Episode 16: My Childhood Piano Teacher
Music - Clare de Lune by Claude Debussy - Arranged and performed by Jessica Roemischer
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Subscribe on Apple Podcasts & Stitcher
Fifty-one years ago, I began studying the piano with a woman who’d become my sole teacher. Fifty-one years. That’s a long time and I marvel had how time has passed. And, now, more than a half-century later, in a kind of way that’s miraculous, my piano teacher - her name is Mrs. Marilyn Sophos - is still there, teaching in the same house to which I'd come, each week on a Tuesday or Wednesday, each week after school to take my lesson with her - as I grew, starting in second grade, and then third and fourth and fifth and on into high school. And she’s there, still teaching, and dedicated to her students, as she was to me.
To have this connection, over all these years, is something that’s meaningful in a way that moves me deeply. Because I’m here now, many thousands of miles away from where she lives - and from where I grew up - but to hear her voice on the phone, and for us to talk, as we do, brings me back, it evokes the feeling of myself as that young person, that young child that I was--in those early years--as if they were just yesterday.
My piano teacher, still teaching over a half century since I first began studying with her, is like having a touch point back to that time. Indeed, when I speak to my piano teacher, it’s actually as if time doesn’t exist. And that is an amazing gift. We talk about our lives now - how she’s still teaching, on the same grand pianos, which I played, in the same living room. The majestic sycamore tree that was like a sentinel in front of her home - and which greeted me each time I came for my lesson - that tree is there, too.
And you see these things are enormously meaningful!
And it makes me sense that there’s a kind of human need, I think to find some real connection to our past - that’s what I’m realizing in describing all this to you - and that’s what I’m realizing when I talk to my piano teacher, as I did this morning. I called her from near the sea where I spend so much of my time, my blessed time, going each day as I do, to look out over the ocean and to see if I can spot my beloved whales and dolphins, to see if I can detect their presence, their misty puffs of breath emerging from the water.
So this morning, it came to me to call my piano teacher, to chat, and that’s from whence this reflection comes. Because as we were talking, it really was like time dissolved, and I was brought back to my own childhood, my youth, the visits I’d make each week to see her, to study piano - and those studies continued for ten years until finally, I left my home and went to college. And there, though I did try to study piano, and tried to continue, given how much my life was devoted to music and playing, that’s what I wanted to do - but, no one I endeavored to study with approximated the feeling I had with my piano teacher from home. There was a kind of feeling of emptiness or shallowness. So, I took a different turn in my academic life at college, and things moved in a very different direction, in terms of my studies and because of that, my childhood piano teacher would remain as the one true teacher and mentor I’d have.
So fifty one years later, as I spoke with Mrs. Sophos, and I still find it most natural and comfortable to refer to her as I did when I was a little girl, I am easily brought back to that time - those ten years when I was young, when I studied with her. When I’d sit on the piano bench, at her Steinway grand, in her living room, the metronome there on the side of the piano, and a second grand piano next to the one I’d play on - that would be the one she’d sit at and play - and I’d play for her the things I was studying, at first little pieces by Bach, and a piece called “Pony Trot,” or other little pieces that I loved by composers like Dimitri Kabelevsky called, "A Short Story," or "Novelette," poignant little pieces - by the composers who wrote simple pieces for children, as he did.
And over time, I developed my skill and ability and grew to play more and different music - by Mozart and the beautiful Debussy preludes - and my piano teacher would always play things for me, and then I’d choose what I liked, I’d always be allowed and encouraged to play the things that I liked best, and then I’d go home, and sitting at my own piano, in the living room, the leaded glass windows opening to the maple tree outside and the back yard, I’d practice the things I was studying and take delight in them.
So as I was speaking by phone just this morning, to my piano teacher, I was taken back to those times sitting with her in her living room - sitting and playing at her piano. And being taken back to that time, that’s a gift. It’s like a gift that enhances what she gave me then, and makes it even more deeply resonant. It’s like the hours and hours that we spent as I grew from a girl of eight, to nine, to a young teen, into a teenager, and finally to when I was eighteen and left for college. Those hours and weeks and months and years of my most formative period in life - as it is for each of us - those are remembered and shared between us. And my piano teacher has a very good memory!
So, as we were talking, I heard her voice, and it sounded just the same as when I was young, and she said to me that her home looked just the same, too. And indeed, that was my memory when I last visited her before I moved far away…And the fact that it’s stayed the same, keeps me anchored in a very moving way to my life then, and to myself as a young person. Knowing that her living room, and the grand pianos we played, and the fireplace, and all those things that I recalled are still there. This is something of enormous value and meaning.
And that’s why, dear listeners, I wanted to share this with you here. Because our lives are wrought amidst and by what we experience, and where we experience it - where we’ve spent that early time - that precious and formative time in our lives. It’s wrought by those things. No matter who we are, I believe - it’s wrought by the place from whence we’ve come. That’s the nature of our lives - we are formed of and by the place, the people, the surroundings we had when we were young.
And so, as I spoke with my dear piano teacher, and heard her voice, and imagined her living room and she told me that she was still teaching and how much she loves it - how it’s the most meaningful thing for her - and I shared that now, I have many little piano students, too, and how darling they are - these beautiful things we shared between us. And at the very end of the conversation, she said something that was deeply poignant. She said, “I always remember you as that little girl, and how you grew into the beautiful older girl you’d become. I always remember that.”
And as my piano teacher uttered those words, I felt myself return to that moment, that place, the feeling of being that child, fifty one years ago, it was like all the cells in my body, my very heart was made warm and whole and complete it. And as my piano teacher said that, it was like it’s now, and the words and reflections of my teacher conjured that.
And I think, we really are still the children that we were. We grow, yes, but the gift of having someone in my life - someone who remembers me from then - the person who gave me the gift of nurturing the music that was in me, and helping me grow and learn and become the pianist - and teacher that I am - she’s giving me a gift now, all these fifty one years later - a gift of simply feeling that place in me that has never changed, that place that’s the same, that delights and yearns and thrives on being anchored back in the origin, of myself then.
As, I think all of us do. That’s the gift my piano teachers gave me this morning as we spoke, and for that I - and so, so much more -
I’ll be forever grateful.
If you're interested in lessons with Marilyn Sophos, you can reach her here.
To have this connection, over all these years, is something that’s meaningful in a way that moves me deeply. Because I’m here now, many thousands of miles away from where she lives - and from where I grew up - but to hear her voice on the phone, and for us to talk, as we do, brings me back, it evokes the feeling of myself as that young person, that young child that I was--in those early years--as if they were just yesterday.
My piano teacher, still teaching over a half century since I first began studying with her, is like having a touch point back to that time. Indeed, when I speak to my piano teacher, it’s actually as if time doesn’t exist. And that is an amazing gift. We talk about our lives now - how she’s still teaching, on the same grand pianos, which I played, in the same living room. The majestic sycamore tree that was like a sentinel in front of her home - and which greeted me each time I came for my lesson - that tree is there, too.
And you see these things are enormously meaningful!
And it makes me sense that there’s a kind of human need, I think to find some real connection to our past - that’s what I’m realizing in describing all this to you - and that’s what I’m realizing when I talk to my piano teacher, as I did this morning. I called her from near the sea where I spend so much of my time, my blessed time, going each day as I do, to look out over the ocean and to see if I can spot my beloved whales and dolphins, to see if I can detect their presence, their misty puffs of breath emerging from the water.
So this morning, it came to me to call my piano teacher, to chat, and that’s from whence this reflection comes. Because as we were talking, it really was like time dissolved, and I was brought back to my own childhood, my youth, the visits I’d make each week to see her, to study piano - and those studies continued for ten years until finally, I left my home and went to college. And there, though I did try to study piano, and tried to continue, given how much my life was devoted to music and playing, that’s what I wanted to do - but, no one I endeavored to study with approximated the feeling I had with my piano teacher from home. There was a kind of feeling of emptiness or shallowness. So, I took a different turn in my academic life at college, and things moved in a very different direction, in terms of my studies and because of that, my childhood piano teacher would remain as the one true teacher and mentor I’d have.
So fifty one years later, as I spoke with Mrs. Sophos, and I still find it most natural and comfortable to refer to her as I did when I was a little girl, I am easily brought back to that time - those ten years when I was young, when I studied with her. When I’d sit on the piano bench, at her Steinway grand, in her living room, the metronome there on the side of the piano, and a second grand piano next to the one I’d play on - that would be the one she’d sit at and play - and I’d play for her the things I was studying, at first little pieces by Bach, and a piece called “Pony Trot,” or other little pieces that I loved by composers like Dimitri Kabelevsky called, "A Short Story," or "Novelette," poignant little pieces - by the composers who wrote simple pieces for children, as he did.
And over time, I developed my skill and ability and grew to play more and different music - by Mozart and the beautiful Debussy preludes - and my piano teacher would always play things for me, and then I’d choose what I liked, I’d always be allowed and encouraged to play the things that I liked best, and then I’d go home, and sitting at my own piano, in the living room, the leaded glass windows opening to the maple tree outside and the back yard, I’d practice the things I was studying and take delight in them.
So as I was speaking by phone just this morning, to my piano teacher, I was taken back to those times sitting with her in her living room - sitting and playing at her piano. And being taken back to that time, that’s a gift. It’s like a gift that enhances what she gave me then, and makes it even more deeply resonant. It’s like the hours and hours that we spent as I grew from a girl of eight, to nine, to a young teen, into a teenager, and finally to when I was eighteen and left for college. Those hours and weeks and months and years of my most formative period in life - as it is for each of us - those are remembered and shared between us. And my piano teacher has a very good memory!
So, as we were talking, I heard her voice, and it sounded just the same as when I was young, and she said to me that her home looked just the same, too. And indeed, that was my memory when I last visited her before I moved far away…And the fact that it’s stayed the same, keeps me anchored in a very moving way to my life then, and to myself as a young person. Knowing that her living room, and the grand pianos we played, and the fireplace, and all those things that I recalled are still there. This is something of enormous value and meaning.
And that’s why, dear listeners, I wanted to share this with you here. Because our lives are wrought amidst and by what we experience, and where we experience it - where we’ve spent that early time - that precious and formative time in our lives. It’s wrought by those things. No matter who we are, I believe - it’s wrought by the place from whence we’ve come. That’s the nature of our lives - we are formed of and by the place, the people, the surroundings we had when we were young.
And so, as I spoke with my dear piano teacher, and heard her voice, and imagined her living room and she told me that she was still teaching and how much she loves it - how it’s the most meaningful thing for her - and I shared that now, I have many little piano students, too, and how darling they are - these beautiful things we shared between us. And at the very end of the conversation, she said something that was deeply poignant. She said, “I always remember you as that little girl, and how you grew into the beautiful older girl you’d become. I always remember that.”
And as my piano teacher uttered those words, I felt myself return to that moment, that place, the feeling of being that child, fifty one years ago, it was like all the cells in my body, my very heart was made warm and whole and complete it. And as my piano teacher said that, it was like it’s now, and the words and reflections of my teacher conjured that.
And I think, we really are still the children that we were. We grow, yes, but the gift of having someone in my life - someone who remembers me from then - the person who gave me the gift of nurturing the music that was in me, and helping me grow and learn and become the pianist - and teacher that I am - she’s giving me a gift now, all these fifty one years later - a gift of simply feeling that place in me that has never changed, that place that’s the same, that delights and yearns and thrives on being anchored back in the origin, of myself then.
As, I think all of us do. That’s the gift my piano teachers gave me this morning as we spoke, and for that I - and so, so much more -
I’ll be forever grateful.
If you're interested in lessons with Marilyn Sophos, you can reach her here.