Last Saturday evening, I was reviewing my Mendelssohn Lobgesang score on the subway, provoking the curiosity of two inebriated but friendly fellows sitting next to me.

That’s some serious literature right there. Maybe she plays the violin. Cello, man. There’s an instrument called the cello.

Eventually one guy poked me in the arm.

Excuse me, do you play the violin?
No, I’m a singer.

What group do you sing with?
The Boston Symphony Orchestra. We’re performing at Symphony Hall tonight.

That’s very highbrow. We’re going to see Tool at the TD Garden. You’ve probably never heard of them.
Actually I have two of their albums from back in high school. “Lateralus” and the one before that.

Did you go to Berklee?
No, I went to MIT.

How did you end up doing music?
I decided I like music more than what I studied.

That’s cool. We’ll leave you alone now. I don’t want to mess up your concert or anything. 

I doubt they would’ve come, but in retrospect, I wish I had offered them free tickets to tonight’s performance.

I started the new year with a new gig to learn a challenging contemporary sonata. The score is a flurry of accidentals and 32nd notes.

After 10 days of practice, the first movement sounds recognizable, but the second movement is still in the painful “hunt and peck” stage. It’s like hour after hour of cats walking on a keyboard. Maybe next year I should try a new diet instead of new music.