My piano teacher

Last Saturday, I received news that my piano teacher of younger years, Cherry Courteau, had passed on. I was asked to play at her memorial service, which I agreed to do. The service was held yesterday.

The news of her passing was sobering, for Mrs. Courteau, who lived for 90 years, occupies a very special place in my heart. Not only did she teach me how to practice, and to love to practice, she provided an opportunity in my life to prove that the seemingly undoable is doable.

During the service, a mother of one of Mrs. Courteau’s other students who took lessons when I did, stood up and told the congregation what had transpired between Mrs. Courteau and me when I was a sophomore in high school.

At that time, I decided that I wanted to compete in the Young Artists competition, which is the major competition for musicians in our region. The winner of each division gets to play with the regional symphony orchestra before a very large audience at one of their regular concerts. It’s a high honor for local musicians to win.

When I told Mrs. Courteau that I wanted to enter, she flat refused to cooperate. She told me bluntly that she would not coach me for the competition, and that if I wanted to enter I’d have to find another teacher.

She didn’t turn me down because she didn’t like me. Quite the opposite. She refused to cooperate because she didn’t feel qualified to coach a student to qualify for competition. She felt insecure and was afraid of failure, which was quite the opposite of her outward demeanor toward life, but nonetheless, it was an internal demon she wrestled with. I sensed this at the time, and with my can-do Christian Science attitude, I looked her in the eye and said, “You are my teacher, and you are the one to teach me this music to enter this competition.”

For a shy young teenager, this was a very brazen statement to make to a venerable, experienced and wise to the world elder. But it’s what I said, and I meant it.

She was taken aback, became a bit tongue-tied, and reluctantly consented. I learned yesterday, that I was not the first student she had turned down, but I was the first student she agreed to help.

The mother testifying at the service said that when her daughter found out, she wanted to enter too. So, Mrs. Courteau really had her hands full now!

I entered the senior division, and the young lady entered the junior division. As it turned out, we accompanied each other’s concertos.

Together, the three of us bonded, supported each other, laughed together, cried together, struggled together and advanced together as we worked on our pieces for hundreds of hours over the next year. It felt like climbing Mt. Everest with no climbing experience. We had to learn everything about competing from the start.

The mother went onto explain to the audience yesterday that we made it to the final competition, and “Wowed,” the audience. She claimed that a judge afterward told her, “They were unbeatable.” We both won our respective divisions, which seemed incredible and impossible at the time. I had never thought of actually winning, only performing.

I’ll never forget the moment the winners were announced. I was sitting next to Mrs. Courteau, and when our names came over the loudspeaker, she had this look of “Unbelievable,” all over her face. She lit up like a high-powered spotlight. Her arms went up into the air, and she could hardly contain her always polite and lady-like self. I bumped her on the shoulder with a gesture of, “See, I knew we could do it!” And the three of us hugged and laughed and laughed and laughed. It was an amazing unforgettable moment.

When I performed for the judges, after untold hundreds of hours of practice on that single piece of music, I lost most all sense of matter. I knew the music so well that I did not think about the mechanics of playing the piece any longer. My fingers flowed effortlessly and without error. I was not aware of the audience or the judges. I got lost in the melody. I was in the “flow,” as some athletes would say. It was a spiritual 15 minutes, even more special than when I performed the piece with the orchestra in front of over a thousand people. And it was all because of what Mrs. Courteau had taught me about the value of practice, and the commitment, dedication, and persistence required to win whatever race we decide to run. We came out of this “race” winners together, and it was a highlight of my teen years.

Mrs. Courteau will always have a very special place in my heart.