Minnewaska Musing

Paul Gremmels

I played the flute in my high school band. To defuse any gender associated bigotry, I will also say that I started at middle-linebacker on the football team. I would go on to play the latter in college, but not the former. I barley had enough skills to make a colligate level football roster and was wholly inadequate at my flute playing abilities to make the college orchestra. Point being, that since football is a male dominated sport and flute playing tends to attract more females than males; I can say with relative confidence, that I may have been the only flute-playing, middle-linebacker in Minnesota State history. Maybe even the Country’s. No data seems to have been compiled to disprove my claim.

Diversity has become a potentially tenuous word in conversations of late. It really shouldn’t be. I began my interest in the high school band by wanting to play the trumpet. I think I completed my paperwork past the deadline for renting a trumpet from the school. Same for the saxophone. There was a flute left over and I thought, “should be interesting.” I received a lot of teasing about playing the flute, but I used it as a measuring stick for the friends that I kept. Friends, that I still have to this day.

I once took my mother and her life-long friend, Amy, to the Minnesota symphony orchestra. They were playing Gustav Mahler’s Symphony Number II; more commonly known as “The Resurrection.” This is a powerful symphony with the full orchestra and a hundred voice choir backing them from the risers behind. It comes at you like a hurricane. Soft and low rumbling at the beginning, then gradually building to the full torrent of sound and fury at the end. There were solos from both the choir and orchestra. The language is in German and although I couldn’t understand the words, I could certainly feel them. Our seats were at such an angle that I could see the lead flutist when she launched into her solo. So intricately fast and perfect that when she hit a seemingly impossible, long, high note, a tear ran down the side of her cheek. I’ll have to admit, that I believe there may have been a little something in my eye as well.   

I’m not saying that you need to know how to play an instrument to enjoy listening to a symphony. Nor am I saying that you need to understand the complexities of playing linebacker to enjoy watching a football game. Just the understanding that there is a higher level of any vocation that stands to be admired and if not completely understood, at least acknowledged and respected.

A decade after playing college football, I turned on the TV to watch Super Bowl XXXI. It was a great game, with of course some of the biggest names in the sport. And just like at the Minnesota Orchestra, on the biggest stage, performing at the highest level – the intensity was palatable. In the closing moments of the game, when Green Bay was seconds away from taking down the New England Patriots, the camera did a slow, close-up pan of the Packer’s sideline. And there, a little older and a little grayer, with his headset around his neck, was my old college coach, hugging one of the All-Pro linebackers he had coached to superstardom – with a tear running down his cheek.