The Secret Musician's Club

Musicians recognize that what they are doing is a unique honor. They have been giving the passion and talent to progress the history of music. In addition to that, a musician is also privileged with the opportunity to bring to life a composer's dream. Every day performers are enriching the souls of concert-goers, telling they story of a composer or may have died thousands of years ago. Music is life-changing. Real musicians understand this. Sarah Fehrman understands this.

I met her in a piano practice room of all places. There are only three piano rooms in the Johnson Center for Fine Arts, and one of them used to be a utility closet. That's where we were sitting. The large sink in the corner is a little distracting at first and the lighting may not be ideal, but the cement floor makes for nice acoustics. Students in the classroom above are lucky to hear complex harmonies and delightfully chromatic dissonances (a piece likely to have come from the Romantic 19th century) as Sarah's fingers type away.

Her eyes are closed and her body is swaying as her hands dash furiously across the spectrum of cold black and white bars.

At 10 years old Sarah hated music and refused to get involved with it at all. Her mother had different ideas for her daughter and insisted on a well-educated child who could play an instrument.

"I went to my first lesson kicking and screaming, literally" said Sarah in a matter-of-fact tone.

She is a stoic woman who is well spoken and rational. Her vast knowledge is rather impressive but her delivery is even more impressive. She knows her stuff and she knows it well. And even if she didn't know about something you were talking about, you'd think she'd written a book on the topic the way she could carry on.

"My teacher, Mark Tanner, was absolutely amazing. I don't know what he did, but after that first lesson I came home and practiced for almost two hours. I was hooked."

As a child, Sarah was considered odd. She rarely said anything and when she did she spoke of strange things. Her parents were so concerned that they believed Sarah may have some form of mild retardation and took her to the doctor.

"We found out that wasn't a problem, but I didn't know how to take everything that was going on in my brain and communicate it to anyone else. I also have fairly severe ADD and have the attention span of a gnat. Taking piano lessons helped me change all that," she explained.

When she was about 12 years old, Sarah self taught herself to play Debussy's "Claire de Lune," a popular piece written in the late 1800s for the Bergamasque suite. It's one of her long time favorite pieces to hear and play.

"It was one of my grandmother's favorite songs and I learned it to surprise her," she said with a shy smile. Despite the songs technical difficulty in comparison to her skill level at the time, she kept at it for a long time because her grandmother loved it so much. "I have really good memories of the first time I played it for her. I still play it for her every time I'm at her house."

She also refers to "Claire de Lune" as her fall back song - the one she plays for a crowd at a random request and the one she plays Sunday morning's when she forgets it's her responsibility to play the prelude. "It always makes the older women tear up," she said.

Musician's understand the fall back song. It's a piece already memorized been performed enough times to pull out of your pocket on a whims notice. Those pieces are the best to hear and to perform - any musician will tell you.

"A musician goes through a learning process every time they receive a new piece of repertoire," said Dr. Natasia Sexton to her voice seminar class. "After it reaches that level where the musician is familiar with the technical details like rhythm and tonality, they start to have fun with it."

Any musician will tell you how important it is to reach that level of comfortableness before you perform the piece - it's the deal breaker. The audience isn't going to buy what you're selling, so to speak, unless you can throw away that anxiousness that revolves around hitting the right notes.

Music happens when the performer is able to fully immerse them selves into their repertoire piece. The whole of their body, heart and soul is thrown into this crazy complex mass of pitches and rhythms and out comes something that is not only beautiful but also meaningful to anyone within ear's distance. Real musicians, the ones in the secret club - they get this.

"If I am working on a really intense piece of music, I sometimes have to fight feelings of depression because the music becomes so much a part of me," explained Sarah lightly brushing her fingers across the cold hard surface of the white piano keys. "My hands and feet are pressing keys and pedals, and the rest of me is so tied up with the emotion of the piece that it is an almost intimate experience."

She stops and takes a deep breath, "I really don't know how to explain it."

She attempts again. "It is like my whole body is involved in making the music. Musicians will nod their head when they hear this, and non-musicians will probably look at me like I've grown a third head," she said, laughing. "It is one of those things that can't really be explained, only experienced."

We both sit quietly in the room. As a musician I nod my head with her - we both understand what it means to perform and we both understand it's impossible to explain the process. It's one of those perks of being in the secret club of musicians.

I ask Sarah to play me "Claire de Lune" before I leave because I know it will be the most delightful of experiences. Together we sit, as two musicians who get it. The soft pale notes that open the song gently tap against my eardrums. The familiar tune settles into my soul because I know it is in Sarah's as well.