My Childhood Dream To One Day Learn The Piano Came True In An Unexpected Way
here i am playing on a piano from the “play me, i’m yours” global art project on the santa monica pier. a friend brought me here as part of my birthday celebration one year. i hadn’t played in a while.
as a child i’d fallen in love with the sound and feel of the piano and vowed that one day i would learn how to play the piano.
fast forward to when i was an adult teaching at a university and signed up for a keyboard musicianship class. i couldn’t read music very well, and i’d fallen in love with one of vladimir horowitz’s recordings of schumann’s, “traumerei,” playing it by ear, but getting stuck in a few places, unable to figure out the fingering.
i bought a copy of the sheet music, and for as simplistic as the piece sounded, the music notation was mostly indecipherable to me. i explained all this to the professor, and the next thing i knew, i was invited to study with her and enrolled in the bachelor’s program majoring in piano performance. i was elated! but terrified, battling performance anxiety.
while i was enrolled in the program, i studied music theory and began to write piano music. i have written music in different genres, and mostly music comes to me. but with this short piece i was a little more intentional and wanted to write something beautiful that only used the black keys on the piano (in a pentatonic scale). this is “japanese blossoms.” my friend swears that the little boy’s groan in the video wasn’t because of my playing. :)
i studied piano for three years until i couldn’t work around my carpal tunnel anymore. it was one of the best experiences of my life. my professor patiently sat through my struggles reading music and took me to a playing level that i never thought possible. i got to learn, practice, and perform on steinway pianos and visited the steinway hall in new york city, which deepened my love of the piano. i am forever grateful. wishes do come true!
Music by Marlene Veltre Copyright 2016 All Rights Reserved
