A Soprano's Scratchpad

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Whoa.....whoa.....whoa......


Wow... the last hour has been really overwhelming for me.

1. Sasha takes silver, Irina takes bronze....what happened? It's Salt Lake City all over again!

2. My favorite pianist, Anthony Burger, passed away yesterday. I was privleged to hear him play twice at the Gaither Homecoming shows when they came to Denver. He was only 44. Find more information on the Gaither website, http://gaither.com/news/news1101.html.

3. The Twilight Zone

I feel like I have reached through time and space to sit with my late grandmother. She passed away in 1998, and at that time, I inherited her spinnet piano. I was playing for fun this afternoon, playing Beautiful Ohio in the stride piano style like my mother plays it. (I learned it years ago from her sheet music and memorized it.) Then, I switched to playing Glowworm, which my grandma used to play for me. She didn't play from any sheet music - she played by ear, and before she died, she taught me how to play the right hand chords. So that's what I started playing. Then suddenly, I was aware that I was playing both hands! I was stunned! It was Glowworm, exactly as Grandma used to play it, but it was coming through my own fingers! And on her own piano, nonetheless! The connection soon became apparent - my grandmother always played stride piano, just like I had been playing a moment before in Beautiful Ohio, and by "coincidence," the two songs happened to be in the same key. My subconscious self made the connection and started playing from muscle and ear memory. I'm still in awe.

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