By now we are probably 1,000 or more people removed from whoever wrote
this.  Doesn't matter.  He is a Julliard student who played for relief
workers.

   Playing for the Fighting 69th
   -----------------------------
   Monday, Sept. 17

   Yesterday I had probably the most incredible and moving experience
   of my life.  Juilliard organized a quartet to go play at the Armory.
   The Armory is a huge military building where families of people
   missing from Tuesday's disaster go to wait for news of their loved
   ones.  Entering the building was very difficult emotionally, because
   the entire building (the size of a city block) was covered with
   missing posters.  Thousands of posters, spread out up to eight feet
   above the ground, each featuring a different, smiling, face.

   I made my way into the huge central room and found my Julliard buddies.
   For two hours we sight-read quartets (with only three people!), and
   I don't think I will soon forget the grief counselor from the
   Connecticut State Police who listened the entire time, or the woman
   who listened only to "Memory" from Cats, crying the whole time.  At
   7, the other two players had to leave; they had been playing at the
   Armory since 1 and simply couldn't play any more.  I volunteered to
   stay and play solo, since I had just got there.

   I soon realized that the evening had just begun for me:  a man in
   fatigues who introduced himself as Sergeant Major asked me if I'd
   mind playing for his soldiers as they came back from digging through
   the rubble at Ground Zero.  Masseuses had volunteered to give his
   men massages, he said, and he didn't think anything would be more
   soothing than getting a massage and listening to violin music at the
   same time.  So at 9:00 p.m., I headed up to the second floor as the
   first men were arriving.  From then until 11:30, I played everything
   I could do for memory:  Bach B Minor Partita, Tchaik.  Concerto,
   Dvorak Concerto, Paganini Caprices 1 and 17, Vivaldi Winter and
   Spring, Theme from Schindler's List, Tchaik.  Melodie, Meditation
   from Thais, Amazing Grace, My Country 'Tis of Thee, Turkey in the
   Straw, Bile Them Cabbages Down.  Never have I played for a more
   grateful audience.  Somehow it didn't matter that by the end, my
   intonation was shot and I had no bow control.  I would have lost any
   competition I was playing in, but it didn't matter.  The men would
   come up the stairs in full gear, remove their helmets, look at me,
   and smile.

   At 11:20, I was introduced to Col.  Slack, head of the division.
   After thanking me, he said to his friends, "Boy, today was the toughest
   day yet.  I made the mistake of going back into the pit, and I'll
   never do that again." Eager to hear a firsthand account, I asked,
   "What did you see?" He stopped, swallowed hard, and said, "What you'd
   expect to see." The Colonel stood there as I played a lengthy rendition
   of Amazing Grace which he claimed was the best he'd ever heard.

   By this time it was 11:30, and I didn't think I could play anymore.
   I asked Sergeant Major if it would be appropriate if I played the
   National Anthem.  He shouted above the chaos of the milling soldiers
   to call them to attention, and I played the National Anthem as the
   300 men of the 69th Division saluted an invisible flag.  After shaking
   a few hands and packing up, I was prepared to leave when one of the
   privates accosted me and told me the Colonel wanted to see me again.
   He took me down to the War Room, but we couldn't find the Colonel,
   so he gave me a tour of the War Room.

   It turns out that the division I played for is the Famous Fighting
   Sixty-Ninth, the most decorated division in the U.S.  Army.  He
   pointed out a letter from Abraham Lincoln offering his condolences
   after the Battle of Antietam...the 69th suffered the most casualties
   of any division at that historic battle.

   Finally, we located the Colonel.  After thanking me again, he presented
   me with the coin of the regiment.  "We only give these to someone
   who's done something special for the 69th," he informed me.  He called
   over the division's historian to tell me the significance of all the
   symbols on the coin.

   As I rode the taxi back to Julliard...free, of course, since taxi
   service is free in New York right now...I was numb.  Not only was
   this evening the proudest I've ever felt to be an American, it was
   my most meaningful as a musician and a person as well.  At Julliard,
   kids are hypercritical of each other and very competitive.  The
   teachers expect, and in most cases get, technical perfection.  But
   this wasn't about that.  The soldiers didn't care that I had so many
   memory slips I lost count.  They didn't care that when I forgot how
   the second movement of the Tchaikovsky went, I had to come up with
   my own insipid improvisation until I somehow (and I still don't know
   how) got to a cadence.  I've never seen a more appreciative audience,
   and I've never understood so fully what it means to communicate music
   to other people.

   And how did it change me as a person? Let's just say that, next time
   I want to get into a petty argument about whether Richter or Horowitz
   was better, I'll remember that when I asked the Colonel to describe
   the pit formed by the tumbling of the Towers, he couldn't.  Words
   only go so far, and even music can only go a little further from
   there.

Roger Hecht