THIRTEEN

As far as I can remember, music was always a part of my life. I loved to sing. I loved to listen to music. And I loved to play. Now that I am an adult, I would love to have the time to play. When I was a little kid, playing music was just another aspect of my life. You see, I was a little kid wandering around the hallways of Juilliard. Juilliard was so famous that my mom knew of the school. So she made it a point to seek out Juilliard and make sure her kids would be trained thru the teachers there.
They had a pre-college division. It was in that section that I met the famed violinists Pinkas (Pinky) Zuckerman and Itzak Pearlman. I used to play patty cake with Pinky. But I remember that even then, everyone thought very highly of them when they were just students. We all knew, even then, they were superstars. But at five years old, I was deemed too young to receive lessons. So I watched for a couple of years while my older siblings received lessons. And then finally at 7, my mom decided to let me begin piano lessons.

I remember I had one teacher named Mr Ellis. But my more beloved piano teacher was Mitchell Andrews. He was an accompianist for amazing musicians like Leonard Rose and Michael Rabin. Michael was an exceptional violinist. But he passed away in a freak accident (I think he fell and hurt his head on a coffee table or so they say.) At some point, I had to switch piano teachers and ended up with a teacher I didn't like very much. Richard Fabre was his name. I think he might have been a good teacher, but somehow the chemistry was not there. So I remember nights when I would cry because I knew that he didn't think very highly of me. Then, I auditioned for my brother's piano teacher, Jane Carlson, who was much nicer. Maybe it was because she was a woman. But she had issues. She was a lonely spinster and sometimes had a temper.

Another memorable teacher I had at Juilliard was a theory teacher named Francis Goldstein. She would smoke in class and we'd all watch as she shakily would raise her hand to her mouth to get a puff. The most fun teacher was the Ear Training teacher named Bob Wimer. He had this melody for solfege that I still remember today. One day I will have to record it. We one time made a silly tape with a bunch of musicians and gave it to him. It was hilarious because we were spoofing the song he made us learn.

Today, I am so swamped with life and the internet (yes, facebook is a time vampire) that I rarely have time to practice. But even at my advanced age, I still dream of having the time to work on my music.