I have some traditional piano teachers out there that like to stalk me.
It gets weird sometimes.
Like over Christmas when I got in the mail a CD of a classical piano player.
The name was Rachmoniff or something like that.
I couldn’t pronounce it.
In fact, I couldn’t even understand the label on the CD was saying. Something about a “concerto in movement 2 Opt 81”
I am assuming that meant concert in spanish or italian or something. Not sure what a movement is, but whatever.
Anyway.
I decided to pop it in and take a listen.
Pretty good.
Like amazing actually.
So I did some investigation on old Sergei Rachmaninoff.
Come to find out he started playing at like the age of 8. His dad was a piano player and a military man. Terrible combination for practice time I’m sure.
But soon his grandfather arranged to have a piano teacher live with them to teach Sergei.
After three years she left and Sergei was shipped off to Saint Petersburg Conservatory. The conservatory was founded in 1862 by the Russian pianist and composer Anton Rubinstein.
And the long and the short of this story is that Sergei went on to become one of the greatest pianists and composers of all time I guess.
I don’t consider that a big deal.
In fact stories like this actually annoy me.
It’s like the hearing about the youngest CEO of a company in their history only to find out its the son of the founder.
Big deal (insert sarcasm).
Sergei was great.
But what do you expect?
He was born and raised and trained and forced into music since a very young age.
Why do we as a society hold up situations like this as some kind of great feat or heroic?
here’s the deal.
You (me and you) aren’t going to be a Sergei.
In fact, we aren’t even going to most likely be a “great” piano player.
But if we lower our standards a little bit.
Realize we aren’t nine and don’t have anything else to do all day but play piano.
We can really be successful at this piano thing.
Play songs we love and enjoy the heck out of it.
In fact, I didn’t learn till I was 33.
A student last week emailed me about finally being able to play after trying his whole life. He was 71.
Unless you have that time machine we talked about a week or so ago.
You might just get started now, with a program meant for those of us who didn’t have the chance Sergei had.
Just the normal old blue collar folk wanting to play a little piano. And maybe, just maybe have a “concerto” of some kind in the living room!
Sign up here:
