I played an improvisation in the dark at Hillel. Why? I couldn't find the light switch. I found some buttons, but they didn't seem like a safe bet to be the right ones. Playing in the dark is liberating: if I hit a wrong note, it's because I can't see a damn thing. Not my fault! More valuable, I become much more attuned to sound because of the lack of visual stimulus. I hear myself better. I don't know if I'd choose to play in the dark, but it is interesting as a change of pace.

The Cleveland Institute of Music offered a free recital of two Rachmaninov Suites for Two Pianos (Opp. 5 and 17), played by Sergei Babayan and Margarita Shevchenko. Rachmaninov is my favorite composer, but I'd never heard either piece, so I went with Roth and Grauer to hear what I could hear. Hey, you can't beat free! Neither piece sounded much like what I'd come to expect from Rachmaninov, in that the dynamic range seemed constrained to the high end. Put simply, there was a lot of banging and not enough lyricism. I like Rachmaninov because of his compelling melodies, and there was little of that here. The performances were also less than sparkling.

The piano has been of paramount importance in my life since I started playing in fifth grade. I had played violin and viola already, when one day I sat at the piano and made up a song. It was pretty bad by the standards of the decade in which I was temporally embroiled, so I asked to take lessons. My parents were overjoyed that there was a musical instrument I wanted to study. Through eighth grade or so, I would skip lunch once a week and bike to the home of Barbara Eskoz for a lesson. When I outgrew her teaching, I moved on to study with Terry Spina. We worked briefly on composition before I found that I lacked the patience to scrawl any significant number of notes on paper, and reverted to studying the music of other composers. His method of teaching was very well suited to my method of learning: I would play pieces I wanted to play, and he would correct errors in my playing. My love for the instrument, founded on its nature as a richly expressive instrument that can stand alone, was fostered by my experience with Terry throughout high school.

My relationship with the piano is emotional, deep, and permanent. I play whenever I have the urge. I am a lucky guy.