inspiredbyactualevents.com

Tonight...I pulled my punches.

We went to a small piano concert. Four high school seniors, graduating this month, performed a small concert sponsored by their studio.  The show gets low marks for production values.  These amateur night extravaganzas insult the art they should celebrate. Nonetheless…

Four performers. One has a perfect ‘performer name’ - Ace Tardo.  Ace couldn’t play for...well...for shite, as the Brits say.  Cute kid, great smile, knots in his fingers.  But with a name like Ace Tardo, he’ll be a star one day, a star at something.  If he doesn’t want to use his name to become a star, I’ll take it.  Ace Tardo.  Wow.

Another performer could play better, but made the mistake of playing without a score, forgetting his notes, and resorting to opening the score to find his place.  His teacher should be shot for letting him play without his score before he was ready.

A third was a beautiful young woman who could play like a dream.  Her long expressive fingers deftly crossed the keys, leaping high, pouncing from phrase to phrase with the grace of a big cat.  She worked without a score since the music was part of her already.

Finally...and this is the point of this note....was Michael, the pianist we’d come to hear.  Michael’s mother works with my wife. Michael is, in a word, brilliant. He should be a concert pianist.  He, alone among his peers, felt the music, moved through it with ease and joy, a joy belying his awkward stage presence. (Someone MUST teach all these kids how to walk onstage and, for Christ’s sake, bow correctly - one hand on the piano, dip shoulders and head and DO NOT cross any arm over any waist anytime.)

Michael should study music performance.  Period.  He’s headed for college...pre-med.  I understand he can do this easily.  Smart, hardworking kid, Michael.  But...doctors are a dime a dozen.  Well… millions of dollars a dozen, I guess, but the point is how many dazzling concert pianists can my humble city produce?  I hope Michael, whose Chopin Etude moved his audience deeply in spite of the dreadful setting and whose sterling recovery after flubbing the middle of the Polonaise was an unappreciated display of profound professionalism, really wants to be a doctor.  Really want it a lot. 

If he is passing on becoming a pianist because being a concert pianist won’t pay the rent (which I suspect), he is cheating the world and, worse, himself.  And I, who know better than to let such a tragedy unfold sans comment, said nothing to Michael of how his playing moved me, nothing of my hope for his art. 

I may have another opportunity.  Here’s hoping I pull no more punches with the dazzling Michael and his golden fingers.