Mr. Reed: A Short Story

Improved Essays
A nervous young boy glanced down at his choir notes again. Mr. Moses Reed waved his baton in the air and started the piece with the star bassist, a tall and broad shouldered senior with a deep voice that put either fear or warmth in the pit of anyone’s stomach.

Bass members added to the deep note and Mr. Reed motioned to the rest of the choir boys.

As the music flowed freely, the boy became more and more nervous. This was his ticket to being in with the cool music kids and getting Mr. Reed off his back, if he didn’t prove himself to be the best he would face the wrath of Mr. Reed.

Mr. Reed, was the strictest teacher in the school. He was the bassist for the Army’s accapella group before he retired to teach at Vowel High. If it was up to

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Nt1310 Unit 1 Review

    • 644 Words
    • 3 Pages

    On such meditative adventures, the rhythm of my 191 steps per minute inevitably unite with my wandering thoughts to produce music that only I can hear. Conveniently, Schubert’s Impromptu plays today, its tempo scaled to match my gait. I turn left off of familiar Dublin Road onto an unfamiliar forest trail. Through this decision, superimposed with the hopeless, pleading harmonies of the piece, I suddenly understand that the story Schubert was telling in the Impromptu was actually no different than my own story—one of doubtful strife and sweet, sweet success. Like a farmer who would still laboriously sow his seeds into the ground each spring, not knowing how successful the fall harvest will be, I have been conditioned by my music education to invest my free time in pain—whether it manifests itself on a long run, in a practice room, or anywhere else—and let Fate work its magic.…

    • 644 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Patrick knees are split as far apart in the seat as possible. He’s sat in many concert halls many times over, and he still can’t understand why the seats are so small, the rows packed in so tightly together. He arrives quite early and alone so he can sit in the middle of the row in the middle of the auditorium. This way he can avoid that whole dance of trying to allow big hipped women and round bellied men past him in his chair. The turnout tonight is good.…

    • 457 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Shenandoah's Redemption

    • 1642 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Redemption is a widespread concept that each person will evidently need to grasp at some point in their life. With war, many men and women feel this requirement of forgiveness or salvation due to the traumatic events that occur. This idea is investigated throughout both the written and visual industries continuously. One novel containing redemption, is the eye-opening story of World War I, Johnny Got His Gun, by Dalton Trumbo. The captivating plot tracks a young soldier, Joe, who is an unfortunate victim of trauma and needs to make peace with what he has done to himself.…

    • 1642 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Salvation” is a shocking deviation from the customary religious chronicles heard today. While the account is a provocation for some, it provides insight and understanding of the often invalidated feelings of doubt and deception to others. The majority of spiritual narratives tells of passionate restitutions with Christ, while Langston Hughes’ tale describes a vastly different testimony. Whereas most Christian disciples strive for honesty and integrity, pretenses fill “Salvation”. Deception is a huge theme in this essay; in fact, the first sentence is a lie.…

    • 416 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Trombone Qualities

    • 343 Words
    • 2 Pages

    If I have not challenged myself to practice and to confront challenges, I could not have become the principal player in our school’s jazz band and wind ensemble. After several breakthroughs, I decided to share my inspirations to the younger generation. This year, I am one of the coordinators of the Molding Musicians program supported by the Cypress Boys and Girls Club, teaching the fifth and sixth graders how to play an instrument. I appreciate the fact that my achievements did not come from an easy work, but rather a persistent standing against…

    • 343 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    I walked through the senior and junior courtyard and I start to say a prayer, “Lord, I am very nervous and scared, but I know that you haven’t given me the spirit of fear. If you will, let me play this music with passion not for my…

    • 1213 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Class: English 12 Teacher: Miss Tamayo By :EVRETT Manning There was a man, is name was chucky. Chucky wasn’t your normal average human he was a man in demon body he would find family’s and watched them for weeks days whenever he but the family that he is looking at is a powerful family they love each other.…

    • 684 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Jameson Marvin Essay

    • 974 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Jameson Marvin does an excellence job in explaining how the process conductors use to achieve the highest level of performance. He begins by saying, “Mastering choral ensemble – a unified sound image of the whole – is the foundation upon which enlightened, communicative, and inspiring performance takes place.” He explains that there is a process to achieving this mastery, and it is based off of mental-aural image, which is a vision of what the music should sound like. In this chapter, Marvin goes through the “Conductor’s Process,” and explains the mental-aural image in four very important guidelines. The first one talks about score study and how it is the catalyst for the mental-aural image.…

    • 974 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Thinking, nothing more to do there, Agent Powell pivoted to leave the balcony and the apartment: There was nothing of value there apart from some paintings and a few sculptures Dr. Cord had handpicked. However, to his surprise Roger Nelson’s figure was in the doorway like an apparition in the hallway of the apartment; perhaps with the intended silence for effect and to observe Agent Powell at work. “You! How long have you been standing there,” Agent Powell said both annoyed and surprised. “You have an uncanny way of showing up where I am.”…

    • 1190 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Sonny’s Blues, by James Baldwin, we start out by meeting the narrator, an unnamed, middle-aged African-American male. He is riding the subway to work and he opens his newspaper to find out that his younger brother, Sonny, has been arrested for distributing and using heroin. Although he and his brother have been distant in the past, this traumatic event seems to make his brother real to him again. He continues on to work to teach his algebra class at a local high school in Harlem, but all through the day he feels scared and as if a great block of ice is inside of his belly and is melting there slowly all day long. At the end of the day, the narrator packs up his things to head home and proceeds to walk across the school courtyard.…

    • 1330 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As the loud clanging of the bell resounded in my ears students stampeded for the door, class finished for the day. Having few friends at Captain Shreve High School, I spent the majority of my afternoons at my friend Stephen’s house. Stephen stood an inch taller than I at five-foot four with disheveled chestnut hair sewn with blonde highlights. As he was not from Shreveport, he didn’t have anyone he trusted, or knew for that matter, leading us to become tremendously close throughout middle school, and as I had no siblings, we had become as brothers. Though we now attended different schools, we vowed to always be there for one another.…

    • 864 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Hello. I hope I am writing the correct person. I am looking for Arthur Rankin. Currently, I am a student at OC.…

    • 155 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Eric Whitacre Analysis

    • 861 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Eric Whitacre is a contemporary choral composer who is known for his unique compositions that utilize harmonies as well as dissonance. The particular piece that I had a wonderful aesthetic experience with is Hope, Faith, Life, Love. This beautiful song has a total of eight words which are Hope, Faith, Life, Love, Dream, Joy, and Truth. These words are the first and last four words of a longer poem by E.E. Cummings. The beauty of this piece lays in three different places, E.E. Cummings poetry, Whitacre’s interpretation of the these words, and the performance of the choir which is influenced by the particular director.…

    • 861 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The stage lights blared down on my trembling body as I tried to force a smile onto anxious face. The year-end concert had approached and the moment for the audience to be introduced to the elegant melody of Gabriel’s Oboe had finally arrived. The hours spent perfecting my tone, the repetition of phrases to perfect my rhythm, all led up to my hope of performing a faultless solo. As the conductor nodded his head and the the phrase the band behind my played escalated, the first notes spoke from the wooden instrument I grasped in my shivering hands. The F, E, G, A, C, resonated around the auditorium and boomed off the sound beams back into my determined mind.…

    • 551 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    James Baldwin, born in Harlem and the oldest of nine siblings, has been called the most important black writer of the twentieth century. Baldwin’s first novel “Go Tell It on the Mountain” was written in 1953 and was published in the United States while he was living in Europe, which is where he went to live for nine years to escape racial injustice. He returned to the United States in 1957 and wrote several essays that shed light on the civil rights struggle that was taking place. Baldwin was constantly attacked as being “sufficiently militant, he was nonetheless a forceful, brilliant voice, warning white America of the explosions to come and cautioning black America against the self-destructive excesses of racial hatred” (Baldwin 1784). In…

    • 1128 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays