Recital.

I played the trumpet for a few years in grade school and then left it behind--for 40 years.

Last year, I visited a friend, a man who had always played. He had trumpets lying around, and I casually picked one up and played simply.

My friend did the same, harmonizing.

I had an epiphany. From a simple duet played with a close friend arose that feeling of concert, of creational well-being that musicians know that lifts up bodies and minds. He loaned me a beat up horn. I took it home and found a teacher.

The first lesson had not ended, but the teacher had already informed me that I would play in the annual spring recital. Not because I was good enough, but because a student is obligated to perform. He gave me a piece to play by Marcello, a contemporary of Bach.

Daily, I played the necessary warm-ups and then practiced the recital piece. But I fatigued easily, could not reach the high notes and did not have the breath to play through the piece.

Lips are muscles and require blood flow to function, to buzzzzzz. A trumpet mouthpiece pressing lips into front teeth reduces blood flow and oxygen supply. So, just as athletes do conditioning exercises, one trains lips into strength and stamina. Sometimes, after 30 minutes of playing, I massaged my top lip, as an opera singer would shake her larynx, and I wondered if I was really resupplying circulation or just acquiring a tic. To regain adequate breath I got onto the exercise bike. I began cutting short the trumpet warm-ups to be able to hit the high notes later; my teacher forgave me for this.

I travel for a living, and to practice on the road I bought an old "pocket trumpet." It was a tightly coiled affair--hardly bigger than two palms. I also bought a mute so I could play in hotel rooms. But blowing against a mute is like blowing up stiff balloons, and the sound is so unfulfilling that it's been difficult to know if I am making tonal progress.

Hotel managers, though, have been quite cooperative, and late at night they open banquet rooms for me so I can play, unmuted. Lo! The little trumpet fills the room with sound. Security guards open the doors and listen awhile, but I, who must play in front of 50 people, ignore them thinking smugly to myself while blowing that this act of ignoring is effective training for the distractions of an audience.

The recital is now a few hours away. I do not know where my nerves are. I do know that I must have the courage to stand up there and play, else my wife and daughter and my teacher, who have all been so patient with the endless repetitions over two months, will be disappointed in me.

Usually, I loathe perfectionists and always assume they failed toilet training.

But somehow music is an exception. It should be possible to achieve a perfect rendering of a piece, though I do not expect to today. The second movement of this piece is sprightly; I am somewhat indifferent to it. But the first movement, marked "doloroso," though simple, is powerful and evocative, and if played well could move an audience.

This is what music is: A conveying from composer to player to listener, of intense emotion, and playing it shares all of it with everyone listening. In so doing, we transcend.

I will try to send the nervous part of me out of the room, detach it from myself, leaving blood and lips and lungs to do the work. I wonder where I will focus my eyes. I do know already that playing well involves psychology. I must hear the notes before blow, for the sound that emanates loyally follows the sound inside my head. If there is mismatch, the horn produces only a noise that is indescribably ugly. By playing the notes I will transmit my personality, my heart and soul.

It must certainly be the stress of recital that causes so many young students to quit. But I am an adult and should have a perspective on how this all works. I should realize that if I keep practicing, however poorly I play today, then some day my dear friend and I might play duets that will move listeners.

Daniel Millar is an airline pilot. He lives with his family and is based in Seattle. Since he wrote this article, he has joined the 85th Street Big Band, playing swing-era and other jazz charts.