Playing With Others 1964 - 1977

I started singing in choirs at our church when I was 5. In the 5th Grade I took up drums and

8th Grade Nerd King

percussion so that I could join band and, later, orchestra at school. In my teens I joined the Thalia Youth Orchestra. Due to rehearsal conflicts (both choir and orchestra met on Thursday nights) I stopped singing in choirs until I got to college and discovered it was an easy ensemble credit.

Both Victor Smiley, my piano teacher, and JoAnne Deacon, my Mom's accompanist at The Lake Washington Singers, taught me early on that instrumentalists and singers need pianists, a potentially lucrative discovery. By the time I was in high school I was accompanying fellow students, sometimes going with them to their lessons. I was, thus, privileged to learn from a group of (possibly) unwitting auxiliary teachers and picked up on how string players think (it's all in the bowing) and how wind players think (breath control of course, much like singers). I remember particularly valuable lessons with a Seattle Symphony violinist, Mr. Sotor, and later, at the UW, with the violinist Dénes Zsigmondy and the flautist Felix Skowronek.

Frances Walton

In the Thalia organization, then under the leadership of Mikael Scheremetiew and Frances Walton, I played percussion in both their youth and also, later, their community orchestras, and attended their summer orchestra camp, where I first came into close contact with chamber music in some of its varied guises. It was also there that I was first allowed to wave a baton in front of an orchestra. Maestro Scheremetiew must have seen an aptitude, and his kind support led to my first official paying job: Junior Associate Conductor of the Youth Orchestras. I think I rehearsed and conducted one of the intermediate orchestras in an arrangement of some Couperin piece or other, and got to perform it in concert.

Looking back on it, all of my summer camps but one (a Junior High Church-sponsored hiking camp) were music related. I went to Choir Camp and Orchestra Camp, but never Band Camp. In contradistinction to how

that's me with the legs next to the teen with the midriff
Choir Camp, Penticton B.C.

summer camps are portrayed within Popular Culture, they did not last the entire summer, but were single week affairs. They were generally held at various church-owned camp sites on the Kitsap Peninsula, but I also remember one choir camp on Lake Coeur d'Alene in Idaho, and another on Lake Okanogan, in Penticton B.C., led by the well-known hymn writing duo (Richard K.) Avery and (Donald S.) Marsh (or perhaps just one of them, memory fails).

Piano Lessons 1965 - 1977

My first piano teacher - Mrs. Swint, if memory serves - was a violinist who taught piano on the side.

When it became clear that my interest in playing wasn't going away Mom  consulted with her accompanist, JoAnne Deacon, to find a more suitable teacher. I started with Victor Smiley when I was 7 and worked with him until I graduated from High School.

At our first lesson, or so I am told, I played some thing I had learned.

His response was "Dig That Crazy Rhythm."

I guess he dug me, though I did not know myself well enough at that time to know what digging myself, as myself, well enough to dig me, was, but no problem. We've all been there.

He told my parents that his greatest fear would be that I would get bored, so he loaded me up with a pile of music. Bach to Bernstein was his motto, and though I think he used Bernstein as a placeholder, the Bach part was no joke. Lots of it from the very beginning. Musicianship: Scales, arpeggios, finger exercises, theory, improvisation, and repertoire from Baroque (always it was Bach), Classical, Romantic, Modern, and Popular composers. Popular meant show tunes at first. Later on he tried mightily to teach me the rudiments of jazz, but I resisted just as mightily.

What I learned:

think vocally. (hidden message: music is thinking)

legato is about shifting weight.

the damper pedal has seven positions (an oversimplification of course, but it sets the feet to listening).

the greater part of all ornaments begin above principal note.

keep your pinkie curved.

(never in so many words, but:) keep it moving, take your time.

and in case you forgot: think vocally.