![]() ![]() She was a Baldwin artist, and she and my mom picked this Baldwin baby grand and brought it home when we moved to a bigger house when I was ten. Jeanne Kirstein had won the Naumburg competition and was the local piano God. She was the wife of Jack Kirstein, who was the cellist in the LaSalle Quartet that did those great early recordings of the Second Viennese School. ![]() My teacher was a woman named Jeanne Kirstein. So they spotted that I had the talent it was something that was in the family. My maternal grandfather, for whom I’m named, played violin semi-professionally, and my paternal grandmother was a pianist. I grew up with a Lester baby grand that I just sort of went to as a four year old, and picked out cartoon show themes, and my parents said I was talented. And I would hear my mom yell from the kitchen, “You’re not practicing!” She wasn’t a musically illiterate person, and she knew when I was faking things… but faking it was much more fun. I would constantly be noodling or improvising, but it would sound like Mozart or something, because that was mostly what I was listening to. I had done four-part writing, I had done counterpoint, writing in various styles, figured bass, checking out scores. So, by the time I was in 7th or 8th grade, I had been through what every freshman goes through in a conservatory. Perhaps the best thing that my parents ever did for me was getting my private music theory/composition/analysis from 3rd to 7th grade. Thanks to Martin Porter for transcribing the interview.įred Hersch: I was an atypical piano prodigy. Before turning on the tape, I said to Fred, “Let’s go from the beginning,” and he dove right in. Logically he should have been one of the first DTM interviews I’m surprised it’s taken this long to sit down together. I still occasionally consult with him about piano problems. Beginning in 1993, I studied consistently with Fred Hersch for several years. ![]()
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