Meet the Band!

Wendy Underwood, Clarinet (for life) and Meet the Band Chairperson

I ran away from home in 7th grade because I wanted to quit playing the clarinet.  However, while living in Florida, my band teacher took me under her wing and taught me private lessons after school.  By my sophomore year, I sate solo chair in the best high school band in the state!  292 kids, and we got picked to play in the Cotton Bowl Parade.

Then my parents moved us to Galt, California.  There were only 20 kids in the Galt High School band, playing songs I had played in Jr. High.

I cried after school every day.  Band – clarinet – was my life.  It had been a balm to this aching soul as I navigated my way through trauma I had experienced growing up.  When I played my clarinet in a group, it felt like the music cradled my soul and would bind my wounds the eye could not see.  And there I sat in a new place, alone, and no one to play the notes I had once taken for granted.

Then I got a letter that changed everything.  My band director at Galt High School, Jim Spratt, had submitted my name to audition for an elite program called America’s Youth in Concert.  We worked on my audition tape.  Only a few musicians from each state were chosen, and I was one of them – from little Galt, California, no less!

That was the summer of my junior year, and I was 17.  We practiced on our own, rehearsed in New York for 4 days, and played a concert at Carnegie Hall.

Then we went on tour, performing in prestigious venues in London, Paris, Austria, Switzerland, Florence, Venice, and Rome.  Every concert was sold out.  We always began with “The Stars and Stripes Forever” and ended with “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” No matter the country, the people, or the language spoken, the audience would stand and sing “Glory, Glory Hallelujah,” with tears streaming down their faces.

It didn’t matter our differences, or that we’d never even met – because music is the universal language.  We were united – we were one in spirit, in hope, in goodness.  I am 61 now.  That musical experience changed me and provided me with solid ground upon which I could always stand.

I have stayed in Galt.  It is my home.  My oldest daughter, Katie, plays clarinet, and she met her husband Andon while playing clarinet in jr. high.  Now their daughter Camilla plays clarinet too.  My youngest daughter, Madeline, played clarinet with me in the Nevada County Concert Band Summer Invitational Concert of 2023.  Music saved her as well.  That was the first time we ever played together.

Last year, I joined the Elk Grove Community Concert Band after forty years of not playing in a group.  The minute I played the first few notes, I was flooded with that feeling only a musician knows, of music surrounding you, vibrating the floor, and flowing through your body up and through an instrument connected to you, to life, to the world.  It is a pure joy that you have to experience to fully understand.

I think back to my younger self, that girl in her room with the clarinet, crying every day.  Little did she know, that one move to tiny Galt, California would take her to places much bigger than she would ever imagine: Carnegie Hall, Europe, a musical family, and a town she loves.  But the best thing of all is that time and time again, the clarinet brings her back to herself.  When she plays, she’s home.  When I play, I’m home.