I is In love with music: My mom’s vocation. No. 9 of 26 posts in the April 2024 Blogging From #AtoZChallenge and a Wordless Wednesday post. Theme: My Life: The Prequel (in Snapshots) adding my parents’ stories to the family history mix. Please join me on the journey.
On family car trips during my childhood, my mom Peg (Laurence) Charboneau — a school music educator — would distract us five kids by leading us in song.
As Dad drove us to Cape Cod or to visit our grandparents, we held forth in multi-part harmony on songs from “The Sound of Music” as well as holiday carols and folk tunes — unaware of how unusual that was.
Besides teaching school music, Mom was also a girl scout leader and choral director at church. Because music was so much a part of her life, it naturally and seamlessly became part of ours.
Under Mom’s influence, classical records mixed with jazz and Broadway scores on our living room shelf. And I remember our coat closet bursting with sealed oatmeal boxes and coffee cans containing a handful of dry beans for her elementary school rhythm bands.
Origin of Mom’s musical calling
How did Mom’s interest in music begin, I wondered. So I asked her.
“When I was young, I heard a woman play the piano at a concert,” Mom said. “It was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard.” Transported by the experience, she fell in love with music there and then — a love that lasted a lifetime.
In her tweens, Mom began studying piano with Minnie Rea, a former Gloversville, N.Y., school teacher who went on to build a career giving private lessons and holding recitals.
So meaningful was this experience that Mom carefully saved the programs from her youthful piano recitals, and her mother Elizabeth (Stoutner) Laurence photographed her prior to one of them — perhaps her first? — as shown above.
One of Mom’s recital songs
Below is a performance of Gavotte in A Minor, Op. 210, No. 9 by Cornelius Gurlitt — one of the songs that Mom preformed at her 1938 recital, as listed in the program above.
As Mom got deeper into music during Junior High and High School, she branched out to chorus (becoming director of the Junior High a cappella choir) and joined the marching band (I think she played clarinet).
However, piano was Mom’s instrument. And eventually it became her major at Potsdam Teacher’s College — where we will catch up with her in the next post.
Up next, J is for Just for Fun: Potsdam Ice Carnival. Please stop back! Meanwhile, please visit this week’s other Music Moves Me bloggers by clicking on the link below.
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