When I was a child, my father and I would go to the big closet and put on his World War I uniform once a year or so. I’d wear the blouse and he’d try on something else, and then we’d switch items of clothing. On those occasions I always noticed a tattered leather case at the back of the closet. I had a feeling it contained something taboo, so I never said anything to him about it.

Then, when I was about eleven, I was staring at the case, and when I looked up, I caught my father’s eye. Without saying anything, he opened the case and pulled out a cornet. He put it to his lips, and he moved his fingers over three valves, but he didn’t make any noise at all. Then he put it back in the case and that was the end of it.

A couple of years later, I asked my mother about it. She said, “Your uncle Sam plays violin, your uncle Joe plays percussion, and your father played the cornet. But when your uncle George died, your father didn’t have the heart to play anymore.”

I can’t tell you how sad that made me feel. Uncle George died before I was born, so I never got to see my father play. But as I was growing up, we would listen to classical music together, and I got so much out of the music by looking at him. My father had such heartfelt feeling, and the emotions were perfectly conveyed by the changes on his face.

Now I see the cornet every morning: it’s hanging on the wall in my kitchen. One day, I noticed the cornet looked dirty, and I asked the housekeeper to polish it, but when she put it back, I saw that she must have dropped it: the front end was smashed. I took it to the office, thinking, What can I do? I needed to get it repaired, but I didn’t know where to take it.

Around that time, Wynton Marsalis happened to visit us, because we had just finished filming Baroque Duet with him and Kathleen Battle. As he was leaving, I took the cornet over to him, and just like my father he worked the valves and began to blow on it. It was the only time I ever heard it played, and I was watching his fingers and his mouth. It was so thrilling.

After he handed me the cornet back and left, I walked to my desk and thought, I’ve got to tell this story to my mother. But she had died. And I thought, I’ve got to tell this story to my brother. But he had died, too. There were a lot of tears in my eyes.

I think this must be why I’m fascinated by watching musicians’ faces. In my film Gimme Shelter, one of the most beautiful scenes is the one where we have close-ups of the faces of the Rolling Stones listening to the playback of “Wild Horses.” I remember when I shot that and zoomed in on their faces. It rang such a bell, it was almost uncanny.

I also made a film of Vladimir Horowitz. He performed Mozart’s Concerto No. 23 with an orchestra, and then he went to a back room to listen to the playback. I filmed him listening to it, and again I was thinking of my father.

The cornet is still hanging on my kitchen wall. It’s such a sad thing, that. &