Witnessing a Miracle of Love and Dedication

This past weekend in Toronto, I heard Rosemarie Blanc’s piano students perform. There were nearly 70 of them. Normally, one would expect some to play excellently, some very well and maybe a few to be not-so-well prepared for any number of reasons. What an incredible experience to hear each child play with joy, confidence, musicality and competence, covering the full range of beginner to advanced repertoire. Every piece flowed rhythmically and accurately, with a clarity of purpose and total engagement from the performer. It was only after the last student finished that I fully realized the miracle of what I had witnessed.

Over the past twenty-five years, Rosie has been my friend, Suzuki trainee, Mastering the Piano and Bigler~Lloyd-Watts Music Camp teacher. For approximately fifteen of those years, I have journeyed annually to her studio for a workshop. It has been such a privilege to observe her ever-upward trajectory as a pedagogue. This year, there seemed to be a gigantic leap forward in the pleasure and accomplishment of her students.

Rosemarie embodies what I wish every student of every subject could have: a loving teacher who cares first about the well-being of her pupils, who has the goal of giving the best lesson she can every time to every child, who learns from each lesson and who spends her spare time exploring, learning and growing so that the next lessons will be even better.

Hats off to my beloved friend and esteemed colleague!

A Debate Swirls

The question: Teaching popular music as well as classical music to piano students is good.

Since this is my blog, you are going to read my opinion on this topic. We would, of course, like very much to hear your opinions.

When I was 12, I heard, over the radio, Jack Fina playing Bumble Boogie, loved it, and managed some time later to acquire a copy of the score. It is a challenging piece, both to read and to play well and is based on the fabulous Flight of the Bumble Bee by Rimsky-Korsakov.

I was a good student but, as you know from previous blogs, a poor sight-reader. One of my biggest lacks was the ability to work out the rhythms with any kind of consistent underlying beat. So anyway, I bashed my way through it, sort of. There were many places where I was too inexperienced and sloppy to be able to manage the complex rhythms. No adult I knew was willing to help me with the difficulties I encountered. The attitude at the time was, “That stuff is junk and if you want to play it on your own time, OK, but we’re not going to help you with it.”

The result was that I played about half of the piece, always to great acclaim from the listeners, but only at private gatherings. I wish I could say that I learned all of it by the time I was an adult but the truth is that I didn’t learn it properly, totally, until I taught it to one of my students. I told Jamie, who had heard me play it in the cut version, that I wanted him to be able to play it better than I did, so I would help him if he would agree to work carefully. Deal. By this time, I did know how to count and work out the rhythms so both Jamie and I learned it completely and well. I play it as my encore now at all concerts because everyone loves it so much.

My attitude is that students learn a tremendous amount about resolving rhythmical challenges from playing popular or jazzy music. You have to count to be able to do it! Besides, teens need to have something to wow their peers with. First you have to get their attention, then it is possible, and I have heard about it over and over again from the kids, that they can then play their Bach and Clementi Sonatinas and their friends love hearing what they can do.

I would opine that the Royal Conservatory of Music agrees with me, since they now permit wonderful arrangements of popular music to be used as studies as well as eight levels of jazz pieces by Christopher Norton.

Another Lesson Learned from Tennis Players

Some years ago, a fabulous tennis player named Bjorn Borg was winning everything in sight. Naturally, everyone wanted to know how he came to be so good. In an interview, he said that he practiced tennis five hours each day, in itself an excellent display of discipline. So far, so good.

There is a quote, attributed to Artur Rubinstein, the late, great, much-loved pianist, “Don’t tell me how talented you are, tell me how hard you work”.

Yeah, well, lots of people work hard, or at least put in the hours, and they are not necessarily the best at anything.

Here’s the kicker. Borg went on to say that every second of that five hours was at the intensity of tournament play and that every shot counted as though it was a match point. Now we’re talking a whole other thing. We are including, along with physical stamina, incredible mental focus, motivation and sustained commitment. Anyone can play at an intense level for a game, or a set, once in a while. To play at that level of engagement for five hours, every single day, year in and year out, is awe-inspiring.

How that translates for me is that I aspire to be engaged all the time when practicing. I believe that practicing and performing are, ideally, the same. If I can be totally present, in the moment, and focused on the task at hand in the privacy of my practice room, I stand a vastly greater chance of staying with that kind of focus out on stage.

It sure makes practice time fly!

A Miracle Called Carole Bigler

Last year, two weeks before our 30th Summer Music Festival~Suzuki Kingston program in July, Carole’s illness took a nasty turn and put her in hospital, on dialysis. The outlook was grim, to say the least.

Over the course of the previous year, various unexplained symptoms, such as swollen, red hands and intermittently swelling feet, had been incorrectly diagnosed as rheumatoid arthritis. Finally, the term scleroderma reared its nasty head. It is related to arthritis in that they are both auto-immune diseases. The prognosis was not pleasant yet it was thought that Carole could manage for many years. Then suddenly her kidneys faltered in a big way.

So, on to dialysis, about which we all learned more than we ever wanted to know. Even though the process keeps people alive, it is truly a wrenching procedure that takes place three time a week for several hours at a time. It was terribly hard on Carole, to the point where she had to take a tranquilizer in order to endure the treatment.

Carole is one determined and strong person, as I have learned to love and admire over the course of our 30 year working relationship. She concluded that as long as her kidneys were having their work done for them by a machine, they had no incentive to get up off their hind legs and start taking care of business themselves.

So she went off dialysis, with the approval of her physician. She has 15% kidney function which is the minimum required for independent living. She holds the thought that her body knows how to heal itself and she is giving it a chance to do just that. Every night, as she is falling asleep, she pictures her blood flowing easily and perfectly through her kidneys, cleansing and renewing itself.

Last week, the dialysis ports were removed from her body. For the first time in nine months, Carole could take a shower! For a person who loathes baths, this was bliss! She stayed in the shower until the water ran cold.

Carole is feeling so feisty, her natural state of being, that she is planning on being with us in July. We will have a glorious celebration to welcome her back.

I want to invite the world to come celebrate our living, breathing miracle, called Carole Bigler, with us.