Music that made you stand still in wonder

music...
Originally uploaded by kkozanecka

Geoff has tagged me with a music meme. The point is to write about moments when music just made you stand still in wonder, but not to write about your all-time-favourite music.

Aged 6 or 7 - sitting on the stairs hearing my Dad singing The Holy City. It was the first time I realised how well he could sing.

Aged 9 or 10 - on the last night of my holiday in Bridlington sitting on my own on the sea front listening to an electric guitar solo screaming out of the open windows of the caravan park social club. Somehow made me feel strangely grown up.

Aged about 12 - listening to the Karelia Suite at my uncle’s. He was the rich uncle – they had a garden. The sound the of majestically romantic music while staring at the greenery out of the window proved to me that I did like “classical” music after all.

Aged about 20 - late at night hearing a busker playing Rafael Ravenscroft’s famous alto sax solo from Baker Street somewhere round a distant corner at Kings Cross underground station. I think this was when I truly fell in love with the sax.

Aged 35 – standing in Pastor Elise’s yard in Macenta, Guinee for an hour or more almost literally entranced by the his a cappella West African choir.

Aged 36 – that bit in Brassed Off when the band play Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez.

Aged about 38 - hearing Lark Ascending for the first time in the parish church at Bolton Abbey while on retreat. It was as if God had pressed the pause button.

Aged 41 - me in the chapel practicing my new soprano saxophone (my first ever instrument) and actually getting it to sound good (to my ear anyway). Hardly great music, but it was the first time that I had made music myself; like discovering a new level of intimacy with an old friend.

Aged 43 - Billy Bragg at Greenbelt – the way one man with a guitar dominated the stage ten times more effectively than the manic, high-energy, multi-personnel Polyphonic Spree who had been on just before him.

Aged about 44 – a small ensemble form Grimethorpe Colliery Brass Band backing Kate Rusby on Underneath The Stars at Wakefield opera house. Kate’s voice and the mellowest of French horn playing – I melted.

Aged 49 - coming across Christian Forshaw’s rendition of Nunc Dimitis while looking for music for my mum’s funeral. ‘Nuff said.

I'm tagging John Griffiths, Dick Davis, Andy Amoss and Sean Winter