Today I am thankful for music.

11.23.19

---

My appreciation for music certainly isn’t contained to just this one day. It’s a super important part of my life. But tonight I had the honor to attend a concert by Phoenix Singing, a group of local vocalists with some incredible talent. My friends Jaime and Annalicia are both in the group. The entire concert was acapella and featured many locally composed and/or arranged songs. It was an amazing night of music.

There was a very eclectic collection of songs presented tonight and it made me reflect on what a gift music is to so many people in so many different ways. The beauty of music can be represented with a simple melody or with intricate layers of harmonies. It can be predictable and comfortable or dissonant and unexpected. It can represent any emotion possible and it often surprises me with the memories or feelings it invokes. Tonight, for example, I was transported back to a service trip I took in college, I got all sentimental and mushy remembering something Grampy told me once, and I created a new item for my bucket list – all within an hour and all while sitting in one spot, listening to music.

I was also struck tonight by the power music has to unite people in the human experience. All of us sitting in the concert likely had different impressions of the music, different reactions to different songs, and various thoughts about the performance. But, we were united in our shared experience and our appreciation of the music. And then it occurred to me that across the world right then in that moment there were likely people dancing together in clubs, people singing lullabies to babies, people celebrating sports victories with pep bands, people sipping wine and listening to slow jazz, people creating art while listening to their favorite playlists, people putting up Christmas trees while listening to carols, people mourning the loss of a loved one with echoes of favorite songs playing on repeat in their minds, on and on and on. It’s kind of cool to think about, if you ask me.

Music is intertwined into so many aspects of my life that I sometimes take it for granted. But I’m appreciative for an evening like this to remind me of the beautiful gift that music is to me, and in my opinion, to humanity.