Nocturne Read Free Page A

together. I held my breath, my throat tight with anticipation, and with tears stinging my eyes at the absolute beauty of this seemingly elementary song he’d just taken to a level I didn’t know existed.
    Exhaling only when he carefully ran through the end of the song, I cleared my throat and looked up at Nathan, who was still standing and completely slack-jawed. It wasn’t that we just watched some groundbreaking performance, and that was the cause of the dead silence in the room. It was that we just watched a musician with one of the sternest reputations live up to it in a classroom full of students who could only dream to play with a fraction of the greatness he possessed. Right before our eyes.
    Resting his bow against the top of his thigh, he opened his clear blue eyes. “Class dismissed.”
     
    Gregory
    Just one semester. That was all I had to deal with ... one semester of dealing with arrogant, disruptive teenagers bent on wasting my time in a class I didn’t want to teach in the first place. I was hoping Madeline would be able to pick the class back up before the end of the semester, but given the extent of her wrist surgery, it didn’t seem likely. She would be spending her free time in physical therapy to get back to playing. That I could understand. Turning the corner to walk down the long hallway of practice rooms, I shuddered at the thought of not being able to play for a few months, as was going to be the case with Madeline.
    The practice rooms are mostly soundproof, so it took me off guard to hear the high-pitched melody of a flute floating through the hall. The tone was solid, the sound itself was beautiful, but the notes were disorganized. It didn’t sound like jazz—which I could appreciate on a technical level, if not a sound and composition level—it sounded like rock music of some sort. Suddenly the notes stopped and the hypnotizing melody of Entr’acte from Carmen took over my senses. While this was a fairly simple song, note and rhythm-wise, to be able to play it beautifully was the challenge. It was largely in the upper octave and played between piano and mezzo-forte—especially challenging for under-trained throats that tend to lean toward blaring through the upper-most octaves as though they’re in a marching band.
    As I made my way toward the end of the hallway, the song started again as soon as it was finished, sounding even more beautiful than the time before. I knew it wasn’t Madeline, even though it sounded keenly like her. It had to be one of her students. Madeline was thorough and demanding in the physical instruction of her students—coaching their throats to stay open and strong. While that was good practice for all flutists to learn, Madeline was able to train her students in such a way that gave them great endurance. Approaching the room, drawn by a curiosity that didn’t usually strike me with woodwinds, I began to think maybe it was another instructor. The sound, though, was too familiar to be someone I didn’t know. When the second run of Entr’acte ended, that unfamiliar rock song started again.
    Normally, it’s poor form to spy on someone as they are practicing, but their sheer inability to stay on task irritated me. How could one jump from classic opera, to that uncultured noise, and back again? I raised my eyebrows when I saw Savannah Marshall, her back to me, playing as she stood in front of an empty music stand. Her control over the notes is what held my ears captive. Despite her playing music I had no use for, I couldn’t look away. While I remembered her audition nearly three years ago like it was yesterday, since I’d never heard a seventeen-year-old flutist with such skill in all of my years, I chalked some of it up to her ability to audition.
    Some people get stage fright. This is why, increasingly over the years, musicians have turned to anti-anxiety medications and beta-blockers to calm their nerves. Some musicians, however, do their best work in an