#piano lessons

Luke wishes you a happy practice session

One of my grandsons began piano lessons again this week. He is 6 years old. The highlight of each lesson for him is a candy treat that the teacher gives him if he is a attentive student. He also gets to play some kind of musical video games on their computer.

I took piano lessons too, but I never got to be much of a pianist. My clever avoidance to practicing music that I didn’t care much about overcame Mother’s attempts to keep me at the keyboard.

As noted on the cover, my piano book contained 74 easy pieces and this one was clearly my favorite. I can still play it from memory which is amazing because it was assigned to me on the First of March, 1956, 65 years ago. It is also the only piece (I leafed through the entire book) on which I earned a silver star. The stars were apparently not the incentive that my grandson’s after-lesson treats are turning out to be.

I took piano lessons (later violin and viola also) from Miss Sipher, an older unmarried woman who lived in what was even then a very old brick house about a block from our home. All of us students played an old upright piano next to a shelf on which she displayed dozens of glass and china figures of tiny animals playing musical instruments.

As a sidelight, Mother sometimes served as an election worker in a small unheated shed at the end of her sidewalk, which served as the local precinct’s polling place. Years later my older brother and sister in law bought Miss Sipher’s house and raised their own family there.

Hey everyone! If anyone in Canada is looking for piano lessons, my friend is offering to teach! She is based in Mississauga, but she is looking for any Canadian prospective students to teach over Zoom. She is a very skilled piano player as well, and has studied up to level 10 with the RCM curriculum. Message me for more info and to get in touch with her! She is a wonderful teacher who was wrongfully fired due to a parent’s complaints and she is starting this practice after bad experiences with private music studios. Thanks for reading!! And reblog if you know anyone who might be interested!