greatest recording ever of the piece. And who could say otherwise? I felt moved and invigorated in that way that celebrations of music and long dead composers by talented musicians you listen to while driving to the airport to pick up your parents has a way of doing.

For this wasn't the first time that a perfect meld of music and environment moved me while I was on my way to pick up my parents from the airport after their vacation.

About two years earlier my parents went on vacation to Hawaii, and I drove to the airport to pick them up on their return home. The night was warm and I had the windows down. This time I was listening to the Jazz station. I had already left the freeway and was on the long straight road that leads directly to the airport. The lines in the road, lit up by the cars headlights, ran together in the distance. At the point where they met I could see the control tower, standing like an obelisk. Directly aligned above it was the moon, a shimmering crescent on its way back from being a new moon, And surrounded by stars.

I felt the wind coming through the open window, moved my head to the rhythm of the jazz, looked at the road, the control tower, and the moon, all in alignment, and I said "cool." A word that's been overused, but invented for moments like these.

So all this to say, not just to my parents but to everyone, that when you're on vacation, the world has a way of welcoming you back. Now it's time to work again.

Before I sign off I must give credit to the performers of the 1812 Overture. After doing a bit of digging on the classical station's web site, I can give the statistics. It was performed by the Cincinatti Pops Orchestra with the Kiev Symphony Chorus and the Cincinatti Children's Choir, conducted by Erich Kunzel. Bravo.