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My musical education continues.

And I have Alexis to thank—or blame—for it.

Alexis loves music. Not just likes music. Loves it. She also seems to know every song ever written and, more astonishingly, every word to every one of those songs.

I, on the other hand, am something of a late arrival.

Back in February, I wrote about one of my first serious introductions to chamber music in a blog called Late to the Chamber. Since then, Alexis has continued my education.

We went to the magnificent Red Rocks Amphitheatre outside Denver to hear the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. There is something extraordinary about sitting among those enormous red sandstone formations, looking out across Colorado, while an orchestra is playing.

Then we went to Boulder and the historic Chautauqua Auditorium for the Colorado Music Festival, celebrating its 50th summer of concerts in Boulder.

For Alexis’ birthday, I took her to Dazzle in downtown Denver to hear jazz—another musical world entirely.

And then came last Sunday.

We were back in Seattle and found ourselves at the Carl S. English Jr. Botanical Garden at the Hiram Chittenden Locks—the Ballard Locks—

to hear something called the Ballard Sedentary Sousa Band.

I had never heard of them.

I am not even sure I had ever sat through a concert devoted to marching music.

And what a delight.

What a hoot.

First, there is the name.

The Ballard Sedentary Sousa Band.

They play marching music.

But they don’t march.

In fact, they won’t march.

That alone was enough to make me like them.

Then there were the uniforms.

There were perhaps 30 musicians sitting in front of us, and seemingly every one of them was wearing a different marching-band uniform from another place and another time.

Red ones. Blue ones. White ones. Gold braid. Hats. Plumes. Jackets that clearly had stories attached to them.

I started talking to one of the musicians.

He proudly told me that the uniform he was wearing was his University of Washington marching band uniform from 1965.

1965!

He had kept it—or somehow reacquired it—all these years.

And, even more impressive, he could still get into it.

That fact alone deserved applause.

Then the music began.

Sousa marches. Other great old band marches. Tubas, trombones, trumpets, clarinets, drums—the whole glorious collection of sounds that makes it almost impossible to sit perfectly still.

Which is, of course, a little ironic for a band committed to being sedentary.

The group takes its lack of seriousness quite seriously. They even have a Sedentary Majorette who performs the apparently demanding art of seated baton twirling.

I loved the whole thing.

The setting certainly helped.

Here we were on a beautiful Seattle summer afternoon, surrounded by trees and flowers, boats moving through the Locks nearby, people sitting on folding chairs and blankets, and this wonderfully eccentric collection of musicians playing music written to get armies, football teams, parade floats and small-town America moving down the street.

Except nobody was going anywhere.

Including the band.

And as I sat there, I found myself thinking about what has happened to my musical world in just the last few months.

Chamber music.

A symphony orchestra at Red Rocks.

The Colorado Music Festival at Chautauqua.

Jazz at Dazzle.

And now John Philip Sousa at the Ballard Locks.

I don’t pretend that I suddenly understand music the way Alexis does. I still can’t name half of what I am hearing. I certainly can’t sing all the words.

Actually, I usually can’t sing any of the words.

But maybe that doesn’t matter.

What I am discovering is that there isn’t one world of music.

There are dozens of them.

And each one offers a different experience.

The place matters.

The people matter.

The story behind the music matters.

And sometimes the absurdity matters too.

There was something wonderfully joyful about watching 30 people in mismatched marching-band uniforms enthusiastically play marching music while steadfastly refusing to march.

At 82, I keep discovering things I somehow missed during the first eight decades.

That could make me feel deprived.

Instead, it makes me feel lucky.

There is still so much out there that I haven’t heard.

And fortunately, I have Alexis.

She seems determined to make sure I hear it.

Even if the band isn’t going anywhere.