The Piano

Practice & Performance: Each week, I join a huddle with the Fellows of the Institute of Coaching, McLean/Harvard Medical School. This week it was hosted by Marsha Hughes-Rease MSN, MSOD, PCC . I was asked to share what influenced my coaching practice. This is my story: I started to re-learn the classical piano after a lapse of 40 years and was struggling with a Mozart sonata (deceptively complex in his simplicity). My piano teacher (a teenager piano protege and a god son of a dear friend) explained why I was not making progress. He said, “Douglas, the reason you are struggling is because you are held back by the past and worried about the future. You are not playing the note in front of you.” It seems I was haunted by the mistakes I made just a few bars ago and pressured to hit the next note to achieve the sound Mozart wrote. By slowing down, I learned to play the entire piece faster. By focusing on the note in front of me, I became less overwhelmed by the enormity of the entire score. Each key strike mindful, each note purposeful, each finger movement deliberate... the music emerges. When we make our practice deliberate and present, it becomes our performance without even trying.