So while I'm busy sorting out my future (studies, exams, plans, etc.) I think it would be good to try and inject some of my other interests here. The photo above is of my piano bag. I bought it in a store somewhere in downtown. I was so excited to have a bag to hold my sheet music that I've kept it in almost pristine condition since my parents bought it for me.

I have only fond memories of taking piano lessons at a tiny music school. It occupied the entire second floor of a store complex, housing a good amount of padded rooms and a humble recital room. It was barely noticeable to people driving past or walking by. There was only a tiny, unobtrusive sign bearing the name of the school. One day out of every week, I would climb these wrought-iron stairs and enter a long narrow hallway. A look to the left, a hallway with rows of wooden doors; a look to the right, another hallway with rows of wooden doors. Straight ahead was the recital room. A black grand piano stood in the center; my favorite piano of all the ones in the school.

Maybe most people have this: a box stored away full of tapes from old camcorders. Each tape labeled with a date and weighed down by hours of recitals. In my school, there were two recitals every year—mid-year and the end of the year. I would have to conquer numeral pieces until a day my teacher would hand me my sheet music and say this would be the one to play. As I got older, I got to have some input on what kind of music I would like to play. But for the most part, I was always content to let her choose.

I remember one recital was one of my most anticipated ones. I had done duets before with other students; I had practiced all of them with my teacher before being paired up. But this recital, my teacher would perform with me. The beast to conquer—Brazileira from Scaramouche for 2 pianos by Darius Milhaud.


The copies she handed me were a little faded. They were 9 pages of what would prove to be an intense, bone-aching exercise. We had to constantly jump between our usual practice room and the recital room so that we could work on the timing. I remember being so intimidated by the idea of playing with her, but somehow I lost that feeling when I started playing. It wasn't one of those moments were fear fades in the face of courage, or anything poetic like that. I lost the feeling because it took all my concentration to keep the tempo and to play all the accents at the right time.

When I finally had the piece memorized, I had the time to appreciate the song. It was probably the happiest song I ever had to play for a recital. I want to dig up that old tape and see how the recital went. In my mind, the memory is fragmented so I looked on YouTube to see some renditions. There are some great videos out there, but some of the tempos were a lot faster than I remembered playing. I think this one is the most accurate to how my teacher and I played it.