I think, to my benefit, that I've had an extraordinary number of "Why am
I even here?" moments where I felt like I was so far out of my depth
that I thought someone must have made a huge mistake that would be soon
corrected. Lets see, when I was promoted to a new team in San Francisco
at the where bank I worked, when I was moved out of the office
answering emails to teaching kids how to ski in Japan, and my second
guitar lesson with my teacher in college. My first lesson was fine, but
my second lesson ended after 10 minutes with my teacher Allen Krantz
saying "So you tried to learn it but you don't have any specific
questions? Sounds to me like you didn't try at all." My only
thought at 18 was wtf!
But by far though the most outrageous ability gap was when my piano
teacher during my sophomore year at Temple. My teacher's name was
Alexander Panku, and he still lives over in the Philly area teaching
piano. I knew he was from Romania, and although he did speak English
the bulk of our lessons consisted of him inevitably saying:
"No no no no - let me. Like this. You know what I mean?" -
Alexander Panku
Here's his picture
I would try playing my Bach or my sonatina, and he would stop me and take the bench and just play a mini concert where I could watch his hands right in front of me, and it was just the best. He also would always write and circle things and draw arrows in my books in pen, which is just something you're not supposed to do! I honestly hated piano lessons because I just didn't want to learn this extra stuff when I had all these other things to deal with - there were other things like choir, ear training, keyboard theory, and ugh renaissance music notation like what the hell I didn't come here to learn all that! Maybe it was the gravitas of his accent or just how he would pound the little grand piano in the practice room where he would teach me, but he turned me right around, and I started practicing a lot of piano.
Anyway, this is a Bach prelude I learned for my jury, which is like a final exam, and I remember being really let down at 20 years old because he didn't make it because of scheduling. I always called him Dr. Panku, but in writing it has to be Alexander, because when he saw his name on a folder of mine he said "No no no no - Alex is my nickname. My name is Alexander." and fixed it.
The sound the Yamaha Motif grand piano with a Line 6 guitar pedal with Reverb set to Hall.
Ishida