I joined ACMP when I was 30. My wife, Debbie, had given birth to the first of our three sons, and I was working nights as an editor at a newspaper in New York. It was a busy time, but I wanted to go back to the violin. The question was how. Orchestras were not an option because of my work schedule, and I lacked the discipline to practice on my own. I knew this because I had tried taking lessons in my 20s, only to spend my time watching sports.

So I joined ACMP and, like many, waited for a call.

That call came a couple months later from a distinguished-sounding man named Henry. He played the violin and his quartet needed another violinist. Was I available during the day? Why, yes I was.

I was less than half the age of the three other players. Henry was in his late 70s and had enjoyed a varied, successful career. Gideon, the violist, was in his 80s and life had taken him from Austria to high school in Switzerland to Palestine to New York. His treasured copy of Beethoven’s Opus 18 quartets was a frayed hardcover book, printed sometime around 1920. And then there was Joan, a cellist in her 70s who was born in a small town in Michigan.

We met weekly. I was rusty and would get lost. I realized I had to practice. Before I knew it, I was coming home from work at 1 a.m. and practicing for however long I could last.

Gradually we got to know one another. I’d ask them about their lives, their careers, their families. The conversations between movements grew longer.

Gideon, I learned, had been an important figure in the New York art financing world. Established banks stayed away from the art market, seeing it as too risky. Gideon had a different view, and history proved him right.

Henry, a man of many talents, asked me what I did for a living and I told him I was an editor. “So was I, for the WPA Guide to New York City.” That book was published in 1939. It’s still in print, something not many editors or authors can say.

I never would have heard stories like this in my insular world of New York newspapers. If nothing else, these conversations taught me that if I talked less and listened more, I just might learn something.

When we weren’t talking about our families and careers and interests, we’d talk about music. At one session, Gideon suggested we play the second movement of Beethoven’s Opus 59, No. 2.

Gideon and Henry and Joan ended up in an extended discussion of what the right tempo should be.They went back and forth, until Gideon read Beethoven’s instructions in Italian: “Molto adagio. Si tratta questo pezzo con molto di sentimento.”

“What’s that mean?” I asked.

“It means that Beethoven wanted this movement to be played with a great deal of feeling,” he said in his continental European accent.

We stopped talking about tempo and played through the movement, never having to stop. After the last note, we put our bows down and were silent. No one wanted that moment to end. I looked at Gideon and his eyes had welled up.

“That was beautiful,” he said.

My mind wandered to the life he had led, his frayed copy of the music, his love of the viola. I thought of Joan and Henry and what I had learned from them. Thirty years later, I’m still learning.