Talk about having a Piano in the Family! Meet the 5 Browns...a Five-Piano Family!

The 5 Browns are all siblings and they all tour and perform together.  They are the first family in history to have 5 children attending Julliard School of Music at the same time.

I recently read that their mother sat at the piano bench with each child as he or she practiced for an hour a day.  That's 5 hours a day just spent sitting at the piano with each child!

I think the practising paid off.

Apparently their monthly tuition for piano lessons was more than the mortgage on their home.

Imagine trying to find music for a 10-hand piano quintet...probably made to order.

Moms have better imaginations than you think

I played piano for years beginning at about 3 years of age and as a teenager was still not a fluent player.  

Somehow between the ages of 12 and 18 my skill level and performance ability just blossomed.  My mother was incredibly insistent that I would learn and play music so I could have that as a life skill.  She just did not give up...and believe me...I fought her about this.  

She even had our piano teacher move into our house!  So I lived with my piano teacher for many years.  While this might seem remarkable to some of you...I am amazed we all lived with my mother!

I had many musical friends and I seemed to be less able than all of them at that time.  Most of those friends didn't play piano though.

They played easier instruments (well...to me they seem easier) like violin or viola or a wind instrument or a brass instrument.

With those instruments you read one melodic line of music and that's it. That's it!

With piano, you read two different clefs simultaneously.  So your brain has to remember two systems of dots and then each hand plays a different system (different notes) at once.  It's a harmonic and contrapuntal instrument.   So much more going on with piano.

More dots on the page to decipher and translate into something musical.   Not as challenging as the organ though!  Look at all the keyboards the organist has to play and think about...the organist even plays tunes with foot pedals.

In the end, my continued efforts took me far beyond what my friends or I might have imagined!

My mom had a better imagination than all of us in our short-sighted teen years! 

Be Quiet!

"Be Quiet!"
"Not that again!"
"Couldn't you have picked the flute?"

If you heard that in your home you would not be inclined to practise piano much.   We never heard that in our home from an adult.  Siblings...yes.  Parents...no.

The sound of music being practised is a little like having kids running around your house all the time.  You have to be okay with noise and mistakes and a cacophony of sorts.  Of course, some kids are quiet practisers.  They focus and play their tunes and it's enjoyable to listen to.  It brings a smile to your face.

After many years of quiet, focussed work a budding pianist is likely to play something with more intensity to it.  Maybe a little Beethoven.

Beethoven: Sonata No. 8, Op. 13 in C minor. (1st Movement) Performed by legendary pianist, Claudio Arrau.

I remember as a teenager playing this Beethoven piano sonata and loving it.  My sister would hear the opening chords and groan, "No...not that one again."  She would get as far away from the music as she could get.  She didn't like the angry, full sound of it all.  

Lucky for me my mother knew I needed the emotional release available through the playing of music of this intensity.