Touching lives with music.(The Back Page)

My role model, as a piano teacher, was my mother, who died fifteen years ago at age 85. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of her birth, I embarked last January on a project to record her favorite piano pieces so her grandchildren would have CD representing part of their musical heritage. My mother was a whiz at playing Maple Leaf Rag (composed in 1899), Glow Worm (1902), Nola (1915) and Kitten on the Keys (1921). Practicing these pieces reconnected me with her spirit and her style.

To prepare for recording, I tried out a short program of "Music from the Early 1900s" for anybody who would listen. First, I played for some neighbors. Their enthusiastic response led me to offer my program to a wider circle of students and friends. At a birthday luncheon for a friend turning 78, the honoree remembered Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy singing Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life (1910) with great passion. His comment strengthened my interpretation. In addition to playing the piano, I began interspersing commentary I had collected about each composer and selection. In a program for senior adults at my church, my mention of Jeanette McDonald triggered the memory of a woman who had lived in Los Angeles in the 1940s. She told of seeing Jeanette McDonald in a convertible, singing at the top of her lungs as she drove to her Hollywood studio. A studio car followed close behind to make sure she didn't get lost in her music. Another couple there loved hearing me play Always (1925) by Irving Berlin, which had been sung at their wedding fifty-eight years before. This group especially enjoyed such hymns as In the Garden (1912) and The Old Rugged Cross (1913), ...