Lang Lang on Ice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLrczpou4RE&feature=player_embedded

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IT TAKES ONLY ONE GOOD TEACHER

I spent many years playing the piano and not getting much better at it, although I had a natural talent for playing the piano and began lessons at a very young age.  There were no competent piano teachers in the small town in Kansas; my first teacher was the grade school principal who knew a little about music, then a relative who just wanted me to play hymns, and then a high school English teacher who taught piano on Saturdays.  My mother drove my sisters, me, and my younger brother many miles every Saturday for piano lessons when a teacher could be found.  I taught myself, mostly,  banging away at grand pieces by Chopin, Liszt, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff.

At  KU, in Lawrence, Kansas, I majored in voice.  My voice teacher, Mirabah Moore was a great teacher.  I loved her because everything she asked me to do made perfect sense, felt good and made my voice stronger.   I had little interest in practicing the piano and just wanted to play for my own enjoyment. 

Finally, past the age when most young students would have gone to Juilliard,  I was privileged to meet and study with Nigel Coxe, at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.  He told me at our first meeting, after hearing and watching me play, that I was quite gifted but had some problems that needed to be rectified. 

He made the development of piano technique crystal clear.  It involved practicing scales and arpeggios in a certain way, with correct posture (including the right way to sit at the piano!), totally relaxed arms and flexible wrists, relying on the strength of the fingers for power and control.  When I'd go to the practice room I knew exactly what to do.  I saw clearly the value of having a good technique and how and why the hard work of disciplined practice would set one free to really "play" the piano.  For me, that was pure joy.

Nigel Coxe was kind, patient, encouraging, witty, (sometimes wickedly hilarious) and inspiring.  He was also a world class concert pianist!  It was always exciting to hear Nigel Coxe play; he made music come alive, visually and viscerally, and sing to my own heart.  When he demonstrated a passage to me, it was revelatory.   Practicing began to be enjoyable.  Then it began to be positively addictive!  Soon I began to look forward to my piano lessons with anticipation instead of with dread.

It takes only one good teacher to set a talent free.  I had one good teacher and I have been forever blessed.

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Good ol' summertime

Well, the longest day of the summer has come and gone.  Now the days will be growing imperceptibly shorter even while the weather gets relentlessly hotter each day.  If you live in the northern hemisphere, that is.

I grew up on a farm in Kansas.  Summers were hot and sweaty.  Some nights were so hot, we slept out in the backyard on the lawn.  (This was before air conditioning!)  We ran barefoot all summer, went wading in the creek, and tried to catch fireflies into a jar.  Our Dad made homemade ice cream on Sunday afternoons, and oh boy, I loved eating watermelon on a hot day.  We had a "milk house," where we separated cream from the milk from our own cows and where my mother washed clothes with a wringer washer.  I still remember how good the milk house smelled - kinda like milk, I would say.  Anyway, we kept the watermelon and anything else we wanted to keep cool in a tank of water in the milk house. 

Summertime was definitely a time of good eating - everything from huge juicy raspberries and tomatoes from our garden to strawberries from Grandma's strawberry patch, to corn on the cob slathered with butter, with fried chicken nearly every day.  Mother would kill the chicken not very long before it would be sizzling in the frying pan.  (I'm glad that wasn't my job!)  I was such a little sadist in those days - not that I could have killed a chicken - I would torture caterpillars by poking them with a stick and making them squirm.  Geez, I feel guilty now. 

Another example of my cruelty:  we kids would get bloodsuckers (leeches) on our feet and legs when wading in the creek.  We got so used to it we didn't think much about it, just get out of the water with blood running down our legs and go on about our fun and games.   But we had a city cousin who came to visit one day.  Well, we didn't warn her about the bloodsuckers and did she scream bloody murder!  She probably suffers from PTSD to this day.  We were really wild kids, hoodlums, you might say.

 

 

 

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Speaking of Weddings . . .

Speaking of Weddings
My first wedding was in a Lutheran church - full of people, me wearing long white dress and veil, groom, best man and groomsmen in tuxedos, maid of honor, bridesmaids, flower girl, ring bearer, music, flowers - the whole nine yards.  A reception with wedding cake, tons of food, towers of gifts and hordes of people followed.   A week's long honeymoon in the Colorado mountains followed the wedding.
My second wedding was in a Congregational church in Boston (which burned to the ground a year to the day later), me wearing a pea green miniskirted dress, with the minister officiating and one witness.  My husband, his sister and I then enjoyed an excellent dinner with plenty of champagne at a restaurant with a revolving view of Boston Harbor.
My third (and last) wedding was in a garden in Santa Barbara, me wearing a forest green flowing hippie style pants and a (definitely hippie style) green top; my husband-to-be might have been wearing running shorts for all I remember.  A woman minister (Verna Yater) officiated and a few close friends attended.   Afterward, for a honeymoon, we drove to the beach, sat in my husband's car, and watched the ocean for a little while.  We went home and ate baked potatoes.
I've played for lots of weddings; from pipe organs in big Catholic Churches to grand pianos in churches and resorts to keyboards in outdoor tents and seen all kinds of individual styles of ceremonies; one couple boogied out the door while I played and the singer belted out "Stand by Me."  Of course nowadays we see all sorts of things on YouTube; anything goes.

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