I’m in the fact-gathering phase of making a decision about returning to school (again) and getting another degree – either a Masters or a second Bachelors in Music Education. I have a meeting with a guy in a couple of weeks to talk about options.

My education has been a little circuitous – I almost finished a Bachelor’s in Music in the early 80’s (the early 1980’s, not MY early 80’s). But then I kind of lost momentum, took a little time off, got married, and never really got back in there to finish it.

Time passed, and finishing a music degree didn’t seem as important anymore. Then eventually, because of being in the right place at the right time (which probably had a lot to do with God’s way of doing things), I eventually got into ministry and became a pastor – and ultimately finished a degree in something other than music.

Now, I find myself back in music in a school teaching role, and it’s looking as though it would be in my best interest to become officially degreed in the music education field. So that means either getting a second bachelor’s degree in music education, or pushing through to a master’s degree. Right now, I’m leaning toward the second bachelor’s. I probably have enough units done that it would be a relatively short process to just get the Music Education degree.

That’s all just introductory to the main point. The main point is this – in order to get back into the music program, I have to pass a piano audition. This is tricky, because although I’ve played almost constantly for the past 25 years or so since I left my first music degree attempt, I haven’t played college music-type stuff since that time. No Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and the other stuff I used to play. And that stuff wasn’t particularly easy the first time around. And since then, I’ve been playing a lot of jazz, pop, theater, and anything else other than the serious stuff.

So this afternoon, I went and bought some stuff to start practicing. Some of it is music I had already learned 25 years ago and thought I could brush up on. Some of it was new stuff – well not new, since it was written in the 1800’s. But it was new in that I’d never learned it before. Then I brought it home and dove into it.

It wasn’t pretty. I mean, the music itself is no doubt pretty, but the sound of my almost-50-year-old hands banging around on it wasn’t pretty. I’ve put a lot of miles on these fingers.

So this is going to be an adventure. I think I can do this, but not without a lot of work. This is going to take a few hours a day at least, for several months. Plus I’m working on a production of “Footloose” at the same time, to be done in June.

I have a feeling “Let’s Hear it For the Boy” is going to end up having a more Baroque feel than normal.