34. MY MO - HIS FIRST PREMIERE

Timothy David Petersen
(my Mo)

“There was a lot taken away from us at the end of last year. Less than 24 hours before our concert, when we were supposed to perform some of these numbers, we got a call from the venue telling us they were going to have to cancel this concert.”

(Within weeks all performances of Lyceum Youth Orchestra had been cancelled.)

“One of the pieces we were supposed to perform at that concert was written by one of our own, a percussionist named Timothy Petersen.

This is entirely new music, and it’s finally, after many months, receiving its world premiere. Thank you so much for joining us… this is Timothy Petersen’s, Searching.”

                          Kayson Brown, Director, Lyceum Philharmonic Orchestra

Lyceum Philharmonic Orchestra

Tonight, in a nearly reverential audience of humans starved for the enveloping vibrations of live music, Dave and I joined others in our family in the premiere performance of our oldest grandchild’s orchestral piece called Searching. I stood at the side of the Covey Performing Arts Center music hall, trying to get a view of the percussionists in the back, those tuxedo clad fellows placed on the periphery, hidden behind the tall brown basses and thick layers of string players, whose bows raise and lower like Rockettes’ kicking legs. When Kayson introduced Timothy’s piece, the only original number in a stellar assortment of classic pieces, he had to ask him to wave his arm from the back so people in the audience could see where he was.

His slender limber little body stood behind a vibraphone, back there against the sound wall. He slid the sleeves of his suitcoat up to his elbows and grabbed his mallets. I watched and listened, breathless with the beauty, his whole young life ran simultaneously through my mind as I listened, tears working their way down the sides of my cheeks. I thought of that little boy that sang before he talked, his pitch spot on before his mouth could even form words.

When Timo was not even five years old we were at the cottage in Michigan on our yearly family vacation. I woke early in the morning to some sort of throbbing noise. “I wonder if there’s a problem with the water heater?” I whispered to Dave. We found, instead, little Timothy sitting on the floor in front of the couch, pounding on a pillow to the beat of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. For Christmas that year I gave him a pair of drumsticks.

5 years old with new drum sticks.

For his 8^thbirthday I decided he needed to get some real training before he taught himself incorrect techniques. I searched the classifieds and called a number of drum teachers before I finally found one willing to take someone so young. 

“I don’t know, I’ve never taught anyone near that young.”

“Well,” I said, “If you’re willing to give it a try I can pay you ahead for one month of lessons, and if you think it won’t work, you can stop after the first lesson and keep the rest of the month’s pay.”  His name was Craig, and I am sorry to say I can’t recall his last name, because the man was life changing for our boy, and therefore life changing for us. He taught Timo the proper technique. He taught him how to hold his sticks correctly. He taught him to read music, and listen with a musician’s ear. After a few years Craig told Sarah, our daughter and Timo’s mom, that he had taught him what he could. By then I had enough friends in the music business I knew exactly who should be his teacher and mentor. Jay Lawrence agreed to take him on, and he has advanced him beautifully on his first instruments.

These two people flanking Timo deserve a standing ovation!
Bravo to parents of gifted kids!

Timo also takes piano lessons, a necessity for a composer, I would think, though I really don’t know these things. And this past Christmas Dave and I gave him an upright bass we had been saving in our studio for years. He used the bow from that new bass to draw across the metal bars on the vibraphone tonight. (Look closely in the video.)

The percussion section is always relegated to the back.
They like it there. 

Timothy is seventeen years old, a Junior at Mountain Ridge High School, and just yesterday he found out he made the high school Madrigals singing group, and Vocal Jazz group, so next year four of his class periods will be music, the other two being concert band/ marching band and jazz band. I am most thrilled about it because the incomparable Kelly DeHaan is the vocal educator at his school. I love what Kelly can offer him musically. But my heart and mind are most grateful that the spirit of Kelly DeHaan will be able to speak to the spirit of my precious boy. Kelly gets him. So does his band instructor, James Denzley. They understand he is that quirky, happy little fellow who drops his sheet music all over the floor of the music room and frantically tries to gather it as rehearsal is starting. They know his strengths and his struggles, and they not only accept it, but they embrace the whole package that is our boy, knowing that some of the finest gifts come in unique packages. Thank you Lord, for patient, tolerant, powerful teachers!

Timo and Kayson Brown.

Sitting in the audience with his family tonight were two friends. My eyes shifted over to Tyler, and I said a silent prayer of thanks for friends who are true and good and kind… friends who laugh at the same humor, who overlook bumps in the learning curve, and who make each other feel safe and important. Thank you, Lord, for true friends.

The whole concert tonight, with seven remarkable musicians being highlighted, was just so beautiful. It was hard to believe these were teenagers playing. Bravo to Kayson Brown and others who have made the Lyceum Youth Orchestra world class. 

The reality of a working musician:
Striking the stage and loading gear into trucks after the gig.
This is how friends are made.

I tiptoed up to the side of the stage when it was over, called Timo’s name, and he came and threw his arms around my neck. I held him a good long time. He let me. The memory of it brings tears to my eyes. When he was still a small baby I was struck with Guillain Barre Syndrome. For months I was unable to walk or control my limbs, because of peripheral nerve damage. While the myelin sheaths around my nerves slowly regrew, I sat in a recliner at home. Sarah was in her first year of medical school at the time, and her husband Dave was also a full time student. I often spent the night sleeping in the recliner because of restless leg pain. Sarah and Dave lived with us at that time. At sunrise, Sarah would quietly come into the room and place her baby against my chest, freshly changed and nursed, ready to go back to sleep. His warm head would tuck into my neck. I inhaled the sweet sweat of baby’s hair after he’s received his mother’s milk. In the quiet morning I could hear the whimper of his breath, feel his tiny heart beating against mine. It brought a holy kind of peace, and soon we were both sleeping in the comfort no other setting has ever afforded me so perfectly. We called it my Timo-therapy, and I know for a surety that I would not have healed so soundly without him. Tonight, as I held him on stage, and he held me with the same intensity, we were both seventeen years younger.

Feeding little Mo with a teeny pink Baskin Robbins spoon.

I realized the moment needed to end because there were people waiting. Two young men from the audience were waiting to meet him. One of them handed him a stem of wild roses. “You had the most remarkable piece! It was just the best. We can’t believe you wrote it.” They had decided to give the flowers to the piece they liked the best. Another gentleman came up to him: “You have to know, I am not one to cry, but your piece brought tears.” There were beautiful comments like that, one after the other, falling on him like a blessing from heaven.

Embracing his biggest fan... his mom.

Dave and I went to thank Kayson for selecting Timo’s piece to be performed. He was sincerely complimentary. “He needs to know he can use this recording for auditions for Julliard or Berklee.” Because of the pandemic, they live streamed the whole concert, and in the process recorded it. Then Kayson said how fun it was for him to see the orchestra members respond to the piece, and how impressed they were that it was written by that quirky little percussionist in the back. Timo has the most endearing little personality. He has a light heart, and a love and acceptance for all. It’s hard not to love him.

I was thinking tonight, on the drive home, that what we had heard tonight was newborn, too. Like that little bundle of newness Timo himself used to be, nestled there on my chest. All those notes, and non-notes. All those rhythm’s and vibrations and sustains. The melody and the harmonies and the ritards and builds and crescendo’s…all of it was new, and yet older than time. Every one of those notes has existed, probably forever. But never before have they existed together, in that holy family of composition, in the cloak of this particular performance. That’s the thing about original music. It is new birth; bathed and wrapped and fed and ready to find its place against our hearts. Our mind may or may not comprehend the science of it, but the rest of our soul can feel what it does not understand.

What lies ahead is a whole magical cloud of possibility. Who knows where Timothy may go. He has always and forever been the boy who would rather listen to movie scores than any kind of pop music. He hums it in his sleep. Regardless of the future, no one can ever remove, from us who were present, the magic of this night. A dream come true. Truly. He has heard it over and over in his head. But tonight, he felt it on his skin. And so did we.

Bravo, my precious boy!

You can watch this performance by clicking HERE and sliding up to 1:23.30 (roughly one hour and twenty three minutes into the concert.) The whole concert is fabulous, but if you only have a few minutes, slide it on up to Timo's piece. Mo is playing the vibraphone (looks like a Xylophone) and snare on this piece. What you won't see is the standing ovation after his piece.