My Carnegie Hall

My relationship with piano performance has been consistently off the beaten path. Though I started playing piano at 6 years old and never stopped, I didn’t dare claim myself as a musician until I turned 60. Even then, the usual choices of concert hall or jazz club didn’t quite fit. Here’s where I’ve played in the last five months or so:

 • The Jewish Home for the Aged, every Friday I’m in town and now tailoring my repertoire toward the particular songs I know particular residents love. 

• SFS Jazz Center, sneaking in through the back door of Family Concerts. 

• Playing 90 minutes at the house of someone consciously dying through Euthanasia. Then weeks later at his Memorial Service. 

 

• Playing the piano in my school music room when I subbed, warming up the space before the kids come in as I did for 45 years. At my retirement, many teachers and kids remarked on how that made such a special start to their day as they walked past the room. 

 

• A house concert with saxophonist Joshi Marshall mixing classical music and jazz. 

 

• Another one-piece performance with Joshi and singer Rhonda Benin as a “palette cleanser” in a concert for two pieces for 12 pianos. In the magnificent acoustic space of Grace Cathedral. 

 

• A “history of jazz” solo piano concert as part of my recent Jazz Course in Sydney, Australia. 

 

Like I said, all unorthodox venues off the beaten path. And then yesterday, meeting my nephew’s 6-week-old son and having the honor of playing the first piano music of his young life. I’m happy to report that after some cranky whining, he immediately got quiet when I started to play and stayed listening attentively until the end. I began with Bach’s Prelude No. 1, then on to Jeepers Creepers in honor of his big wide eyes (singing, ”Jeepers, creepers, where’d you get those peeper, Jeepers, Creepers, where’d you get those eyes?”). On I went with Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag, the jazz tune A Child is Born, one waltz by Strauss and one by Chopin, the tango-ish La Paloma and then ended with an improvised blues. He was with me all the way! 

 

Whether 6-weeks old or a 103 years old, whether playing at a birth (haven’t yet) or a death, a wedding or memorial service or a simple gathering at someone’s house, at a jazz center or cathedral or retirement home, these are my Carnegie Halls, the kind of concerts I was made to play. May there be more!