morning practice

Many mornings on my way to work, walking down the final cobblestoned hill to Ingólfstorg (the path that freezes over into a kind of ice-slide in the winter), I hear a brass player working his way up and down the scales, major and minor. It's usually very quiet in that area of town, and the smooth brassy tone carries its way on the wind, working a half-block radius among the corrugated-steel houses and old streets of that little quarter.

Just now, on the way to the post box to mail a letter, I took a slightly different route and ended up walking right past the player's house, past the open window. I heard the rich tones of what I think is a trombone or euphonium floating out. But today, instead of scales the player was working on a melody that is all to familiar to me (and to some IR regulars as well): Ravel's Bolero. It gave me goosebumps: it was beautifully and perfectly played, and all that was missing was the driving and incessant percussion.