What brought 88 Luther alumni from 22 different states (plus Mexico) to Decorah this week? It had something to do with singing – with reconnecting with friends – and with revisiting one of the most gorgeous places on earth. But mostly, it had to do with paying tribute to one of our most treasured teachers, Weston Noble . . . to thank him . . . and most importantly, to learn still more from him.
But my week in Decorah served up several opportunities for me to reconnect with some other important music teachers and mentors in my life, beginning with someone who was back in Decorah as a fellow singer in the Alumni Choir. Ed Kramer went to Luther back in the late 1960’s, and during at least part of his time there he was organist at the church my dad served as pastor, Good Shepherd. Even before Ed came along, I had flirted with the idea of playing the organ at church- but seeing a guy on that organ bench Sunday after Sunday somehow made this seem like the most natural thing in the world for me to want to do. And more than forty years later, the organ bench is still a place where I feel incredibly comfortable- where I make a difference- and I owe Ed a huge debt of gratitude.
Speaking of the organ, early in the week I was glad to run into Bill Kuhlman, former college organist and organ prof at Luther – as brilliant as anyone who has ever taught there – and someone with whom I briefly studied organ. But what was especially nice about this encounter is that his wife Yvonne, one of my former piano teachers, was with him- and we had the chance to chat for the first time in decades. She was a fun and exciting teacher – but also very exacting – and it was in my lessons with her that I first started to realize that if I was going to become a better pianist, it would take more than just showing up . . . or growing older. And it would take more than just playing the piano for hours on end, which I happily did every single day. I had to learn how to be a truly diligent piano student, which meant more than playing whatever I felt like playing, strictly for fun. I think it was about a year and a half after I started with her that my mom and dad took me out of her studio- and my mom told me it was because I was just so easy-going and Mrs. Kuhlman was a little too intense. (I think my mom actually used the term High Strung.) It was only years later that my dad gave me the full low-down. . . that Mrs. Kuhlman simply couldn’t teach me any longer because it drove her crazy that I wasn’t practicing. A case of Tough Love- and I very much wish that my mom hadn’t been so protective of my feelings in this instance, because I might have learned a really important lesson much more quickly than I did. But so be it. At least the seed was sown.
This week was also when I finally took the time to look up the piano teacher who taught me longer than anyone else – and who in a number of ways left the most lasting impression on me. Connie Bolson was my first piano teacher when we moved to Decorah in 1965- and although she was not exactly the last word in sophisticated teaching methods, she LOVED the piano and had a fantastic way of nurturing that love in her pupils. She was also adept at playing by ear as well as sight-reading, and of all my piano teachers she was the one who most deeply appreciated this facet of my playing and went out of her way to nurture it. So every time I sit down at a piano, take out a piece of music and sight-read it just like that. . . or sit down at the piano and play something without having ever seen printed music but just from hearing it . . . whenever I’m doing that kind of playing (which is all the time) I find myself thinking about Mrs. Bolson, the wife of a chicken farmer. And at long last, I finally took the time to call her up and ask her if I could swing by her house. And for two hours and fifteen minutes, we got reacquainted just as I had hoped. We spent that whole time in her piano room, which had scarcely changed at all from when I last took a lesson there almost forty years ago. I played some Debussy and some Rachmaninoff – and a couple of hymns – listened to stories about her family – looked though her mountains of reel to reel tapes in search of recordings from one of the recitals I played with her – and tried to say thank you for all she had done for me.
(this is a photo of her grand piano, where I spent untold hours over the course of quite a number of years. The room and the piano were exactly as I remembered them.)
As I reread what I have just typed, I am reminded all over again of how blessed I have been all along the way with my teachers and mentors- both in piano and voice- and with someone being in the right place at the right time. That begins back in the tiny town of Colton, South Dakota – where, fortunately, there was a young woman teaching piano lessons right across the street from our house. I don’t even remember her name, but she got me started at the age of 4.
When we moved to Decorah about a year later, there was Mrs. Bolson, a member of Good Shepherd and someone living basically in our neighborhood, who was just the right person to nurture my particular gifts and interests with the piano. Then at some point, when my folks began to realize that I might actually flourish with a more demanding teacher, they signed me up for lessons with a woman who taught some lessons at Luther – and for some time I took lessons from both teachers without either knowing about the other. THAT was weird, but also sort of exciting. (I suppose I fancied myself to be some sort of double agent, or someone leading a terribly exciting Double Life.) Eventually Mrs. Kuhlman took the place of that other teacher (was her name Mrs. Rechtim?) — and then we moved from Decorah to Atlantic, where I was blessed all over again to hook up with Mrs. De Woolf, who in many ways took me the rest of the way. As it so happened, she had just come through a very serious bout of cancer, and she was very forthright about it and about how there might be days when she wouldn’t be up to teaching me. (I remember her also telling me that she had taught her husband and son everything they would need to know about the household, the kitchen, the laundry, etc. in case something happened to her, so they would be able to carry on with the matters of daily life.) Perhaps most importantly, her bout with cancer – which would return and claim her life a few years later – gave her an uncommon appreciation for the preciousness of time and the need for us to use it well, in whatever is important to us. And that seems to have been the ultimate breakthrough moment for me, when I stopped skating by on talent and applied myself with new diligence to becoming the best pianist I could be.
It was in Atlantic that I also started taking voice lessons from Cherie Carl – an extraordinary, life-changing experience – but that’s a story for another day – and after her came study with David Greedy and Richard Grace at Luther and UNL, respectively – plus the fine choir directors under which I sang . . . plus generous souls like Fletcher Nichols who underwrote my music lessons out of the goodness of his heart . . . and it’s little wonder that I feel ridiculously blessed as a musician, and only hope that what I’ve gone on to accomplish is an adequate reflection of all I have received from my teachers – and that I have made a similar sort of difference in the lives of the students I have been blessed to teach.
pictured at the top Connie Bolson and I after the Alumni Choir concert, the day after our visit. I am so pleased that she wanted to come- and I’m glad that she not only got to hear the choir’s fine singing but also got to hear her former piano student play one-half of the zesty four-hand accompaniment to “Ritmo,” my own arrangement of “Amazing Grace,” and a lovely setting of “Lord, make me an instrument of Thy Peace” that was a really exciting piece for me to play. I was so touched that she was there, and nothing all week gave me as much pleasure as her heartfelt hug afterwards.
pictured below: Another treasured teacher at Luther, David Judisch, greeting alums Tim Welch and Jim LaBelle at the Alumni Choir Banquet. He was my advisor at Luther and I appreciated his wise guidance and affectionate support and encouragement then – and now.
