Miss Tess' Music Studio

Triple congratulations to this student on her 200th lesson! Her milestone present from me was a combination of heart (artistry) and ribcage (protection). For the heart, she got a 1917 first edition of “Prince Melody in Music Land: Musical Fairy Tales for Musical Children” by Elizabeth Simpson. I know she’s old enough now to take care of such a treasure. For the ribcage, she got three "Smart Girl’s Guides." The first is "Money: How to Make It, Save It, and Spend It,” the second is “Worry: How to Feel Less Stressed and Have More Fun," and the third is “Getting It Together: How to Organize Your Space, Your Stuff, Your Time, and Your Life.” She writes:

Looking back on all my years in piano there have been several moments that stick out. I remember all the group events, especially the Witching Hour when I dressed like a black cat for my performance and made my tail puff. I still have seven programs from the last studio recital where I earned my 30 Songs Challenge poster. It lives next to my piano, it’s the dark teal color I choose, and it has the titles of the 30 songs on it.

I remember walking into the studio and on the left in the hall, there was a little platform with three glass pyramids and a blue starry heart stone and they represented pitch, rhythm, technique, and artistry. I remember them because Miss Tess made me walk down the hallway to wash my hands before every lesson.

One of my other favourite memories is when Miss Tess took me into a room filled with books. It was really amazing because most of them looked really old like something that you would find in a magical library, not in a modern day house. Stepping through the doorway was like stepping back in time. We started talking about old books, and that’s when Miss Tess said she would get me a copy of Prince Melody if she could find it.

In my first lesson, I remember hiding behind my mom. The house was decorated for Halloween but the only thing I was actually scared of was the new person in front of me!

When Miss Tess moved to Ohio I said, “We have to be online forever?!” When she had to have her house worked on, we had lessons from the hotel. If Miss Tess had canceled during the scam house repairs, I would have flown to Ohio if I had to and banged on her hotel room door and said, “Give me lessons NOW!”

In the fall Miss Tess sends us these huge packages that are about half as big as I am. They’re filled with really fun prizes and new spiral books and music and a letter and a planner with stickers. I have seven spiral books so far! The boxes are a reminder that we have a give-and-take system. The prizes make up for the fact that we’re online. They motivate me to get my work done. It’s also special because if I was taking in-person lessons from some other random person I would earn different things, but the prizes from Miss Tess are super personalized.

Miss Tess taught me some Latin phrases like “stultus unicornis” and “tace nunc” and “musa cerebri" and right now I’m learning key signatures and scales for Latin workbook prizes.

I’ve done two holiday performances at my house. A couple of my friends came and we had pizza afterwards. Also, my choir conductor Julian came. It meant a lot that he made the time to see me play. The house recitals were harder than the group events because I had to do like four or five pieces with intros instead of just one. My grandparents and Miss Tess watched me on Zoom. My mom supported me so much because she invited people and decorated everything.

My two cats, Melody and Tigger, sort of help me practice. Tigger likes to sleep inside our piano cover and Melody “plays” the piano by walking on it and sitting on it and getting cat hair all over it.

Last fall was the first time I’d seen Miss Tess in-person for a lesson since January 31st, 2023. The lesson was fun because it felt so normal but special at the same time.

When I started lessons I wasn’t sure that I wanted to continue, but now, I wouldn’t dream of quitting. I think lessons work being 2,000 miles apart because Miss Tess and I are both stubborn. We’re determined to make this work. It has definitely been worth fighting for!

One of my favorite ways to preserve group event memories was to put together fancy paper frames for our photos and tape them in the students’ journals. Now that I had all these wonderful in-person pictures from the fall trip, I went and got celestial crafty things, made a batch of images, mailed them, and the dutiful studio moms taped them in their journals. We find our way.

My little pr***en calls him Cooked Loser Hanon and says she doesn’t care about “the acquirement of flexibility, strength, independence, and perfect evenness of the fingers as well as suppleness of the wrist.” 😆 (Shared with her express permission.) I said she may grow to love it when we find flow state, but for now we’re trudging through mud.

PS She turned the ascending line of No. 2 into the prechorus phrase of Kpop Demon Hunter’s “Golden” and I howled!

Me: *talking about how E Major is a palindrome with tetrachords repeating*

Her: Hey, I’ve got a tacocat!

Me: What’s the saying about pearls before swine?

Student: Oink.

Me: Exactly. I’m about to give you pearls, are you going to be a swine?

Student: *snorts*

Me: *imparts artistic wisdom*

Student: *plays with care, nuance, incorporates specific articulation details*

Me: YESSSSS

Student: Shhhh! Miss Tess, I’m going to mute you!

Shown here with the very best feline companions.

"If you're good, I'll stick you out the window to see the snow!" ❄️

Me: “It would be magical if I could hand the new spiral books to the students in person.”

Sean: “That would be. Let’s make it happen. It’s time.”

The studio’s 23rd year began by ringing the doorbells of my two Seattle students. I guard my heart fiercely these days, and it took several weeks of rest and rehabituating to Ohio before I was ready to post these images, but I am now genuinely delighted to share them with you.

No matter if we’re in the same room or two thousand miles apart, these students and I know how to work together. We three have deep history, and although we continue to evolve and change, we are still growing in the same direction, and that’s a rare treasure.

Sean got emotional just watching the warmups, those familiar patterns he’d heard through the walls for a decade. My own personal pang was from getting to actually write in their journals, the date, the lesson number, the checkboxes. The last time I’d taught in person had been in the old studio.

I think the students themselves had their own mix of joy, confusion, sadness, excitement. I believe what this trip meant to them will settle in layers as they get older. For me, it was about holding this moment in time while we all still have it.

I wish I could give them a larger community with musical peers, annual group events, recitals with family. But like I’d said in the first announcement about the move, that core teacher-student relationship will remain. What we have right now is our own unique story, and I love spoiling these two with prizes and presents. And presence. I brought them black LED candles to put on the piano during our lesson for a small touch of Witching Hour.

We covered things best done in-person, starting Hanon exercises, rhythm, improvised duets. Getting to reach over and help move a wrist or kick the bench during a slouch, I will never take that for granted. We also opened the fall supplies together and made our plans for the year.

The very first day of the trip, I went to the old studio. I wanted to see it while I was at full strength. I hadn’t planned to, but as Sean and I drove towards Ballard, it pulled like a magnet. I will always honor that place and the wondrous and difficult things that happened for so many in that room. But it was a husk. It was a “do not stand at my grave and weep, I am not there, I do not sleep.” I asked my girl student where the studio lives now, and she pointed at her heart, and she pointed at mine, and I said, “Very much.”

Another shining moment was visiting studio graduate Alli and studio mom emerita Rebecca. We met at Alli’s house, and that was an immense privilege seeing her all grown up in her current chapter, her gorgeous living room, her backyard, her neighbor’s cat who thinks she lives there, too. The studio plays a long game, and that was like a glimpse of eternity, seeing an adult with studio memories, not knowing where she’ll take them or who else’s lives they may influence, but knowing that she has them, knowing that they travel on.

Though emotionally depleted, I was surprisingly okay at arriving back home to Ohio. Sean and I are now in The Forge: Round Two with a renewed sense of purpose, remembering what it is we are working to rebuild in this new life. My Seattlite students picked right back up on FaceTime and are on their way with holiday pieces.

Wishing you all a beautiful Halloween’een, here on the eve of wherever our many roads wend ahead.

In the studio we label events as inward-facing or outward-facing. Witching Hour and Winter Forest were both inward-facing, students creating worlds for each other as the only guests. Spring Recitals were outward-facing, students performing for friends and family.

This current chapter is overwhelmingly inward-facing. Grief, anger, rebuilding, uncertainty — these forces wind through a long and physically taxing road. Having just two students has given me the time and energy to spend on my own health. Strength in body, strength in mind. And if I can have only two students right now, I am grateful beyond words that it is these particular two. Their creativity, humor, imaginations, and drive keep Sean and me focused on the life we are fighting to regain. They are two glorious souls.

It’s amazing how present we’ve managed to be in each other’s experiences despite the 2,500 miles in between. Driving to the Whole Foods in Pennsylvania across an open field with horses and having a text come through with a practice question, moments like that are infinitely precious. While we are doing the work of The Forge to build an unbreakable ribcage for the heart of the studio, I’ve also found something for the present moment: Enough. Taking a homemade pie out of the oven, having the endurance to hike through the woods, completing 10 Song Challenges or animation compositions, these are Enough. There is peace to be found. Vapid billionaires who spread daily misery never get to know such a thing.

This is also not a time for deep roots. Green leaves and new buds, but not the anchor yet. Watching how the world unfolds leaves us wondering if Forever House and its studio will be in Canada? Or further East? Or here in Ohio? I am much too hurt with Seattle and its hypocritical gentrification for it to be a possible consideration (from the Latin “con” with + “sidera” stars; that each day of teaching adds another star to the night, but Washington pushed those stars into another state’s sky). As my mom says, “More to be revealed.”

Someone here advised that it’s okay to build walls while healing, but to make sure you keep a drawbridge that can both raise and lower, remembering how to let people in. So during this inward-facing chapter, I wanted to get these past couple posts up to open a few windows you all can peer through. I told my Tolkien girl that the studio right now is like Sauron, laying low and gathering forces, but, like, in a good way. She said, “Yes, and then … RAWR.” Exactly.

Wishing you all a safe and beautiful summer. The fireflies will appear any evening.

Thus closeth the studio’s 22nd year ✨

Another challenge finished! Learn ten pieces (no, ma'am, you cannot double-dip from other songs for other prizes) and earn a box set of “The Enchanted Forest Chronicles” by Patricia C. Wrede.

I read these books 31 years ago and still vividly remember Morwen and her talking cats. I’m delighted that this student has her own such summer reading adventure ahead 📚🐉

This guy has been in an animation class at school and we’ve been working on some soundtracks. He’s writing little 30-second clips that other students can use for their scenes. Our process has been to listen to a sample song by someone else that’s going in the direction he wants, we write down the mood/style/speed/tonal center/what specifically makes it have its emotional effect, then we "steal like an artist” and compose a piece with those characteristics, then reverse engineer to see what kind of piece we actually did write (art will surprise you), then record.

He’s adding a list of ten possible actions or vibes that can be used with each track. Here’s one collection from his piece “Sea Salt and Vinegar,” shared with permission:

1. Calming
2. Sitting on a roof watching the sunset
3. Surf music
4. News channel
5. Being in a different place you weren’t expecting
6. Chill traveling with a purpose
7. Muted bombastic
8. Climbing a tree
9. New Age cafe with various teas, mango flakes, and no chocolate chip cookies, just heavily flavored croissants
10. Millennial desolate burger joint

The current piece we’re musing will either be “woebegone” or “mod synth creepy.” We were tossing around some concepts and he wanted to play a track for me that went with that. He held up the recording so I could hear, and I was about to interject that it absolutely matched the chords we were considering, but he jumped in, “Hang on, let them cook, let them cook.” So I zipped it and listened to the song unfold. In that moment there were no student/teacher roles, just two musicians communicating, and I have deep respect for that.

Other random thing to capture here. He calls natural signs “natty,” as in “A-natty, B-natty,” which I’ve talked about before, but now he called the actual natural sign symbol a crop icon, and I love that. I so enjoy the universe in his head.

Here he is showing off a hideous CaseOh garden gnome with which he is infatuated, though his mom says, “Nowaynotinmyfrontyard."