The man on the podium was wiry and intense, just as I remembered him from high school. “We’re going to take this piece apart and put it back together again,” said Dr. Joseph Ceo, then 85, stabbing the air with his baton. I trembled, remembering past musical humiliations. I hadn’t played the string bass in decades, but once I heard that alumni were invited to join the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestra anniversary concert in 2018, I knew I had to be part of it.

Playing in an orchestra had made adolescence bearable. It introduced me to a group of people whose idea of a good time was listening to Wagner’s Liebestod on a Saturday night. It left me in love not just with music but with music-making. Yes, I lived 500 miles away, and my only symphonic experience since high school was air-conducting in the car, but these were trifles. I rented a string bass and got to work.

Though Dr. Ceo had left the orchestra and moved away shortly after we graduated, none of us had forgotten him. He had treated us like musicians, not kids, and we had performed well for him, many of us going on to conservatories and musical careers.

I was not one of them. So why was I standing here with a string bass I could barely hold up, preparing to play the finale of Stravinsky’s “Firebird”? Because I knew that if Dr. Ceo was part of it, I wanted to be, too.

The concert that weekend was everything I remembered from the old days. The fun, the tension, the pit in the stomach. But there was something else, too: the joy of making music together. As soon as I felt it, I knew the months of practice had been worth it. 

As we belted out the last bars of the piece, the timpani pounded behind me and I felt its vibration travel through the floor boards and into my spine, where it left a tingle. We had taken the music apart and put it back together again. In fact, life had taken us apart and put us back together again — and we were all richer because of it.

Thank you, Dr. Ceo. Rest in peace.

(Dr. Ceo stands in the back row of this photo, second from left.)