The making of a pianist II - a tiger is born not made

Well, it's the end of another calendar year and we completed another recital at the end of the Spring semester.  In a nutshell, here is the list of what we have gotten so far:

1, Lesson progress: Completion of Suzuki book 1 and preparation of book 1 recital.  Completion of Fabers' book series of premier level and entering 1/3 of level 1.

2, Music note reading level: name and play all 23 notes on the entire staff in treble clef and bass clef.

2, Exam: A- for the Fall/Winter semester and B+ for the Sprint semester.

3, Competition: Superior for the Winter fest (Feb 2014) and and Excellent for the Local Area Music Teacher Association (LAMTA, March, 2014).  Students must receive Superior to be qualified for a state-level competition (I came to know this after the fact!)

4, Awards: None (she had a third place award from Ms. Alice's studio last year).

5, Current practice frequency: every other day mostly and occasionally daily, 15 - 30 min each session.

As a self-labeled tiger mother, I am proud beyond words.

Zhuzhu is not at the top level compared to her peers - we can easily find many young piano geniuses online, although I personally have not met anyone in real life demonstrating her/his innate talents on piano playing at her age.  I begin to believe now that Zhuzhu may well be one of the true music lovers based on her willingness to play the piano whenever her friends and our adult guests come to our house.  She even agreed to do a Suzuki book I recital at home for her friends when she was given a choice of not doing so, wow!

Does this mean that we are now making a pianist out of her, really?

Hell no.

But you know, other than being born a tiger, I am also a spoiling and glass is half full type of mother.  I try my best to cultivate her natural talents and to maintain an age-appropriate progression.  I am very careful so that I don't push her limit so that she does not sacrifice her childhood for the boring and repetitive piano practice.  She needs spare time to enjoy being a careless child.

Like most of the other regular 7 yr old, Zhuzhu's love for piano is not consistent.  She reminds me often that her life goal is to be a jewelry maker, regardless how well she plays the piano.  I am in fact quite impressed that she has kept this career goal ever since she entered kindergarten (prior to that, she had wanted to be a princess and then a swan lake ballet teacher and then a Chinese dance teacher).

It helps that she has inherited quite a bit of her daddy's artistic talents and has superb sense of responsibility.  Unfortunately, I have essentially no music education.  Nurturing her love for the music in my case is 1) walking her to Ms. Alice studio once per week; 2) reminding her to practice; 3) sitting in front of the piano when she starts a new piece (I cannot read music notes, but sitting there with her calms her down.)

My walking her to/from Ms. Alice's piano studio usually is the time that she tells me how much she hates piano and wishes to drop it.  Our typical conversation following a lesson goes like this:

"I am so happy that you played well today.  I think that Ms. Alice likes the progress you made last week."

"Yea, but I don't really like playing piano."

"But I really enjoy listening to your play and I wish I could play as well as you do!"

"But Ms. Alice still wants me to try this and try that.  She always wants me to be perfect.  It is not good to be perfect.  It is not that important to be perfect!"

"I agree that it is not good to ALWAYS ask for perfection.  But if she didn't tell you where you could improve, how would you know?  Don't you agree if you do what she teaches you, the music sounds better?"

"Yea, but I still like to figure things out myself.  I prefer the way I play.  Why do I have to follow her way to play?  Why she always thinks her way is the best?"

"Because she is the teacher and it is her job.  But don't worry, when your skills grow a bit more, you will have the chance to play to way you want."

"But she NEVER likes the way I play.  I should be creative and I should not have to do what she told me.  I don't like to be told what to do."

"Do you remember what Ms. Alice told you about the number of rights needed in order to correct one wrong?"

"36."

"Would you rather to play the wrong way and than work a lot longer to get it right?"

"But it's like what I do is never good enough for her!  Mommy, Ms. Alice is too strict, so strict that hurts my feelings sometimes.  Plus, she NEVER does anything herself.  She just sits there and corrects me and 'I' have to do all the work.  It's not fair!"

"I see, you don't like Ms. Alice sits there."

"Sometimes I just don't understand her.  No matter how hard I try, I just cannot get it right.  It even hurts my hands!"

"I know.  Let me give your hands a magic kiss."


Of course, there are other times the conversation is quite heated:

"I don't like Ms. Alice and I hate playing piano.  Why did you sign me up for piano lesson."

 "Oh, you are just having a bad day, let's not talk about piano right now."

"But I still don't like piano lessons and I won't go to Ms. Alice's class next week or any other weeks after that of the whole semester!"

After few times of repeating more or less the same thing that she still could not shut up, I would say the following with a stern tone,

"Listen, Zhuzhu, you are a big girl now and I respect your decisions generally, if those decisions made calmly and reasonably.  Since you are mad, you may not make any permanent decision now.  If you truly mean to quit piano after you calm down, I'll not force you.  But then you need to understand that will be your decision, not mine.  You are responsible for all the decisions that you make and all the consequences coming from those decisions.  I want you to promise me once you have made the decision of quitting piano, you have to stick to it.  Please don't come back to ask me to drive you to another piano lesson ever again."

This works from time to time, but not all the time.

One day, even when Zhuzhu saw steams coming out of my head, she would not drop the idea of quitting piano.  So I told her to go away with a pen and a piece of paper to write down her decision, the arguments supporting this decision, and its consequences.

Here is what I discovered hours later*:

* She did not give this little note to me right after she finished and was embarrassed when she saw me reading it hours later that night.  So the note indicated that she, instead of recording the decision, expressed her strong feelings.  If you are someone like me, you must also be impressed by her capability of expressing her feelings with words and drawings.  It's such a powerful way to dissipate strong energy!

To be absolutely fair to Zhuzhu, it isn't always her fault if she gets upset with playing the piano.  Her teacher Ms. Alice, in my opinion, emphasizes more hard work than innate interest or at least she comes across as someone who believes more "commitment to practicing" than talents.  She said even talented students need to practice outside her classes to build a strong foundation in piano techniques and grow musical understanding.  When she meets parents like I who don't intend to making a professional pianist out of our kids, she would emphasize that "piano education cultivates discipline, confidence, personal integrity, and perseverance, which carries over to many aspects of a child's life regardless of career directions." - quote from her website.

Well, I had not known that she was dead serious about her teaching philosophy and would strictly adhere to her policy until one day at which I'd learnt my lesson in a hard way: sometime during the first semester, I informed that Ms. Alice that I would need to take Zhuzhu to a birthday party a little bit before the end of her studio classes.  I'd not intended to ask her permission, I was being polite and respectful to let her know.  Yet what surprised me was her strong reaction, "Studio classes are designed for students to come together so that they can observe and learn from each others.  It's important and MANDATORY.  Students are usually quite motivated following such studio lessons.  It would defeat the purpose if students are free to come and go."

Guess what I did?  I waited as long as Zhuzhu could possibly stand, which was almost at the end of it, and then wrote an apology letter to all the parents/students afterwards to promise not to repeat the same "mistake".

Naturally, the progression of Zhuzhu's piano skills, just like her love for music, is inconsistent.  She actually had very tough time in the past year.

Ever since last summer vacation, Zhuzhu's piano play skills had taken a down turn.  She advanced from premier to level 1 in Faber book, but she kept the old habits of learning those new pieces right prior to her lesson time.  As the music pieces get longer, it would require more practice to grow muscle memory.  Her "practice prior to lesson time" had been easily detected by her sluggish progress.  So, Her teacher was quite disappointed.  Coincidently, Ms. Alice was not happy about some of her other students at that time.  So one day, when we arrived her studio, she somehow started to talk about the fact that she had been debating whether she should tell few of her students to either quit piano lessons or look for other more suitable teachers.  Since she has been frustrated with those "unmotivated" students who clearly came to her lessons only for making their parents happy.  "Some of them even told me that piano grades did not matter because it is not part of the regular curriculum"... She went on and on to relay the importance and value of teaching and learning piano to me.  Knowing that she has always been quite careful in maximizing the benefits of each of her lessons, I kept my mouth shut.  After about 10 minutes or so, she finally turned to Zhuzhu to ask her to play Allegretto 2 from Suzuki book I, a song that Zhuzhu needed to prepare for the LAMTA competition.  This piece requires a technique called staccato, which is the very first repertoire that Suzuki book 1 teaches and Zhuzhu had never truly mastered it.  But after a whole month of repeating the same song, Zhuzhu was really tired of it.  When the teacher repeatedly stopped her in the middle of the song to ask her to repeat/correct staccato notes, she simply played worse at each repeat.  At the end of the lesson, Zhuzhu behaved like a zombie mechanically doing whatever she was asked to do, without even trying to get it right.

At that point, I was quite concerned about the teacher's method of teaching.  I believed that her strictness had gotten too far and it could hurt Zhuzhu's self-esteem.

Then I offered my opinion, "Is it possible that Zhuzhu simply needs more time to grow the ability compared to other students?"  The experienced teacher looked at me, with her utter sincerity and said, "Mia had been such a wonderful student the first year and I truly am not willing to lower my expectations of her.  We have spent quite some time to relearn some of the techniques that we had already learnt last year.  If we continue on doing this, I won't be able to move on teaching her any music."  I felt quite guilty and sorry but could not come up with any words.  After few seconds of silence, she told Zhzuzhu, "Mia, since you have worked on this for quite a while now, I would move on to learn next song.  However, I want you to promise me that you will continue to practice this song at home by yourself.  Okay?"

Zhuzhu nodded her head obediently with obvious relief.  However, my feeling (or ego?) was hurt profoundly.

Following that came with more bad news: one of Zhuzhu's friends and her brother quitted taking piano lessons from Ms. Alice.  Those 2 students had only transferred to Ms. Alice one semester ago!

Suddenly, those sentences like "Ms. Alice is too strict."  "I don't like her.", "I wish that I could switch to a less strict teacher!" and "She hurts my feelings sometimes." became louder and clearer...

... So I started to look around for alternatives.

You guessed it, before I could act, Zhuzhu had miraculously regained her comfortableness with Ms. Alice.

I must say that it is such a luck that Zhuzhu's mood rarely is in sync with mine keeping her still having the same piano teacher.  Or maybe from the bottom of her heart, Zhuzhu knows that her teacher is one of the best.  Ms. Alice does have superb sensitivity to her students' efforts.

So I once again had put the idea of "switching teacher" on hold.

And I hope that I won't have to revisit this decision ever again.


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At the time I was working on this post, Ms. Alice sent this article to all her students and their parents.

What did you get from reading it?  Here is the list of things that I learned from the article:

1.  Praises and criticisms need to be specific and concrete on skills, techniques, abilities, talents, time spend on practices, efforts as those can motivate students and help them to build self-esteem.  

2.  Do not give any personal praises/criticisms as they are subjective.  

3.  Do not compare one person to another as it hurts self-esteem. 

Also praises and criticisms from different people weight differently: 

10 from teachers (!!!)

5 from parents.

2.5 from friends - this can be tricky tho, sometimes can be 10 as well!  

1 from someone barely known 

Zhuzhu has showed tremendous grace to accept her "B+" on her piano final exam and "Excellent" on her LAMTA competition.  Such second tier grades have not stopped her clapping hands to congratulate her peers for their receiving mini-scholarships and awards at the recital stage.  They also have not stopped her going to piano lessons this summer willingly.

Most importantly, she has not asked me to stop sending her to piano lessons for even once ever since the recital!

She clearly is stronger than I give the credits for.    

Let's go skiing!

Alright, I know ski season is out for this year, but the following post took me a whole two month from the start to a working progress - yes, I do come back to edit my published posts often.  They are never good enough, you see. 
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I was born a learner, as if I have not emphasized enough here already.  I mean I can acquire knowledge and skills pretty fast, especially when I have someone to show me how.  Unfortunately, I was born in China 50 years ago, at a time when our parents could hardly satisfy the fast growing physical body of their children with sufficient food, let alone meet the rapid developing innate curiosity of them with special provisional tools!  As a little girl, I had to teach myself how to dance, play Chinese violin (Er Hu 二胡), blow bamboo flute (Di Zi and Xiao), fondle ancient form of piano (Jiao ta qin, 脚踏琴), even sing Beijing opera.  I didn't want "missing out".  As you can imagine, my talent could only take me far enough to become an amateur for just about everything I tried to be.

I have suffered from under-developed syndrome (UDS).  What, you have not heard of UDS before?  I am not surprised because I've just coined it to describe us new Chinese immigrants.  Look around you, whenever you meet Chinese, ask them why they want to come to America?  I bet the answer is all the same: we did not have the opportunity to fully develop ourselves in China.

True, we Chinese come here to fulfill our childhood dreams, to explore, and to get ahead.

Believe or not, we Chinese and Americans even share the same dreams: we are all competitive and happy to get ahead.  But we are told to be modest by our Chinese parents and teachers - we can be bunch of tigers who sleep with an eye open and then eat you alive when your guard is down, ha ha ha -  joke aside, the truth is we grew up being taught that famous singers, movie stars, and athletes were not real people, they were icons who were born this way, which discouraged us to even try to become one of them early on.

Then I got lucky.  I came to the U.S. to make myself a perfect educator.  I have enjoyed having the land of opportunity so far and most importantly, I have learnt a saying "practice makes it perfect", which has shaken my self-image and the figure of my childhood heroes profoundly.  I now believe that I can learn just about anything and everything, even the seemingly impossible ski, without much of talent.  All I need is to keep on practicing.  So, when the first opportunity came along, I jumped into it.

In 2002, I was sent to a Keystone meeting.  Such meetings usually start at 7:30 am, stop at 9:30 am, then resume at 4 pm, and end at 9 pm each day for about a week long - totally are designed for ski lovers - that, my friend, provided me a golden opportunity to learn how to ski.

For about $100, I bought my first and only ski lesson pass on the first day of the meeting.  It went extremely well considering that my legs were still functioning after the lesson, which encouraged me to continue renting the ski boots and skis to get on the slope the next day and the day after.  After a few days of practice on my own, I learned how to turn, stop, and go downhill in a reasonable speed.

I was so excited that I could not wait to report to Fabrice on the phone to make him jealous of me for having fun outside the slave shop in which we were both working.  I totally bragged about my progress to trick him into believing that I had mastered those skills necessary to go ski with him - he'd started his first ski trip on the Alps as a teenager and not been too enthusiastic to take me to ski with him just yet.

And he ignored what I was reporting as he knew better me than himself, "Bend your knee, pressing the front of the boot so that you can put your body weight on the shin.  Face downhill, lean forward, put your skis parallel to each others..."  Fabrice was giving me instructions constantly over a cell phone that dropped signals frequently on the mountain.

I tried to transform his instructions into my actions except the "face downhill" - I rather skid with eyes closed!

He then sensed that I was unable to faithfully follow his instructions delivered in a cell phone.  On the 4th day, he joined me on the ski slope.  He had just stolen me from John at the time thus was quite eager to show me that he was worth of my love.  The price of a last minute plane ticket served the purpose just about right.  

When he found me on a slope where I had my ski lessons struggling with my turns and stops, he laughed his ass off.

"What, you spent all these days "skiing" on a bunny hill?!"  He made fun of me when he was catching his breath.

"Why not?  Look what I can do now?"  I was proudly showing him my beautiful "narrow" stance on the skis, I could feel that my feet in the boots directing where I was going, I could glide in a wedge by tilting my skis, I could easily stop with a wedge, I could even do the zig-zag... while I was showing off my newly acquired techniques, I heard,

"You are not skiing." he commented, "Let's go to the top of the mountain."

Completely ignored my fears, he went ahead to get us two lift tickets.  The whole time sitting beside Fabrice on a ski lift chair, I cursed to make sure that that man knew with whom he was dealing.  "I am afraid of heights and I cannot get up there!"  I screamed.  "Close your eyes, then."  He answered and then put down the metal bar in front of me to fool me into having some kind of protection.  In fact, I even need extra oxygen than many normal people to feel alive because I was anemic as a child and have grown to be extremely sensitive to high altitude where oxygen is scarce as an adult .  "I feel dizzy.  I have a severe motion sickness, you know?!"  He did not show me any sympathy at all at that time, maybe because he had never met anyone with this condition so severely - he then learned the lesson two years following our first ski trip in Hawaii watching me dying on the deck of our whale watching/snorkel ship later in 2004 during our honeymoon.

His confidence and easiness of sitting on the chair did calm me down a bit.  Seeing me quiet down, he started to go over the techniques to prepare me properly so that I could get off the lift.  I listened to him very carefully like a nervous school girl.  At the end of our ride, I did exactly as I was told: pointed the front end of the skis to the sky, let the snow/icy ground to touch the back end of the skis, which naturally put me standing straight on the skis.  A victory!  I was proud.

"Now follow me."  As soon as he got our boots tightened, he commanded, before I could properly respond, he skied down, way down.

If you skied once or twice in your life, you know that everyone is usually trying his/her best to get out of other skiers' way, particularly at the end of a lift.  I, like many beginners on their first try, could not abide by this common law.  I was busy to keep my balance in the mean time and to call the man, expecting him to walk back up to me.

What I did not know was that the area at very the top of the mountain is usually shared by skiers of all levels, thus, it is not too steep.  Fabrice failed to explain this simple fact to me, which resulted in his standing at the bottom of the slope, turning into a popsicle!  Had suspected my intention of staying at the top of the mountain for the rest of my life, he started to dance on his skis (yes, one can do that!) to seduce me to move on.  I watched him dance and felt tons of skiers flying by me, one after another, for a long while... Eventually, I had gathered all my courage, positioned my skis to form a upside down V, and skied straight down toward Fabrice.

As soon as I reached his location, he skied away from me.  What the hell, I was going to take a break!  "Stop, I could not move my legs!"  I yelled to the back of the man, but he was gone.  He could not hear me anymore.  Boy, this teacher of mine was pushy.  When I caught him again, he said seriously, "You have to move fast here.  It's too cold and you could catch cold."

Too cold, I was sweating, but why his lips were turning grey and body was shivering?!

What I did not know at that time also was that a green trail from the top of a mountain is usually the longest run because it surrounds those steeper and shorter blue and black runs.  "If we keep on stopping, we would need a whole day to finish a run!"  He said and asked me to ski on the long, narrow, and curvy tracks behind him.  What he did not know was that I needed a lot of energy to balance myself on those slippery skis and had no confidence nor ability to follow his marks precisely.  Plus, it was the first time in real life that I had someone "belonging to me" who could ski so effortlessly.  I was charmed by his elegant ski posture.  I was lost in awe watching his "performance" ahead...

... "So, move!"  He would command annoyingly.  But when he was not looking, I would just skip the curves to avoid being left too far behind, and try to ignore his urges on bending my knees, FACING DOWN HILL - I constantly leaned backward, as directed by my instincts.  When he told me to make turns with the leading ski tip pointing downhill, I would point it to the side to turn my body with my butt... Eventually though, he understood to give the old dog more time to learn new skills, so he went ahead to ski away from me at those divergent runs and then met me at the next convergent points to show me few more tricks.  Often he would find me on the same spot of the slope at this next run.  Whenever he skied close to me, he would slow down to demonstrate how to easily zig zag to get downhill.  This technique could change a steep run into a green slope.  He would also show me how to shift body weight from the center to one leg so that the other leg could move the ski close and parallel to the weight bearing one.  Finally, he tirelessly emphasized not to face sideways, even though when I was skiing in a zig zag pattern.  "Look downhill and face the bottom of the slope." he says this each and every time I am starting my runs!

(In a retrospect, I now cannot understand why I needed any of those breaks in the middle of a green run.)

After few green runs, Fabrice optimistically took me to blue slopes.  "You can ski anywhere since you can make turns and stops now."  Seeing me still in doubt, he insisted, "You have to have some speed to turn.  Green slopes do not help you with that."  He was trying to get me out of my comfort zone.  

Having witnessed how natural and easy that he conquered those scary snow bumps, I became a bit confident myself.  So, I sucked it up.

Guess what happened next?

I completely lost control.  The blue trails were much narrower than those green ones and the skis just took my body straight down.  "Control your speed, slow down, make a turn, turn, turn now.  No no no, don't go toward the tree, not the tree..."  Fabrice was shouting beside and then behind me, bang!!!  I fell right onto a tree.  

It did not take long for me to remove my skis.  Down I walked in my boots!  

Then I spent the rest of my first blue run watching Fabrice who disappeared into and then reappeared out of woods.  He loves to get in between trees himself, but tells others not to do the same, what kind of example that he gives to his students!  

With the help of my personal coach and continued practice, my ski skill has improved over the years, but not at the same level as his though - we late starters can never catch up with those early ones, but as my skill improves, he now at least is willing to take me with him everywhere on high mountains.  We now often take lifts together up to the top and ski a few easy runs together at beginning of each day and then we move on to our separate lives - he challenges himself with black diamond and bumpy slopes whereas I enjoy myself on blue/red even green zones.  We meet at our common zones for lunch and at the end of the day.  It is in this manner that he and I have explored the following ski resorts so far:

Whistler (Fabrice went by himself because my visa to Canada did not arrive on time!)

Jackson hole

Brehenridge

Park City

Snowbird 

Snowmass

Keystone

Alta

Grand Targhee

Copper Mountain

Taos (Fabrice went alone)

Silverton (Fabrice went alone)

Davos (Fabrice went alone)

Les Duex Alps

Santa Fe (I went alone)

Sunlight

Ober Galinburg

Shawnee
... (I know that I have left out of a few hard-to-access but great resorts in both Utah and CO - couldn't remember their names.)

Here is how I skied in March 2005 (I now ski way faster and more elegant than then.  But I have nothing to show you here because my movie maker now gets his hands full with his new students.  Our 6 year old Zhuzhu and 4 year old Niuniu are catching up their Mommy in a light speed!  Since you have read this far, you are rewarded for your patience with a family ski video that I took in the end of this post).

But I must admit that it has become unaffordable for our expanding family of 4 to ski everywhere in the world now.  So, we are practically Colorado residents.  We have been to Denver airport so often that the kids truly believe that Santa lives in Colorado instead of the North Pole!

This is a long introduction to tell you stories of our trip to CO in the week of Zhuzhu's Spring Break.  We stayed in a "historical" town Carbondale, skied on the Snowmass in the day, and soaked ourselves in the Glenwood hot springs in the night.  The trip was sensational and the scenery of the alpine mountains was breathtaking (okay, it is not the Alps, but still!), which reminded me some of those sweet moments that Fabrice and I shared years ago*.  We had so much fun together as a family.  I am afraid now that this first official spring break has raised the bar for their future ones!  Zhuzhu has already become a skillful skier.  She ditched her little brother in the last 2 days to follow her amateur mommy everywhere in high mountains.  Niuniu is still at his weaning days with the daddy, although I must say that the boy learns so fast that I can see that his day of surpassing his sister is now countable with fingers.  Look what he can do already now!
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* Fabrice and I both skied in Snowmass mountain in 2004 at our annual conference.  That was a highly productive meeting both professionally and personally.  We both received some prestigious awards in our fields and few job interview invitations.  We both also took home an Alpine ski racing trophies.  Ironically, he and I both won the third place.  How did I pull that off, you say?  If I tell you, you must die.  Nay, the truth is that there were exactly a total of 3 women participated in the "intermediate woman skiers" race.  But hey a trophy is a trophy!  In this male-dominated scientific community, Fabrice competed with a bunch of young Europeans and he mistakenly identified himself as "advanced skier" thus...the well-deserved third place!!!