Euphonium: A Short Story

The time that I have spent in the music program at Benicia High School have been some of the most emotional, stressful, and rewarding experiences I have ever had, and I cherish every day that I spend with my peers. When I joined, I was oblivious as to what I was getting myself into. I glared with prejudice as nearly one-hundred people, all lined up in a perfect square, screamed with excitement towards me, a naive, inexperienced, and malleable child. I had previously played drums for three years, however, the band director thought that I should learn how to play a wind instrument. He gave me a choice between several instruments, some of which I had never seen before. If I had known what a Euphonium was, that most likely would of been my choice, however, I chose the trumpet. Once I picked up the instrument, everything that I thought I knew about music became a lie. I was handed sheet music that, to me, looked like a jumble of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Over time, I slowly put more pieces of the puzzle together, and learned how to play this one piece of music that I would then rehearse for the rest of the school year. The future of

I knew that if I tensed up, the quality of the product that I had been working on for past week would only suffer. I tried to relax, but I was still overwhelmed by fear. When it was my turn, I let all of my previous anxiety free with a powerful sigh. I took a deep breath, and with clear intonation and articulation, I blew the first note of the solo as clean and with as much finesse as possible. I was blessed with relief, but I could not pause to celebrate, as I had much more to go. As soon as I was finished, I realized that I had played every single note clearly, and I was overjoyed knowing that everything from here was going to be much