"It was through Robyn that I came to study with my first piano guru, Phil Cohen. Robyn was my sister's best friend in high school, and when she heard I needed a better piano teacher, she recommended Phil.
'Decades later Robyn wanted to return to Phil but she was hesitant. I gave her a lesson and told her of course she should return, he would love to teach her again. When I heard her a year later, her playing had improved so much that I myself was moved to return to Phil!
All the books of Natural, Artistic Piano Playing illustrate Phil's approach to the piano, but Play the Piano with your Whole Self gives a special glimpse of my precious sessions with Phil in his last years. Like a fine wine that has aged beautifully, Phil's work at the end of his life was something unique and almost mystical, well worth preserving in any way shape or form. But Robyn's book goes even further than this, offering a personal portrait of Phil the man.
'For anyone interested in the antecedents of Piano Somatics, this is a must read. Phil's Being radiates through these pages full of interactions, conversations and lessons revealing the complex personality behind the approach.
'And as Phil treated each student differently, Robyn's lessons offer valuable new insights, perhaps helping you in a new way to develop your playing in a more organic, expressive, and eminently human direction."
After thirty-five years as an “on-again, off-again, uncoached closet pianist,” poet and writer Robyn Sarah picked up the phone one day and called her old piano teacher, whom she had last seen in her early twenties. Music, Late and Soon is the story of her return to studying piano with the mentor of her youth. In tandem, she reflects on a previously unexamined musical past: a decade spent at Quebec’s Conservatoire de Musique studying clarinet — ostensibly headed for a career as an orchestral musician, but already a writer at heart.
A meditation on creative process in both music and literary art, this two-tiered musical autobiography interweaves past and present as it tracks the author’s long-ago defection from a musical career path and her late re-embrace of serious practice. At its core is a portrait of an extraordinary piano teacher and of a special relationship remembered and renewed.
Product details Language : English Paperback : 356 pages Canadiana : 20210221275 ISBN : 9781771963565
Purchase here: Music, Late & Soon - A Memoir
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