I grew up playing piano since my mother was a piano and voice teacher. Music was the center of my life. Many evenings we gathered around the piano and we sang – my sister was a soprano, I was a second soprano and my mother was an alto and we sometimes sang trios and duets. My sister and I also entered high school piano solo and duet contests. During much of high school we had two pianos in the home – one a Steinway Concert Grand.
(in future website blogs, I’ll tell the story of the piano.) We played two piano duets and performed in a few places around Wisconsin. Then, I took piano lessons for one semester in college. And when I lived in Los Angeles, I had a piano duet partner for about 6 years – we played little house recitals three times a year.
I went back to piano about three years ago after not taking a lesson for 50 years! I had not been playing piano at all for about eight years because I have a neurological disorder called dystonia (a result of a small automobile accident 11 years ago) and I wasn’t able to play. With the help of a doctor in Houston, I am about 95% better. With her help, I was able to return to piano about three years ago. When I had my 50th college reunion in 2017, our drama group decided they wanted to get together and also have a drama reunion. We decided we wanted to sing some of the music from Kismet, which we had performed in 1965. (I was a harem girl in the Chorus.) I volunteered to accompany them, not knowing the amount of practice it would take. I started practicing in April for our October sing-along and realized I could go back to playing – at last!
I found an excellent piano teacher – Abe, and then when he went on vacation, he recommended Sara to me. I liked both of them and decided “why have one great piano teacher when you could have two?”
In April, 2018, I bought an Estonia Grand Piano after looking at pianos for about four months. I expected I would buy a Steinway or maybe a Yamaha but I fell in love with a piano I had never heard – an Estonia Piano. This was the one! (Yes, you can fall in love with a piano. We visited the piano factory in Estonia in November where they made my piano.)