…and so I had many experiences of performing on instruments that should have been retired to non-musical uses. I couldn’t help but imagine how they could’ve had legs shortened and been used for “coffee tables,” or had the inside mechanisms removed so that the frame could be used as storage (liquor cabinet?), or “re-arranged” into a sculpture, or even cut up in 2 foot sections to be burned in the fireplace! In some homes I’ve noticed that the piano is just left to languish in the corner as a glorified plant stand – maybe for a good reason. I remember one piano that had supposedly been tuned, but I think it was a jokester who did it – all the bass notes were tuned one step lower than the treble notes. Another memorable one was a very old, large grand piano that swayed away from me as I struck the first chord, then back towards me as if it might fall on my feet. The audience gasped and so did I, but it was during a competition and I knew I had to keep going. (Happily, I actually won that one!) Another time I was playing a Danzi Quintet on an old spinet with clarinet, oboe, bassoon and horn and was given a favorable review in the Indianapolis Star, “in spite of the upright box of rocks on which she performed!”
Now many people think that as long as the piano looks good on the outside and that all the keys play a tone, it is OK. Even for a beginner this just isn’t adequate. Ears are being trained from the very beginning because music is, in fact, a LANGUAGE! In fact, it is considered a UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE that everyone in the world can appreciate and understand. Proper tuning is absolutely necessary to develop the ears. I always recommend that a student have the best instrument the family can afford because it will make a difference in how the student (young or older) will learn to love music and be able to perform it.
Fortunately for me, I not only grew up in a home where my Mother played the piano every day, but the piano was a very good upright. When I was 12 and already knew that I wanted to have a career in music, my parents (with the help of Grandparents) provided a new, baby grand Baldwin piano. I was completely enthralled with this wonderful new instrument and its glorious sound! My practice time must have doubled at that point and it was only 2 years later that I was taken to a more advanced teacher at Butler University and began teaching young students in my own community, too.
About the same time I got my first grand piano, my Mother also insisted that I begin a band instrument. I really thought the glockenspiel would be a good instrument for me because it was laid out like a keyboard and I wouldn’t have much to learn about hitting a few notes on it. I really didn’t want to take time away from the piano, but no, that wouldn’t do! I don’t think I even had a preference for which other instrument, or even got to try out the other instruments on that special night when all the instruments were on display. My band director simply needed my fast fingers on the flute and another body to fill a chair in the flute section. He thought I had the “perfect lips” for the flute! HA! He was a brass player! Although I developed a fine embouchure, it was not without a struggle, because my pointy upper lip is really NOT perfect for the flute. Of course, I quickly developed a true adoration of this new instrument and yet to this day can’t tell which of the two instruments I love the most. I was a piano performance major at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and eventually earned a double Master of Music degree with performance majors in flute and in piano at Butler University in Indianapolis.
It has been a fine life with music – lots of collaborations with other musicians, working under various conductors, and teaching thousands of students of all ages. I really never thought that I would spend my whole life teaching privately. Teaching at a university was a dream I had and I was privileged to do that for 15 years at Taylor University in Upland, Indiana. I had really wanted to earn my fame and fortune as a performer, but realize now how little preparation and guidance I had for that path. I was young, naïve and didn’t know the right questions to ask nor whom to ask. And, I was still in the generation of young women who mostly got married, had families right after high school or college – and stayed home to raise them.
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