Although she had taken piano for six years, she was playing pieces that some of my first year students play. But the miracle about her playing was that she had both a beautiful tone and a very convincing musicality. In fact, of all my students, even the very advanced, she was the most sensitive. She had an ability that had nothing to do with coordination or memory, and I am stumped to explain where that ability came from.

She could not sight-read, and she could not pick out a tune by ear. She had to learn everything by route repetition, note by note. We worked on Bach’s Prelude in C, WTC I, a piece that I picked for her because it was “real” music, not the piddly five-finger patterns from her beginner books, and although it is a very difficult piece in some respects, the left and right hand do not have more than one note to play at a time so that coordination between hands is not an issue. It took most of a year, but when she had it memorized, her personal interpretation was stunning. She created a whole different environment in the musty basement studio, and I held my breath so I could get all the juice of the sounds she made. After three hours of listening to the superficial banging and plunking of students before her on Tuesdays, she brought me music. I fell in love with her.

Shes been blogging since Dec 2003, beautifully.

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