# Summer Was Always Time to Grow
When I was young, my dad made us read in the summer.
I didn’t like it. I didn’t get it. School was out, the days were long, and the last thing I wanted was a book in my hands when there was a whole neighborhood to run through. But looking back now, I understand what he was really doing. He wasn’t filling our time — he was giving us time. Time to grow. He knew something I didn’t know yet: that the slow stretch of summer is where you build the version of yourself that shows up in the fall.
And my mom did the same thing, just with music.
She’d get us together — me and my sister first, my brother later — and we’d sing and practice. It wasn’t a performance. It wasn’t for anybody. It was just us, making music in the house because that’s what our family did. I didn’t realize at the time that those were the moments shaping me.
Yesterday, at my own academy, my mom and my brother Matthew got together to practice. I stood there and watched it, and it hit me right in the chest. Same family. Same music. Same spirit. It felt like old times. Decades later, in a different room, doing the exact same thing that planted the seed in me all those years ago.
That’s what summer has always been for me. Time to grow.
When I got into band, summer took on a new meaning. It became the season to tighten up. While everybody else was taking a break, I was putting in the reps — drilling fundamentals, cleaning up the things I’d let slide during the school year, getting stronger on my horn. And here’s what made it fun: coming back. Walking back into that band room in the fall and being a notch better than I was the year before. That feeling never got old. There’s nothing like showing up and realizing the work you did quietly, on your own time, actually paid off.
Summer was also time to travel.
For us, that often meant other churches. We’d go somewhere new, and I’d get to hear musicians I’d never heard before — players in the church, players in the city, people doing things on their instruments that stretched my idea of what was possible. Every trip was an education. I was collecting sounds, collecting ideas, collecting inspiration without even knowing that’s what I was doing.
As I got older, that turned into venues. My cousin Greg Murry and I would go out and hear great jazz and soul music live. Sitting in a room while a real player works — that does something to you that no recording can. You feel it. You study it. You leave wanting to be better.
I took all of it — the reading, the singing in the house, the band reps, the church trips, the late nights hearing live music with Greg — and I made it fuel. Every summer was a chance to gain more and to be inspired. I didn’t waste the season. I let it work on me.
That’s exactly why I believe in summer the way I do now, and it’s why we do what we do at the academy.
The world tells our kids to power down in the summer. I’m telling you the opposite. Summer is the secret weapon. It’s the time to grow when nobody’s watching, to fall in love with the craft outside of a grade or a concert date, to come back in the fall a notch better than you were before. The kids who use these months are the ones who walk in next year wondering why everything feels easier.
My dad gave me the mind time. My mom gave me the music time . And both of them gave me something I’m still living out — the understanding that growth doesn’t always happen on a stage. Sometimes it happens in a quiet house, with your family, in the middle of summer, when you’re just a little too young to know it’s the best thing that ever happened to you.
So this summer, give your kids the time. Put the music in their hands. Let them grow.
They’ll thank you for it — maybe not now, but one day, when they’re standing in a room watching it all come full circle.
— Terrence
The Music Master
Music is Life
662-350-3835
