Piano

I played piano for a long time starting at a young age. Maybe 5...or 6. My mother filled my young life with lessons. Piano, ballet, Japanese calligraphy, Japanese school, Sunday school...

Names like Hanon, Czerny, Bach, Mozart and Schumann would stare back at me from the covers of my piano books in various fonts. I liked my piano books. Smooth, soft paper containing bars of musical notation which I could transform into music via my brain and fingertips.

I adored my first piano teacher, Heidi. Having worked with kids and knowing my own children now, I see how very important it is that any student, but particularly a young one, needs to be able to love their teacher(s) at least a little bit for happy learning to occur.

Recently, I heard a piece of music for the first time and it flattened me...in a good way :-) It was like getting hit by a truck and I didn't know why. I just knew I was immediately transported and that I felt infinity in the space of a few measures.

This morning, as I lay awake before dawn, I remembered a piece of music that I learned to play as a child. It was the first piece of music I fell in love with as a piano student. I couldn't remember the title or composer, but I knew just where the piano books were and crept out of bed to retrieve them. (Okay, sometimes, there's a reward in remaining attached to stuff with emotional vibration, faint as they may have become to the conscious mind.)

I present to you, La Courante Limpide by Johann Burgmüller.



And here is the piece that shook up my memories to release the gem of my past.



Miles Davis playing It Never Entered My Mind.