Piano lessons

Rhapsody in Blue; Piano Concerto in F; An American in Paris; Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra; Andre Previn, conducting and piano

I took piano lessons from Nadine for about eleven years. The same year that I started kindergarten, I started taking piano lessons. “The boy is learning some bad habits at the piano,” Nadine had told my mom after church one Sunday. “We’ve got to teach him how to read notes.”

I have to tell you, piano lessons sucked all of the fun out of playing the piano. I didn’t want to play their way. I wanted to play my way. Their way was boring. My way was fast. Their way was tedious, monotonous, mundane, banal and unstimulating. My way was fast.

So, I didn’t let on for quite some time that I hadn’t yet really learned how to read notes. Right at the end of the lesson, before sending us home, Nadine would play the next week’s piano lesson pieces out of my lesson books, like she did for all the other kids. It took her a while to realize that I memorized the next week’s lesson songs while she played them, and I practiced them from memory when I got home. Yeah, I was sneaky.

But I paid for my crimes. How? She stopped playing my lesson songs for me, and I had to figure out how they went by myself. And they were tedious, monotonous, mundane, banal and unstimulating.

After I got the hang of whole, half, quarter, eighth and sixteenth notes, major and minor keys, time signatures and tempos, I moved along fairly quickly. Nadine knew how to task a young country boy: contests. My sisters and I played in so many piano contests. Then she moved me on to something called Guild, where I had to play something like twelve piano pieces from memory.

The last competitive setting in which Nadine had me participate was the South Dakota Music Teachers Association auditions. I only had to learn three pieces. But … they were much harder … AND … I competed against piano students from all over the state. This was an eye opener. I had never heard other serious piano students my age. They kind’a scared me.

So, I vowed to wow them the next year. Nadine, I need something really showy. “How about Prelude No. 3 by George Gershwin?” Is it fast? “{sigh} Yes.” Let’s do it. She had piles of music all over her studio. She moved things here, she moved things there. She climbed up on one of her piano benches to reach some of the stuff on the top shelf. “Here, hold this.” There, in my hands, she placed the sheet music for “Rhapsody In Blue”.

Time stopped. I’ve heard of this. I want to play this. Look at what this does. And there … oh, that’ cool. Where have you been all my life?

“Here you go.” What? “The Prelude No. 3. Here you go.” Then she looked at my eyes, then at what she had placed in my hands, then back at my face … and she knew the end was near.

I learned the Prelude No. 3. It’s a marvelous piece and I still enjoy playing it; maybe not quite so fast, now. After the SDMTA contest was over, I cautiously asked Nadine if I could take the “Rhapsody In Blue” home – for just a week – pleeeeeeease? “Yes, you can. But bring it back next week. And be careful with it. That copy is forty years old.” I learned as much as I could in a week.

At the next week’s lesson, I played a bunch of it for her. She had a big smile on her face. “Erik, that was wonderful. Thank you for playing that for me.” Then she looked serious and said, “Erik, you have to move on. I don’t teach ‘Rhapsody In Blue’. I teach ‘Down In The Valley’, 'The Merry Farmer', ‘Brave Indian Chief’ and ‘Bill Grogan’s Goat’. I’ve talked with Dr. P. at SDSU about you. He's a fine piano teacher. Go home and think about it."

For Christmas, that year, I got my own copy of “Rhapsody In Blue”. I still have it. There’s a Santa Claus sticker over the price.

Nadine was more than a piano teacher. She was a major musical force in the community. And she wasn’t scared of anything. She played the organ, she directed the church choir, she accompanied soloists at church … she even directed the bicentennial band on a float in Bruce’s bicentennial parade in 1976.

With piano lessons, her technique was "hands on". With everything else, it was "lead by example". Those lessons were just as important.

Not counting my Mom and Dad, she was my very first fan.

Credits: To Nadine Anderson. I miss you terribly and will love you always.

This is the fortieth of my final forty-five CD’s.