How has playing the piano enriched your life, and what are you thankful for in your musical journey?

Just to be absorbed in the combination of the sound itself, the music and the physical and mental activity to make it happen. I have loved playing the piano for hours at a stretch since I was a kid, although these days backache tends to kick in a bit sooner!

Playing the piano is a constant reminder that we are all capable of learning new things, and learning is additive. I also meet really fascinating, kind people. 

I'll never forget when I must have been around 8 or 9 and my parents asked if I would like to have a piano. They were probably lower Middle class and it was the first time they were able to purchase a home that a piao could even be considered a possibility. My mother was a great singer, coming from an Italian family, music was always a part of our lives. We were on a Sunday drive and from the back seat I remember eagerly saying oh yes, yes, They then followed with a somewhat ominous warning that I would have to promise to practice one hour a day. Again I excitedly replied in the affirmative.  This must have been in the early 1950's. I was about to enter puberty and lose my soaring boy soprano voice, which I didn't know. 

So they purchased for $100 a Cable Nelson Upright, had it tuned, and sought a teacher. Again they were poor and could not afford expensive lessons. They checked the classified ads in the LA Times and found an older woman named Mary Lamb. They used the Mathews graded courses from books one to ten. It used excerpts from real pian music which has progressed to book ten including whole pieces by Liszt, Chopin, Beethoven, and Schubert -- all the ones we pianists have grown to love. Mary had no concept of technique but I loved her anyway and looked forward to a new hour-long lesson each week. I later realized it was not only for the lesson which routinely consisted of my playing the 2 or 3 pages assigned but another 2 or 3 pages plus slowly learning one octave of a new scale but it was for the time I spent spinning ut my dreams, thoughts about music, art, life. while Mary had no children of her own so her young students served to rill that vid. She loved me and made me feel special as she, just patiently sat and listened attentively -- which by the way was mostly what she did during my piano lesson.  Mary must have been especially fond of me or it seemed that way.  learned she was a Christian Scientist which at least fostered study and thinking as an essential part of their religious practice. She never proselytized her beliefs to me. Mary always scheduled me as her last student of the day. My parents would return from working all day and drive to pick me up. I remember telling them to always be late so I could have more time with Mary. The advent of the piano and lessons with Mary changed my life, giving me goals to accomplish, music to love, and a sense of meaning a purpose that I think provided a new world with aspirations, love of the highest things in life, art, music, and literature. I advanced so quickly that I became a wonderful sight rader, memorized and played, with some difficulty big pieces, Beethoven's sonatas, Un sospiro by Liszt I enjoyed playing the piano and my lessons with Mary that from the time I got home around 3:30 in the afternoon until 7 PM with an hour break for family dinner. My father had to set a time limit of 7 pm so he could relax and enjoy his favorite TV shows. Within a year I had finished all ten Mathew lessons, and I knew that Mary had nothing more to teach me. I had no association with other musically inclined students at the time. The piano practice I realized served as a place I could go within myself away from the distractions and troubles of life. I resolved to dedicate my life to music and the piano and at 85 after a long life with many epic periods, failed marriages, beatnik and hippie periods, choral conducting, composing, and in my early forties while living in a wilderness commune discovered another love which was herbal medicine.  I eventually wrote nine books on herbal healing, learned acupuncture --and so forth, and throughout all of this music and the piano continued like a 'through-composed song or piece like Schuberts impromptu no 1 D899 where the simple these changes, thus a life. One of my first pieces was Shubert A flat impromptu which earned me a scholarship for some decent lessons. I had a herbal and acupuncture practice for over 45 years, wrote 9 books on herbal healing including the best-selling Way of Herbs, and created an online east-west herbs course, I have a son Chetan Tierra to whom I introduced the piano at an early age and was able to provide the best teachers and was a competitor in the Van Cliburn and won awards. Currently, he and his talented wife, Melissa Tierra founded and directed directs the San Diego Piano Academy.  This and of course much more has been my journey with the piano. 

Hey Dominic, I love Tonebase and use it all the time. It's been a great support for me as I attempt to fill in the gaps in my technical deficiencies.  It's inspiring.

Thank you!!

Like many here, playing the piano has enriched my life in a vast multitude of ways. Three, in particular, I share with everyone.

First, it has taught me patience. Since Classical music can be lengthy at times, and learning new rep takes a long time, it requires patience, which has been built up over the years. My students are always baffled by music longer than a handful of minutes. I too remember being overwhelmed by long pieces. Now, some pieces don't last long enough! 

Secondly, it helps me be a better listener. Of course, one has to listen carefully to great music to appreciate it. One has to listen carefully to ultra fine details when sculpting and refining. Thus when I am with others, I find it easy to sit, be patient, and really listen.

Thirdly, it has taught me peace. In a world where everything, even music, has such immediacy that attention spans are shortening, Classical music slows me down and helps me focus. And when life is chaotic, Classical music provides a space where I can exist in a place that draws my thoughts out. There are often no words to tell me what to think, but there is enough of a narrative that the music helps facilitate my thoughts into a more cohesive strand. It provides a space to think and feel at the same time, without judgment. Thus all three elements tie together: patience, listening, and peace.

It gives me a passion to follow and a lifelong sense of learning. You also meet amazing, interesting, determined people - piano brings a lot of good people together.

I am glad that learning to play piano has led me to being a music teacher. The joy, confidence, inclusivity and sheer fun I can give to others through teaching them music is mind boggling.

Allows me to get in touch with my feelings.  A way to express urself. The piano is a language as complicated as verbal language. At my age it allows me to stay cognitively alert with good memory skills. I’m thankful for my wife who was so patient especially in the early stages. 

Piano gave me back part of my previous life. I started out to become a professional musician and found out there was no role for female brass players in orchestras at that time. I am currently 79 and 11 years ago I started piano lessons because of hand arthritis. I didn't expect to fall in love with piano, but I did. It now enriches my life in a way I can hardly explain and has given me some good piano friends as well. My hand still hurt but I still play as much as I can. I have particularly enjoyed discovering composers who did not write for horn or composers that are not well known in the piano repertoire. 

Piano playing gave me a voice I was special needs at school couldn't read or write and I was not able to communicate with others when I was 13 my nana and granddad who never believed I was stupid had a keyboard that I started to learn and it took awhile but I could clearly play later I would be known as haveing Asperger's with out music I sat a steered at a wall all day with music I was able to star writing songs for people this was how I communicate with the world and it got me into excel school of performing arts and I was able to sit both performance certificates the basic and advanced one with trinity have fibromyalgia and find it hard to play for to long these days but mucic when I can still play brings me joy  

Where to start? Piano is the story and metaphor for everything I have learned in this life. The journey which began when I was 9 (actually earlier - my grandmother taught piano and gave me my first lessons, we just didn't have a piano until I was 9, so that's when I began in earnest) has propelled me to take on enormous challenges that only can be answered because of deep devotion. The journey of learning music is of the highest spiritual order. What I have learned through playing and teaching(!) has given me a model for reaching to greater heights of philosophical and metaphysical understanding. Music is a time machine - through the works of different eras we reach into the minds and hearts of humans in different eras. It is a vehicle for bringing beauty into the world - I call it the "beauty way", a South American indigenous idea. The beauty of our own lives and souls is polished and burnished, and we transmit the beauty of the great composers who's works can only come to life when played. It is a wonder of human imagination and creativity, and a means to the angels. I also play jazz and improvise (an exceedingly difficult thing for me at first), but being able to easily express ideas, pick out melodies, write music and play in group settings has given me much of my livelihood (outside of teaching). I will teach and play as long as I'm living. 

I wanted to play when I was 6 and a girl in my class, Claire Richards, played "Pickin' up Paw Paws" for talent day. I started lessons then and there on a little Acrostic piano. Miss Hamby was my teacher. I was never good,` but I never stopped. Now I play Chopin and Beethoven....again never good but I never stop. I ended up on a job in Salt Lake City...the home at the time of Claire Richards who had just played a public concert for over a 1000 people. I called her on the phone and asked her if we could have dinner. On the way I pulled her into a hallway outside the Banquet Room of the little hotel I was staying at and I played her the first movement of the Tempest...again, not well, but I didn't stop...She said to me afterwards...."Why did you play that for me?" I said, "Because I wanted you to know how much joy you've brought into my life. I never would have kept at it if I didn't see the beauty. You showed me the beauty."

Because of Piano, I get to enjoy the vast and wondrous works of gifted composers that move my heart and soul! “The piano is a divinely inspired instrument.” – Franz Liszt

 I like, so many others, returned to the piano around the time of the COVID-19 lock-downs, albeit my situation was rather different, I had a cancer diagnosis just as the first lock-down happened. 

Sister Morphine, post-surgery, enabled me to play pretty-much on a loop for 2-3 days Martha Argerich's Chopin No: 1 in E minor, Khatia Buniatishvilli's Liszt/Schubert Standchen and Emmanuel Pahud's Bach Flute Sonatas. 

Post-morphine I resolved to regain my musical life, which led to my finding Tonebase online, becoming a life-long member on the piano portal, followed by the same on the flute platform, when it was launched.

The cancer is a good news story.  It was discovered by a consultant looking for something else.  The tumour was not at a critical level when it was found and my regular CT scans have been clear since the surgery. 

We have moved to the Isle of Wight, which is an island off the south coast of the UK.  We return to the mainland tomorrow for my Christmas scan as they take place every six months presently.  Our dance teacher's studio is about 10 minutes from the hospital so the scan will be followed by an hour and a half of dance lessons!