After rushing my daughter to her weekly violin lesson last Saturday, my regular waiting-bench in the hall of MacPhail School of Music wasn’t going to cut it. I needed more sunlight, more people, and less of myself. So I wandered into an atrium area that is more like a sunny, public concert hall. The wide stairs leading up to the building’s second story double as stadium seating and normally those steep rows face a folded wall of nothing. But on Saturday, the wall was folded back, revealing a grand piano and a man who was creating from it the most beautiful music. 

The song floated up to me, at the top row, like I wish Spring would- soft and warm enough to thaw wintery edges. The piano player used no music and said no words. Clearly more at home among treble clefs and harmonics, he played perfectly. His hands flowed over the keys and I wondered what it would feel like- to make something sing. 

After playing a few songs, he would leap from the bench, stiffly bow (while making eye contact with no one), and shuffle to the two women attending him for a moment of celebration, before returning to make more Spring. 

During his rendition of Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World, a Family Music classroom emptied into the atrium and a crowd of preschoolers stood, transfixed, watching the piano player play. Their parents, too, equally moved by the music and by witnessing their kids witness it, forgot to feel hurried. 

One young girl grabbed the hands of the classmate nearest her and together they started dancing to the music. When a third child was included the dance became a twirl. They spun on that stage, hand in hand in hand, faster and faster, twirling in the filtered March sunshine. Delight shone on the peach, tan, and cocoa colored faces of the kids- in downtown Minneapolis, no less- while the quiet, gifted man kept playing the piano. 

Someone’s younger sister, she was probably one year old, snuck away from her family and toddled deeper into the stage area, past the twirling friends, and stood just off to the side of the piano. She stood there, slightly swaying in her pink ballerina dress. She couldn’t take her eyes off of the man’s hands. I couldn’t look away from her. 

She looked out at us all to see if her parents were watching. They hadn’t been, until just that moment. I could hear their gasps across the open space. Immediately the luring began: the father’s crouch, his arms flung open wide, the mother frantically digging in a bag for a favorite snack and toy, the desperately happy faces we adults make to get the babies to do the things we need them to do. 

This baby wasn’t convinced. Rather she determinedly turned back to the piano, almost toppling over in her enthusiastic autonomy. And then she raised her tiny fist to the keys and plinked out some of the high notes. I almost squealed with delight. 

The morning’s rare maestro wasn’t distracted or offended and he kept playing, which caused the whole scene to become even more holy. So she kept playing too, her tutu floofling as she struggled, stretching to reach those keys. The atrium was full of the man’s rich piano playing and her bold plinking, the sun warming and the kids twirling. 

I hope the baby knew that for a moment she was at the center of it all- creating the music, calling the spring, and conducting the twirling of us all.