Fill in the blank please Mr. Realplayer. Oh, and to help you out, here is those who have gone before you.

Thanks Joe.

I just saw this thread. I have appended the name of a potential WTFer at the end of my thread...

I think we'll have to link Elena's amazing Cuba thread here since she talks a lot about her family origins there.

Anyway, here goes. First obvious question. Give us a history of your piano training.

When did you first learn English?

About piano technicians. . . Love them? Hate them?

Any stories to tell about how techs made or broke a concert for you?
Our teachers tell us to never expect any acknowledgement.
We are like plumbers, only called when there's a smelly problem.
The best a tech can hope for is apathy.

oh no!! yay!!! I am honored you would think my life worthy of scrutiny but, ahem, this is an honor I could do without at the moment as we have our Spanish debut in 2 1/2 weeks and another concert a week after!!!

OK. I will do my best. Please understand if there is any delay to the replies! Thank you joe, I think...

quote:

Originally posted by kathyk:
I think we'll have to link Elena's amazing Cuba thread here since she talks a lot about her family origins there.

Anyway, here goes. First obvious question. Give us a history of your piano training.

When did you first learn English?

In my mother's world, every little girl must take ballet and piano lessons. My sister, who is five years my senior, began both at around age 5-6 so I was exposed to someone playing the piano at home from birth (my mother claims her dabbling at the piano while pregnant with me was why I had an ear for it). Anyhoo, I definitely did have an ear for it and my sister has told me that when she would practice and make a mistake I would run to the piano and show her what the "right note" was in whatever piece she was playing. I begged my mother for lessons from the time I was about 4 (I remember none of this, it is what I have been told). She took me to my sister's teacher, who lived about 2 blocks from us and taught the Suzuki method and she said she should bring me back when I was 6.

By that point I had already started the ballet lessons and my sister's teacher was no longer taking students. But her daughter, who had studied to be a pianist but due to life circumstances did not go "pro", opened up her own studio in the house next door to her mother's and I was her first student. Suzuki method as well. It was easy for me. Playing by ear was a breeze. It was so easy, in fact, that I refused to learn to read music as I figured I could learn everything by ear. I remained with this teacher for 5 years. When I changed teachers I still could barely read a note. My second teacher Cecilia Talavera, who is now 91, was a long time teacher at the PR Conservatory of Music and was part of the generation of PR musicians that emerged from the inpiration and effort of Pablo Casals and Puertorican pianist Jesús María Sanromá back in the 60ies. She and her sister, Luz Hutchinson, formed a piano duo which was very well-known locally. Both were highly regarded as teachers.

The first few lessons with Ceci, one of the kindest souls I have ever met, I managed to fool her regarding my sight reading ability. I would ask her to play the new piece for me before I went home and then I would try to remember it and work it out by ear at home. For most pieces I also had a recording so I would play it over and over again until I had it down.

Then one day, I remember this like yesterday, I had to learn another new piece. The Paderewski Minuet. I asked her to play it for me, and she gave me this look and said "No. You will have to read the notes". I almost had a heart attack. And she told my mother not to let me hear any recordings! (the nerve! )

So after that things progressed, though even to this day my sight-reading skills, though acceptable, are still quite lacking. I attended the PR Conservatory for 2 years while I was still in Highschool and then decided to pursue piano for university. To this day I wonder if it was the right decision. Not sure if I did it because I really wanted to be a pianist or because it was something I was easily recognized for. One thing is my biggest problem: I hate practicing. Or rather, I hate the technical-physical aspect of practicing. I love discovering the music, I hate the mindless repetition to get a passage right. And of course, this is a huge chunk of what it takes to be a professional pianist so I am still wondering if this is what I should be doing.

More about my secondary studies later. I have to go to bed.

How about a bit about your experience at NEC? Why did you choose the school? How did you like living here?

Do you still have connections here in Boston?(hint, hint...maybe a visit!? )

quote:

Originally posted by EHpianist:
OK. I will do my best. Please understand if there is any delay to the replies! Thank you joe, I think...

Relax, Elena...I didn't answer everything, myself. Just do what you're comfortable with. (You've already covered a lot with your Cuban thread, etc.)

Of course, I must hear YOUR worst-piano story.

Ever done much improv / lead-sheet playing. With that ear it should be a breeze, right?

St. John's - how did that happen?

30 min. lunch break from rehearsal...

I applied to Peabody, Eastman and NEC for music schools. I didn't even apply to Juilliard, I was intimidated by the atmosphere there which seemed way too cut-throat.

Since I had no idea who to study with at any of these schools, I chose New England Conservatory exclusively for non-musical reasons: I had been going to Boston about twice a year all my life, first to visit my maternal grandmother and uncle's family who lived there at the time, and then to visit my brother who was attending MIT. I knew the city well, (BeeLady my uncle and cousins originally lived in Belmont and moved about 10 years ago to Newton, my grandmother rented an apartment on Beacon in Brookline.). A fellow Puerto Rican pianist who graduated from NEC the year before I entered raved about Steve Drury, saying had she known about him before she started with her own teacher she would have gone to him instead. So I attended Steve's studio. It totally brought me out of my small-world shell. Steve is known as a "champion of contemporary music" and when I arrived in Boston the most contemporary thing I had ever played was a Prokofiev Sonata and little Shostakovich, both of which I thought to be pretty "atonal" Steve asked me to make a list of pieces I had played and pieces I wanted to play. The latter went something like: Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Chopin, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Mussorgsky, Chopin, Chopin. I think he was pretty disgusted when he read my list (not to mention he absoluteluy hates Rachmaninoff!) and said "Go out and buy Schönberg's Sechs Kleine Klavierstucke. To which I asked "Who is Schonberg?"

Steve was very very patient with me, as he must have been with most small-town Freshmen that arrived to him. After studying with him one realizes that there is no "contemporary music", there is only music, and when you play a note, whatever it is, it has to mean something. Steve tried to teach us to play contemporary music so that it didn't sound like that was what it was.

Steve also posesses an amazing technique which he learned from taking lessons from Claudio Arrau (who taught pretty much anyone who would ask him). I have never seen anyone play so relaxed and with such a huge sound. I came with very weak technique and he improved my sound considerably. He would hold required masterclasses every sunday night at the school from 7:00 PM where we would basically play our repertoire for eachother and make comments, they would often extend to 11 PM. It was a wonderful studio, very supportive and I learned tons of new music by hearing it every week.

I should point out that although he is "known" for his contemporary repertoire, Steve is also absolutely amazing at traditional classical as well. He puts a lot of thought and analysis into the meaning of each note, each chord, regardless of what style it is.

After I graduated from NEC... oops, I have to go back to rehearsal. More later.

It is interested to hear of NEC.

I was accepted there after a horrid exam - the piano was very stiff and I played some of the old hasbeens - Beethoven's Pathetique, Chopin's Military Polonaise, Malaguena, etc. and I remember my hands just aching after playing. And they kept stopping me to 'start' here, and 'start' there - ridding themselves of what was probably the boring sections (over listening to them).

I wanted pedagogue which they no longer provided although my teacher had gone there for that. So they put me in their music ed department. Something I so didn't want to do. But neither did I want to become a performer!
Good thing!!!

Even with a scholarship, it would have been expensive just to even live there so I didn't go. I regret that now.

I'm rather sad at the recent news. Will continue some other time.

Happy to have my little thing around now. She is putting a blanket on me as a bib and telling me I should eat all by myself.

quote:

Originally posted by EHpianist:
I'm rather sad at the recent news. Will continue some other time.

Happy to have my little thing around now. She is putting a blanket on me as a bib and telling me I should eat all by myself.

Love you both.

Kluurs:

I see I have to start editing myself or I will never get around to answering questions!

After I graduated NEC I stayed in Boston for an extra year while I figured out what to do with myself. That year I accompanied the NEC preparatory division Children's Chorus (that was tons of fun) I taught, I took an extension course at Harvard and I studied piano that year with Patricia Zander, who had also been one of Stephen Drury's teachers (and who recently passed away). She was a most amazing teacher, and I was so not ready for her. Her approach was purely aesthetic. Did not work on technique at all as she figured you either had it already or it would come as you tried to achieve the sound you wanted.

The summer I graduated I spent my first summer in Europe on my own. I attended the Mozarteum Sommerakademie where I participated in masterclasses with Aquiles Delle Vigne and then to Holland Music Sessions where I met my future teacher whom I will refer to as j. o'cnr for reasons I do not wish to disclose. We hit it off immediately and I made arrangements to study with him the year I left Boston.

I moved to Dublin, Ireland and enrolled in a Master's degree at the Royal Irish Academy of Music which he heads. His lessons were extremely intense and he was not skimpy with his time when he in town. I always left his lessons happy. He was the perfect teacher for preparing you for competitions and a concertizing career. He insisted on very clean playing and was full of useful tidbits on effective practicing and perfecting your memory so you would have no memory slips during a performance. He is also a great schmoozer and has the connections in the classical music world to make you or, if he wanted to, break you. He was also always really positive, which contrasted with my previous NEC teacher who had difficulty saying anything you had done was worthy. He did not do it out of meanness but because he wanted to really instill in his students the sense we should never feel fully satisfied swith a performance because it could always be better. Though this is true, it did breed a lot of insecurity at the time of performance so going to John after that was a huge burden-lifter. He has such great humor and his lessons were very visual in terms of the music, he was also very meticulous about playing eveything in its stylistic context, something which I still struggle with since I want to make everything mine.

While in Dublin, I was the accompanist for Veronica Dunne's voice studio which went a long way towards improving the sight reading. It was also in Dublin where I performed for the first time in a piano duo, not with Laura but with Irish pianist Aoife O'Sullivan who went on to be a voice coach and repetiteur. We did the Schubert Fantasy.

My second year in Dublin Laura arrived at the school. We graduated that year. Then I went to Spain, studied my first year there with Joaquin Soriano, and would travel to Belgium for lessons with Delle Vigne every couple of months. My second year in Spain Laura and I got together as a duo.

Laura and I studied with Ferenc Rados, who is pretty much unknown outside of Europe, and I can only describe him as a complete musical genius, almost in an autistic-savant kind of way. This I mean totally as a compliment, the man's perception of the fundamentals of music and what makes it tick was indescribable. And it really was for him too because he had a hard time explaining the message but when you would occasionally catch the meaning of his very convoluted and non-linear way of describing things it was like being revealed the nature of the universe. The man deeply impressed Laura and I for the two years we took masterclasses with him and it was he that really brought the duo into cohesion. We were supposed to study a third year with him but he cancelled his course at the last minute and supplied one of his former students instead, who was a teacher at the Mozarteum, and with whom we only took the one year with. He was good but after studying with the John Nash of music, his students can only come so close.

We also took masterclasses from Alfons Kontarsky one summer at the Mozarteum.

By the way, I don't in any way claim to being able to do any or all the things I was taught to do.