Jackie Jocko's Piano Comes Home

 

Today lounge pianist Jackie Jocko’s piano came home to its old location. It is sitting in the corner of the Hyatt in downtown Buffalo where it used to sit. That corner is in the lounge of the new steakhouse Johnny D’s. When Jocko played there the restaurant was called E.B. Green’s.

I am explaining all this for the benefit of non-Buffalonians. Jocko is special to us in Buffalo still, even though he has been gone for a few years now.

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Howard is going to be playing Jocko’s piano most nights of the week as we go forward. I am going to be playing it the leftover nights. I am guessing I will have the low-rent nights such as Monday and Tuesday. That is fine by me! When I worked for The Buffalo News I used to like it when they ran my columns on those days. I figured they did that to get people to read the paper on a day when they might not otherwise.

The expert piano technician Thomas Miller did the honors of moving and tuning the piano. Here it is in its new/old spot. Before he tuned it, Howard played it. I stood by the piano and listened. I grew nostalgic thinking about how many times I stood on that spot, talking with Jocko.

“Mary!” Jocko used to beckon you over to the piano. And you would stand there.

Sometimes if he had something really juicy to confide, you would sit on the piano bench with him.

Ah, the memories. They light the corners of my mind!

I played for the restaurant owner. Howard told me to do something classical so I played Chopin’s Aeolian Harp Etude. I was happy I got through it from memory! I had not expected to do this. Grand slam! Yay me! After that I played “Over the Rainbow.”

The owner loved “Over the Rainbow.”

“I like songs I know,” he said.

So, I will be playing songs he knows. That is fine by me! I love playing classical music, it’s my thing — however you have to watch what you would play in an atmosphere like this, in a beautiful restaurant. You can’t play anything too loud or, well, anything too deep. The Beethoven “Moonlight” sonata, everyone knows it, however it is just too deep to play in this environment. You don’t want to distract people from their dinners. A lot of Mozart also falls into this category. It’s quiet, it’s simple — but it’s just too deep. Maybe I could do piano treatments of a couple of arias. I do not rule it out. However I aim to please, and I aim to please myself too, and if it’s a toss-up between Chopin and Harold Arlen, I am happy to do the Harold Arlen.

Today is a long story however the adventure ended with me taking the subway and then riding a Reddy Bike down Amherst Street in a long cheetah-print dress and sandals. This killed me — as I was nearing Delaware Park, I passed some parked cars, and this being Buffalo, a voice came out of one of them.

“Mary!” It was a woman, is all I know.

I did not want to know more! It was probably someone I love, however sometimes you cannot, you just cannot. Excuse me, I am riding a Reddy bike in a cheetah print gown and sandals.

Do I look as if my life is normal?

Julia's books

Today I opened the book on Chopin that I bought at that sale yesterday. That is it pictured above! I still have not figured out the piano piece quoted on the cover. I played it but I cannot place it. I thought it was part of this one Nocturne I played but then thought it was not.

Here is the inscription on the inside page:

Isn't that wonderful? August 1894.

The recipient, "Little Two Shoes," was named Julia Grayson, followed by a last name I cannot make out. It looks like Wilson but when I pick it apart I do not think it is. She was a student at the Richmond Female Seminary. I know that because I also bought her copy of Mendelssohn's "Songs Without Words." The Mendelssohn was a present from her father in '96. Not 1996. 1896!!

My father gave me music too once for Christmas! I hope that up in Heaven my father and Julia's father meet. The Mendelssohn is just an old Schirmer edition but here is something cool: It was back when he was Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. If you want to live like a Victorian as I do one thing you have to do is say Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy.

The Mendelssohn book is adorable because Julia wrote in all the titles in the table of contents starting with the first one which I studied in college with my teacher, Stephen Manes, and which thanks to him I still do play pretty well.

How sweet this all is! It made me think of the Mystery Missal.

Hereafter when I play the Songs Without Words I will play them only out of this book.

And I am looking forward to reading the book on Chopin!

A river runs through it

Today, a mildly sticky river on the kitchen floor, from the fridge to the stove.

It can mean only two things, both good:

One, good thing I didn't wash the kitchen floor last week as I had hoped! Procrastination pays off.

Two, the river can mean only one thing:

The cider in the fridge is ready!

I bought this gallon of cider at the Clinton-Bailey Market a few weeks ago. You can get the unpasteurized kind there, the kind that ferments. The cider was leaking through the bottom of the plastic jug, hence the river. But the cider that remained in the jug is perfect, like champagne.

The peppy cider will sustain me as I work to tie up my project. I took a sip at 7 a.m. just to taste it and it felt delicious and illicit, like listening to Leonard Pennario playing a Nocturne first thing in the morning.

No Pennario nocturne on YouTube, alas. But there is this touching performance of a haunting Chopin waltz. I love how simply and perfectly Pennario plays it.



 Goes perfect with buzzy cider.

Taste and see!

Pennario praised on California Web log

The distinguished Oberlin-trained California piano pedagogue Shirley Smith Kirsten has written on her Web log a comparison of three pianists playing a waltz by Chopin, pictured above.

It is fun to read! She explains why she admires Pennario's performance and she compares it with the British pianist Stephen Hough. I love how she prefers Pennario's rendition. That is a most excellent thing in a piano teacher.

She even videos herself playing the waltz! I love that. Her version of the waltz is lovely and very personal and, speaking of personal, it is fun to look around her studio. That is a lived- and worked-in studio! I love the rugs and the books lying around.

It is annoying to see a studio that does not look lived-in and played-in just as it is annoying to see a kitchen that does not look cooked-in.

Smith Kirsten does go on to give the brass ring to Arthur Rubinstein's performance though which, Pennario would not mind but I do. Rubinstein horses with the melody and plays a few different notes that are interesting. I would like to know where they came from! But Pennario's playing of the waltz is just so much warmer and stronger. I am sorry.

I will not rest until I have taken all the hills.

No compromises here at the Leonard Pennario desk!

The straight and narrow

Today I went piously to Pilates class. We do not worship Vishnu in Pilates class the way the yoga class did that I went to the other day.

This is what I love about Pilates.

Instead of worshiping Vishnu we worship the corkscrew!

Above is a picture of the Corkscrew pose. It is actually a killer. What you do is, you keep your legs straight and move them in circles like a corkscrew.

And people ask me why I love my Roman Catholic faith. Not only does the Church frown on yoga but have no problem with Zumba, it forbids you to worship Vishnu but allows you to worship the corkscrew.

O Great Corkscrew, I bow down! Well, I would, were I not flat on my back on my mat.

With luck you are doing the Corkscrew in an environment like the woman in the picture has. By which I mean, under a blue sky, at a spa, by a pool. Such was not my luck today, I admit that. But after sweating out the Corkscrew, the woman and the picture and I may both enjoy the same reward.

We may go and drink a bottle of wine! 

We have earned it! That is because the great corkscrew in the sky is smiling down on us.

I enjoy my reward with Pennario playing Chopin.

That third Prelude. Oooooh.

It goes great with wine!

Where the wily things are

Is anyone else on the lookout for coyotes? I am. I am on complete Coyote Alert.

Here it is this beautiful morning with mourning doves cooing and other birds chirping and not even any boom cars in front of the house yet. But I am thinking about coyotes and warnings I have read against them. They are becoming bold. And, as The Buffalo News wrote, wily! That is Wile E. Coyote pictured above.

What about Jon Wile? He is a friend of Howard's and he is a lawyer which, I always think Jon Wile is a great Dickensian name for a lawyer. Jon While is new on Facebook and for his official Facebook picture he uses a picture of himself with Jackie Jocko. Ha, ha! It looks as if Jocko is holding Jon Wile's head on a plate!


But back to the wily coyotes.

Remember a few years ago, we had raccoons. There were all these warnings about raccoons taking over the City of Buffalo but I never thought much about it. This was about a year before I met Leonard Pennario so I do not know what I was thinking about. Do click on that Pennario link and you will hear him playing the finale of this Chopin sonata that he played better than anyone. It is ominous music. It is where the wild things are!

Which brings us back to the raccoons. As I was saying, I did not think about the raccoon warnings.

Until one night!

Howard and I were on the back porch. We have this postage stamp-sized back porch we like to eat out on in the summer and we were sharing this roast chicken.

And all of a sudden an animal approached!

At first I thought it was a cat. There is this fat sleek pretty cat that wanders our neighborhood and sometimes it comes up our driveway and a few times it has jumped up onto the porch. But this was not a cat!

It was a raccoon! It was like the cat, only bigger. Fat and sleek and pretty. Howard and I agreed later it was a beautiful animal.

But at the time we just sat there frozen. We didn't know what to do.

The raccoon was giving us this friendly look as if to say, "Hi, neighbors. I heard you out here, thought I'd drop by for a bite of chicken."

Then Howard and I made the instantaneous decision to start making noise and yelling at it. And the raccoon's face changed. It got a hurt look. As if to say, "What? What's wrong? You don't want to see me?"

Then it scooted.

But the story is not over!

A few nights after that we were back on the porch. And a raccoon came out onto our garage roof. We have a garage that is separate from the house and sits a ways back. But the raccoon could see us from there. We saw him looking at us.

Then another raccoon joined him. And another! And another! Soon there were about a dozen.

The garage roof was full of raccoons!

They all were in constant motion, parading up and down, tracing loops this way and that. It was the most unbelievable sight. It was like a raccoon show of strength. I am haunted by that image, I have to say that. So often now if I look out toward the garage I remember when it was covered with raccoons.

I wonder if that will happen with the coyotes.

They are out there!