Open Lid

The phrase “Open Lid” refers back to when I was around the age of 12 or 13 years old and was about to perform in a recital. Prior to this recital, I had perhaps been taking piano lessons for a year or two. The reason I started lessons was because I had told my parents that I wanted to learn how to play the piano and so asked them if I could get a piano teacher.

When I did finally find and start lessons with my piano teacher, I would sit at each lesson and play this older small, spinet upright piano - nothing fancy. I figured that this piano represents how all pianos looked. Also, even though I understood that a piano has 88 keys and when you push one down a beautiful tone comes out of the piano, I never questioned or wondered exactly how that process works and my teacher had not explained that yet.

Going back to the recital mentioned above, when I arrived at the performance venue for this particular recital, I saw this big, nice, shiny box-like piano. My teacher then explained that for this recital, we had to “open the lid” since this was now a real performance. At this moment, my jaw dropped when I realized that the piano even had a lid, and that it could be held up in this beautiful noble, majestic “transformed” state. This was all in addition wo what I saw inside the piano now the lid was up - a wiry, shiny amazing complexity of metals, wood, felt, tuning pins. It seemed so chaotic yet organized. I knew it was this complex of metal strings and cotton hammers that was producing the sounds that I was making all along!

So, for me, when my teacher “opened the lid” on this wonderful performance day, it was a big unveiling of all that the piano was. This moment is burned in my memory as a day when I knew that I had to associate my life with the piano.

Even after playing the piano for a good 31 years now, the powerful enchantment that struck me back then has not changed. There is still something about the joy of playing the piano that is hard to explain and defies all reason. The piano is an amazing human creation that has been refined over hundreds of years by many people to be an extension of our bodies. With this “instrument” we try to convey to those around us, and perhaps to ourselves, the emotions inside us that words cannot express.