"Get your skinny white arse onto that piano stool, and don't get off it until you've learned The Lincolnshire Poacher!"
It's been Oscar Peterson, no less, who's gotten me back to the keyboard. Together with a final shove from my IRL teacher, Flora, who deeply impressed me last week by playing the first dozen bars from Chopin's Ballade from memory. Oscar is the new role model because he brought a concert pianist's discipline to jazz, which tells me I can play all the standards one day, but I need to work at all the scales and arpeggios first. Although I've had a two month lull with not much practice, when I got back to it I realised that I've actually learned a lot prior to this recent hiatus. Grade 1, after all, is NOT a beginners exam. Flora was very impressed that I'm playing between the keys, and I was even more impressed to learn that my straight-line wrists are looking pretty good. My date with the ABRSM Grade 1 Piano has been postponed to November this year. Procrastination over. Now I'm doing exactly what it tells me in the syllabus, that is the scales etc gi...