What is the most memorable moment in a music lesson you’ve ever had?

Still early in my piano studies I got to work extensively one summer with Harvey Wedeen, who chaired the piano department at Temple University and taught artists including Marc-André Hamelin. He was kind enough to squeeze in our lesson during his lunch hour.

He saw that I had fingers but of course recognized that I was woefully inadequate in musical fundamentals, so he assigned me a Bach prelude. I played it for him mechanically and unmusically.

Taking a sip of his drink, he asked me for some self-criticism.

"How was that?" he asked.

I smiled and replied, "Never been played better!" whereupon he spat his drink across the room from laughing!

This happened on my first lesson with famous jazz educator Mike Longo. Before I started studying with him, I had studied at the Manhattan School of music.

He was famous on using African drums and rhythms at the beginning of studying with him, so on the first lesson he showed me some basic rhythms and we were playing together on two drums.

At some point he asked me what the time signature 4/4 was and what it meant.

Me, fresh out of college I proudly answered and explained that, 4/4 is the time signature, it has a total 4 quartet notes in every measure, the strong beats are 1 and 3 and the weak ones 2 and 4, that the measure can be further divided by eight notes etc etc etc…

He looked at me and said: “ That’s school s**t man!” He paused and said: “It’s a rhythm”! And then he sang a drum beat in 4/4.

At that moment I had a revelation, sort of an epiphany, and it was the beginning of a journey that made me view things in music in a completely fresh way, raw and direct way.

I expressed to my teacher my fears about my teaching advanced students.  He assured me that I could do it because I know what good music sounds like!  One of my students then went on to qualify for a state competition.  

I was a reasonably talented lesson-taking child pianist who stopped music when he went to college. My first lesson as an adult, almost 20 years after my last lesson as a kid, was quite memorable.

The teacher talked about piano performance as a kind of public speaking, which was an appealing new way to think about music performance without it feeling frivolous. He also talked to me quite a bit about breathing at the piano, issues we are still working on today. "To play the piano isn't to play the piano, it is to breathe."

Anyway, that was the first lesson I can really recall wasn't about which keys contain which flats and sharps, or which fingering to use on a difficult passage. It was a wonderful zoom-out from the technical realm of "how to play the piano" to a more natural realm of "how to be a pianist."

One of my most memorable moments in a lesson was when my teacher said to me ‘We must be a good human before a good musician’. She said as musicians, we must learn to set healthy boundaries with our art form and to have a life outside of our music career will not make us less of a musician. On the contrary, it will enrich our lives and broaden our horizon. It will enable us to bring new perspectives back into our music to connect not only with ourselves and our instrument, but also with other people. Once we have done the hard work, we must learn to let go and trust when we play - this frees us to be fully available and present to what we are giving 🩵

Mine occured when learning Mendelsohn's Variations Serieuses - specifically variations 8 & 9. I was attempting to play it very Allegro Vivace and not doing the greatest job. My teacher, the wonderful Bolivian pianist Walter Ponce, explained to me that "slower and clean" will actually sound faster than "faster but a little sloppy". And many years later when I listen to my recital recording, it does indeed sound like I was flying. That advice has served me well over the years. 

It is sort of a ghost story. When I came to Los Angeles I started taking piano with Patricia Masuda. She was very good. I studied with her for about 20 years. Seems like we covered a lot of ground. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms. Then I got busy. She moved. But I still played for my mental health. About four weeks ago I found all of my old music books - with her notations and exclamation points and somewhat harsh messages : Look at the RESTS!!  READ THE MUSIC, PLEASE!! And started to laugh but I wanted to cry. She was back beside me. For the last month I have just been working from those old books held together with tape - thinking about and silently thanking Patty.

I was a teenager playing the Chopin e minor prelude, and played it quite well for my teacher. When I finished, she said nothing about the music or the playing...but instead asked me how my father was doing. He was in the hospital following some surgery.  I talked about him, and how I was concerned for him. Then she told me to play the prelude again. It was as though something inside was unlocked, and I understood at that moment how I could access emotions held deep to express myself at the keyboard.

One lesson that often springs to mind – not piano unfortunately – is with my harmony teacher in my first year studying composition. I had done an exercise that essentially worked perfectly, and that I was pleased enough with. The teacher played through it and said it was fine and didn't have any corrections to make. I thought I would leave it at that, but mentioned that I wanted a little more tension in one bit, but it seemed all right. To which he replied, "Well, if you want more tension, then you find it and you don't stop until you do."

It was just a simple remark in an ordinary lesson, but it set the course for the way I compose, if I have an idea for something I want, instead of just settling for mediocrity that works and satisfies the standard, I use my musical sense to look for what I know to be right, I try all the different ways that I can and don't stop until I do.

It was a short comment in a mundane lesson. My piano professor saw my bad habit of unstable knuckles on my left hand, and I was aware that it hindered expressing music I wanted. I said "this always happens..." or like that, then she just replied "you should correct it."

It was a simple comment but it changed my perception of the habit completely. I thought it was due to lack of talent or bad physicals I was born with. Not something I could fix. But she saw it as a bad habit I need to correct, and my music is not destined to suffer from it.

Just to know we can makes us really capable.

Two equally important “memorable moments” come to mind:

The first one when, working on the slow movement from Beethoven’s sonata Op. 10 No. 3, my teacher saw that I had covered the score of that piece – which filled me with awe and reverence and the desire for a deeply felt, profound interpretation – with handwritten performance markings and exhortations to myself just about every couple of bars. He gently mocked me for it and said: “How about you try first to just play exactly what’s written? That’s hard enough. A great score such as this is like a Painting by Numbers kit: if you follow the instructions precisely, the work of art will emerge.”

The second memory is of playing Liszt’s Ballade in B minor for a later teacher of mine in a big masterclass with pianists from all over Germany – i.e., in front of a very scary audience. During one of the big, sweeping climactic passages, he began singing, conducting, and punctuating my playing with exclamations such as “Identify!” [with the music], “Stay on top!”, and finally “Und DIE-sen! Und DIE-sen” (“And this one! And this one!”), imitating something like hammer strokes or fist blows for the three-beat figures quoted below. I completely got lost in the music, went off like the wind and felt as though I was flying over the keyboard, playing as I had never played before (or after), risking everything, and forgetting everyone around me.  It might not have been pretty, but it sure was exciting. That moment taught me that, after you have learned and memorized a score and overcome its technical obstacles, you eventually – at least once! – need to let go and give it your all and go for broke and play as if you’re playing it for the last time in your life.

The most memorable moment for me was when I was taking privates on the double bass. During one lesson, my teacher accompanied me on the piano. After we had finished the piece, he remarked that my playing changed completely when he accompanied me. For the first time he heard me "playing music" and not just the notes. In many ways this comment helped me understand why I never did well at auditions (I also played trombone), but was fairly competent and successful when playing in symphony. It might also explain why I still prefer the energy and sound of ensemble playing, even as I am learning to appreciate the sound of a solo piano!