I'm not saying that this particular performer played better at the concert. I was nervous, almost dropped my bow switching from pizzicato to arco. But I held on, made most of the notes in the run, did not rush the entrance in the exposed string bass part half way through the Verdi, and was able to hit the harmonic in the tip-of-the-bow opening of the Firebird finale.
From there on, the hair stood up on the back of my neck as I played our B flats and E flats, putting everything I had into those notes, doing my awkward vibrato, hearing the timpani pounding behind me. I didn't just play the music, I felt it. The trumpets and trombones blaring out their final chords, the whole marvelous ensemble, and at its helm, Dr. Joe Ceo, 85 years old.
"We're doing this again in five years for the 75th anniversary," he said after the concert, as a bunch of us stood around, still in a bit of a rush from it all. "You all will have to be here for it, because I don't know if I will be." No way, we said. If you can do it at 85, you can do it at 90.
It was that kind of music, that kind of concert, that kind of day.
(The Central Kentucky Youth Orchestra with vocal soloists in its final performance of the 2017-2018 season. No pictures of the Reunion Orchestra yet!)