Strains of Warlock, piped across the live night air; amplified, then compressed: a posted video, momentarily searing the thymus. A fresh brushburn.

Wax;

wane;

philosophize.

Remembrance of the glory days, decades past, under the town’s most celebrated maestro’s baton, integral to these. The house, always full; the town, equally filled, with its talk. Performance, live, virtually every weekend. Inside; outside; running out, further, by bus. To most ears and eyes, everybody fully involved, equally satisfied.

Except not.

One handful, older musicians, heretofore secure, contracts unceremoniously revoked, scheduled to drop out of sight from month to next.

These, positioned, in the back desks of string sections, barely noticed by the teeming and energized, that complement rallied close to the stick to be among those increasingly closer.

The lesser talk, of discontent, unnoticed; no warning, no choice; mutterings, whisperings of master contract terms, incongruent with the surrounding ebullience. Such exchanges not self sustaining, lacking gravitas, generating remote, averting eyes, fading like irrelevance…

Now, among these, to float, beyond the stage

to dance

the Capriol Suite.

.

.

© 7/16/19  Ruth Ann Scanzillo. All rights those of the author, who played the Capriol Suite, and all the other Suites, under all the batons. Please; don’t steal “fading like irrelevance.” Okay? Thanks.