My Appasionata Summer
Beethoven, Hemingway, chess and the lessons that prepared me for my journey ahead
In the summer of 2010, while my family was in the midst of moving from New Jersey—where we had spent the past ten years—to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I was given the chance to bid a proper farewell to the place of my adolescence. I would spend the summer in New York City, staying with Wynton Marsalis and studying one last time with my piano teacher of ten years, Ms. Emine. It became a summer of study and growth, the perfect sendoff for the place where I had spent most of my childhood, yet rarely experienced with full independence.
The summer began with the choosing of new repertoire. It was understood that these piano lessons would be an intensive. I wouldn’t simply continue with the same old pieces I had been playing. Whenever my teacher, Ms. Emine, gave me the opportunity to select a new major work, it always felt like choosing a starter Pokémon at the beginning of the game: a decision with weight, shaping the path ahead and how you would play it. That summer, my choice came down to two Beethoven sonatas: Op. 57 in F minor, the “Appassionata,” and Op. 53 in C major, known as the “Waldstein.”
To me the choice was obvious. Appassionata was the kind of piece I was excited to play. It was tempestuous, serious, and virtuosic. I didn’t think I was quite at the maturity to play a piece like Waldstein with the spirit and enthusiasm it deserved.
Looking back on that choice, I’ve gained a deeper appreciation for how far Ms. Emine was willing to push me as a student. For her, it was never enough simply to learn new pieces—it was always a journey to test the upper limits of my growth as a pianist and as a student of music. In the years prior, I was assigned monstrously difficult pieces such as the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody no. 15 and Prokofiev’s Third Piano Sonata. The summer before, I had even taken upon myself to learn the entire Chopin Ballade No.1 in G minor in the week before returning to my regular lessons. With that track record, there was little reason to think I couldn’t rise to the challenge posed by Beethoven’s Appassionata.
Just as I had no idea, in that single week of learning the Chopin Ballade, how many years of work would follow, I didn’t realize that this sonata would become one of my lifelong sparring partners. That piece would kick my ass time and time again over the decade and a half since first learning it. Each time I approached it—with the perspective of more years at the piano, of studying composition, of simply living as a musician—the same old challenge revealed itself. The greatest difficulty was never purely technical, though the piece has no shortage of virtuosic demands. Instead, the true battle lay in mustering the courage to face its looming, treacherous passages head-on.
The Appassionata is one gigantic leap of faith embodied by the first flourish in the opening measures of the piece. There is precarity to it. Though most of the piece is full of moments of ease, it’s these specific moments of virtuosity that make the piece the monster it is. They are the kind of challenges you can never fully prepare for. In practice, you might nail them nine times out of ten, but in performance, everything comes down to that leap of faith. You need just the right balance of audacity and precision to launch into the phrase without tensing up, to let it carry you without losing control of your own pace. That’s the razor’s edge between completely flubbing a flourish and sticking the landing.
That feeling also extended to my stay at the Marsalis household. When I was young, Wynton Marsalis’ apartment was a house of spontaneous learning. You never knew who you were going to meet when you woke up in the morning for breakfast. You’d walk into the kitchen and Wynton would tell you, “This is Bob, say hello to Bob.” You greet Bob and then go on with your business. At a later date you’d be watching TV, and you’d notice on the program you’re watching, Bob conducting an orchestra and you think to yourself “Wait a minute, wasn’t that the same guy in the kitchen the other day?!”
I have a particularly funny memory of watching the 2012 NBA finals at his place two years later. Right before the game started, the actor Wendell Pierce, whom I knew as Detective Bunk Moreland from The Wire, walks into the living room and sits on the couch. He asks me who I’m rooting for, and of course as a young person, I was rooting for the young upstart Oklahoma City Thunder with Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, and James Harden. Having blown out the Miami Heat in the previous game, I was certain this was going to be a cakewalk for the Thunder. Well boy was I in for a surprise.
Mr. Pierce gave me a lesson in wisdom . “Them boys were tired in that first game,” he said. “They just had a long 7 game series. But they’ll be ready for this one. You watch. They’re going to win these next 4 games.”
After those words, he proceeded to fall asleep on the couch before the game even started and then the Miami Heat proceeded to do exactly what he said they would do in this game, and in the following three. It was like he didn’t even need to watch the game to know the outcome!
And this was life at the Marsalis household. You never knew when you’d randomly get a life lesson on a Tuesday night from one of the many characters that frequented his apartment.
During the summer of 2010, the character that I became most acquainted with was John Miller aka “The Rilla”. The Rilla was a former US marine and a writer who studied under Albert Murray. As a kid I knew him as the funny guy with the loud, funny laugh that could be heard from the other side of the apartment. I didn’t really know much about him aside from the occasional time I’d sit around and watch PBS historical documentaries with him, or other times when he’d take it upon himself to give me an education in American literature.
In between the hours I’d spend practicing the piano, The Rilla would lecture me on American literature going so far as to assign books and short stories for me to read. I’d go to Strand Book Store and purchase, The Sun Also Rises, The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories by Ernest Hemingway. After each chapter or short story, he would engage me in a conversation about the symbolism and meaning behind each one. It was a revelation to me—the depth of knowledge The Rilla possessed and the casual ease with which he shared it.
But that wasn’t the end of the lessons from that summer. Just as I spent those weeks sparring with Beethoven’s Appassionata, I also sparred daily with Wynton Marsalis’ oldest son, Wynton II, over the chessboard (and yes—there were moments when three Wyntons shared the same room!). For the entire month, we played at least one game a day. I lost every time, save for two victories that came only because of his rare mistakes. Playing against Wynton II was not unlike tackling the sonata: I had to reach far beyond my natural ability just to stay in the game. Any flicker of doubt, and the match was over in an instant.
In between all of this I would have time to go through Wynton’s score and CD collection, listening to, and studying as many pieces as I could. If I was lucky, I’d even get a lecture from him about pieces such as the prelude to Tristan Und Isolde, or writing for the brass section of the orchestra.
In my downtime, I’d hang out with Wynton’s youngest son, Jasper, and my friend Travis. Sometimes Wynton would come home and commandeer our leisure time, insisting we watch old films from the 1950s and analyze the plot and themes—much to our chagrin. There was no escaping the learning!
That was one of the major takeaways from the month I spent studying with my piano teacher for the last time and staying at the Marsalis household: if you’re willing to put in the effort, there is always time to learn. Even then, I was aware of the resources and people around me, and I tried to take full advantage of them. Looking back now, I see just how formative that summer was in preparing me for my undergraduate studies and for the journey of higher learning that continues to this day.