All the Sad Young Men
“Why do they call it a fake book anyway? Is it for fake piano players?” says Michael the waiter. “That would be good for me.” “You play the piano?” I say. It is five minutes to five and I’m standing in the kitchen of the Omni Park Central, eating spicy corn chips and drinking a […]
Pretty Pretty: Piano Girl vs. Trump
This is Robin Goldsby’s essay from 2016. It is published in her 2021 book Piano Girl Playbook: Notes on a Musical Life [Backbeat/Rowman Littlefield]. Excerpt courtesy of the publisher. *** My hair is big. My dress is too tight. It’s 1986. I’m sitting at a Steinway on a Saturday night in Manhattan. I’m back at […]
Good News Only: Mister Rogers for Adults
What would Mister Rogers say?
I watch the news at six o’clock. Terror, death, chaos, stupidity, racism, extremism, more terror. I hardly recognize the world. I certainly do not recognize my home country. America seems to be swallowing itself whole. It’s depressing. But still, we stay tuned, gorging on enormous bites of hate speech, punch drunk and nauseated by reports of blood and guts and grit and gore, hanging onto the prophesies of ego-bloated politicians and chest-thumping pundits.
Remember Me: A Gentleman, a Steinway, and a Couple of Stubborn Ghosts
It’s June, 2007. I am headed to Steinway Hall. Manhattan, with its counterpoint of horn blasts, sirens, grumbles, whispers, and roars, performs a deafening sonata. I feel energized. I feel defeated. I feel inspired. I wonder how I ever lived here, or why I ever left. To celebrate the publication of my book, Piano Girl, Henry Steinway and Betsy Hirsch have invited me to present a solo piano concert and reading tonight in the famed Rotunda. I open the heavy door of 109 West Fifty-Seventh Street and step from the bashing, flashing, pulse of the city into an embroidered oasis of tranquility. The high-domed ceiling, hand-painted by Paul Arndt in 1925, seems to scrape the sky. Reach high, it says to me. Reach high, and you’ll touch something worth remembering.
The (Euro) Vision
As the US television audience gets ready to watch Eurovision 2016, Robin Meloy Goldsby revisits the 2010 competition to prepare American viewers for a highly entertaining evening. “With a bigger audience than the Super Bowl, Eurovision is the only television event where a tenor can attract a larger crowd than a quarterback. It’s music as sport, even though music has little to do with the outcome.”
Rouge Noir
Alarm rings. B-flat. Fingers tingle; they always tingle on concert days. Wish I could start my morning with meditation. Been awake for an hour, worrying, fretting, betting something horrible will happen in the next twelve hours. Twelve hours. Got to get through half a day before I walk onstage this evening. So much easier if I could hop out of bed, into the shower, and onto the piano bench. Performance isn’t hard—waiting kills me. Playing the Rachmaninoff Concerto No. 3 in D minor this evening with the Pittsburgh Symphony. Performed the Rach 3 at least thirty times over the last decade. Still kicks my butt. Like running a marathon in thirty-five minutes.
The Finish Line
During my NYC years I used to watch, each autumn, as marathon runners of every sort dashed, shuffled, and sauntered across the Queensboro Bridge. Blind runners, wheelchair runners, amputees, world champions with chiselled faces and gangly arms, cancer survivors, friends of cancer victims, men and women hauling children in wagons. The participants in the New York City Marathon seemed like visitors from a distant planet— homo-nautilus super-humans with muscled thighs, dressed in neon tights and puffy shoes. The very idea that anyone could muster enough discipline to run twenty-six miles in a few hours inspired me. Someday, I would think, someday I will do that, too.
Piano del Sol
A fragile sky stretches over the foaming shoreline of Montauk, Long Island. Memories of summer haunt my daydreams, a September wind chills my face, and the future—like the ocean churning in the distance—promises a season of reflection, renewal, and hope.
Picture Perfect: Photo Tips for Real Women
The world is going to hell in a hand basket and I’m worried about how I look in a photo? I’m not the only one. Pretty much every woman I know—skinny, stout, lifted, tattooed, coiffed, buff, chilled, or uptight—thinks about how she looks, probably a little too much. Maybe even a lot too much. Even the deepest of us occasionally wade in shallow water.
September Song
Every September the urge strikes me like a ton of books. I want new binders, new pencils, and a new outfit with matching shoes. In the seventh grade, I leaped over the puberty moat and landed in Miss Padjune’s class at Prospect Junior High. Nothing so dramatic about that, but I was the only kid […]