A Piano At Last!

I learned to read music before I learned to read words, before kindergarten. And so I grew up with a piano, the one my grandmother sacrificed to buy in the Depression for her children. It was a small upright, a "Crown." She paid $200 for it new in the 30's, and it followed me everywhere -- to UCLA, to my first apartment in Hollywood as a married woman, to the 70's when I antiqued it red, to my big beautiful home in Los Feliz, CA. But in 1978 I got a Knabe parlor grand, and sold the upright for--$200! to a young musician who was starting his own band.

My life has always included a piano. When I lived in San Miguel de Allende and my Knabe grand was in storage in L.A., I was able to get the key to a Bosendorfer concert grand in a hotel, and went there as often as possible to play.

I'm not a "musician," but an amateur who loves to play, a person who expresses herself through music, not to be heard but to play. What do I play? the blues, jazz, French music hall songs, tangos!

When my kids were little I accompanied them on their horns for scholarship auditions and recitals. One such moment being a high point of my life, and for which I took lessons for the first time in decades.

When I moved to Caballito in Buenos Aires, destiny united me with a woman in Martinez who had a studio upright for rent. A lovely piano I enjoyed so much for two years and which I tried to buy from her. But it wasn't to be, and so when I moved to Boedo on the 8th floor, I was without a piano for the first time ever. (The Knabe parlor grand was sold at auction when I moved to Argentina.)

This past February I was having a low point, and one night when I couldn't sleep, I went on line looking for a GEM RealPiano. Ruben and I heard one played one night at La Nacional by Los Reyes de Tango, and gosh if it didn't sound acoustic. So I searched where I might buy one here in Buenos Aires. I never even played an electronic keyboard, but the GEM seemed to be the answer to my prayers of getting a piano up all those flights of stairs.

No one in Argentina sells them though, and so I logged on to eBay--and bought one!!
To make a long story a little shorter, I had it shipped to my son Jason in L.A., and when I was there in April, I brought it home on the plane with me to Boedo.

A few little problems later, and voila! Now it's working, I'm playing, Ruben is singing, and I am SO VERY happy!!