SPECTRUM: Remembering a special teacher

For the first time in my life, I am officially a piano teacher. My first lesson is approaching, and I’m excited and nervous and a little scared, but most of all nostalgic. I can’t stop thinking about when I was the piano student, and about my own piano teacher, Carol Tisch.

Carol passed away in March 2014. But I still hear her voice in my head anytime I sit down at the piano. “Curve your fingers,” she says, “and play this part slowly until you can play the whole thing without any mistakes. Make sure you bring out the top note in the chord—that’s the melody. Make it sing.”

Other than my family, I’ve spent more time with Carol than anyone else. Monday was piano lesson day at my house, and, as I am the youngest of seven piano playing children, that meant Carol was at my house each week from before I could walk until my high school graduation, sometimes for several hours at a time.

I wasn’t a stellar student, and I didn’t always love Mondays. Overall, however, I loved piano lessons. And I loved Carol. Many of you reading this had the pleasure to know her, since she taught hundreds of children across the Mat-Su Valley over the years. But if you didn’t, allow me to attempt to posthumously introduce her.

Carol Juanita Tisch, according to her obituary, died at age 84. This surprised me, as I thought she was at least 84 when she began teaching me lessons 20 years ago! She was a diminutive woman, with a brown, wavy pixie cut. She was as particular about lessons as she was about her tightly coordinated wardrobe: she placed the piano bench just the right distance from the keys, a pillow just so. When my parents bought a new dining table and chairs, we kept one of the old ones, because Carol didn’t like the new ones.

She was a soft-spoken but stern commander. If you took piano lessons from her, you took them seriously— there was nothing casual about Carol.

Carol was trained as a classical pianist, and she passed along her music history and theory knowledge to her students. She chose composers and pieces for each student that would match their tastes and interests. More than a few times I would choose a piece for myself and she would say, “I don’t know if that is a good fit for you.” She was of course, always right.

The thing that continues to astound me is that Carol even knew the size of my hands. I have small hands, especially for a pianist, and yet, Carol never brought me a piece I couldn’t play (which became increasingly difficult as I advanced). She had the size of my hands memorized and bore it in mind when she picked out music for me—one of dozens of student.

Because I’ve always hated when a person is described as faultless after they’ve died, I’ll give you a full sketch of her personality as I experienced it.

She may have been short, but she was no pushover. She had a finely tuned passive-aggressive personality. I think that to this day I have never felt the shame and embarrassment I felt during piano lessons for which I hadn’t practiced. I distinctly remember those bus rides home from school on Monday afternoons, dreading the lesson ahead, and hoping she wouldn’t notice I hadn’t touched the piano for a week.

She always did. I would bumble through a few lines of a piece until she put her hand on my arm and said, very softly, “Oh, it sounds like you didn’t really practice very much this week.” To me, this was as bad as a very loud scolding, and as she wrote the piece down in my assignment notebook in her perfect cursive, I would mentally commit to practicing twice as hard in the week to come.

Carol loved competition. When she passed away I attended her funeral in Boise, and I laughed at her children’s memories of being pitted against each other. It was well-known that her piano recitals were organized by the skill of the pianist: the first player was the most inexperienced and the last the most accomplished. As such, it served as a sort of torturous ranking list. “Tess is playing after me!” I would anguish, “but she’s two years YOUNGER than I am!” The abilities ranking was so important to me that getting to close out a Carol Tisch piano recital went on my bucket list—an experience I only got to check off because I took lessons from her as a sophomore in college.

Above all, Carol was fair. She praised you when you deserved praise. She chastised you when she knew for a fact you weren’t working hard. She gave her all in lessons, in good health and bad, and expected you to do the same. But she was also merciful.

I remember one specific Christmas recital. I wasn’t usually nervous, but at this recital my hands shook violently. In the middle of my piece I hit a few wrong notes, and the error confused me so much that I had to stop and start at a different point in order to remember the song at all. I continued to flub my way to the end and held back tears as I bowed.

Afterward, I dreaded my upcoming lesson, sensing Carol would sigh and say, “You did fine,” which translates in Tisch-speak to, “You were such disappointment.”

However, when Carol arrived for my lesson she instead put her arms around me. “You worked so hard on that piece,” she said. “I know you are capable of playing it much better, and I know how frustrating it is when nerves get the best of you. I am so proud of you.” She then asked me to perform it again just for her, which I did, flawlessly.

Carol taught me so much about piano—artistry, technique, theory, phrasing, memorization—and I hope to pass along those skills to my own piano students. But more importantly, she taught me about life—to work hard, take pride in what you do, and be careful, generous, just, and kind. I wish I could talk to her again, but I’m confident I relay the sentiments of her past students with this: Carol, we love you and miss you.

Rachel Kenley Fry was born and raised in Palmer and graduated from Utah State University in 2012 with degrees in journalism and agricultural communication. Her previous work for the Frontiersman includes two years as a “Student Views” columnist and contributions for a “What to Eat” column while she was an intern with the Alaska Division of Agriculture. She currently lives in Virginia with her husband and two children.