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.
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 […]
Up, Up, and Away
I flew for the first time in 1973, the year I turned sixteen. I was headed to New York City to visit Aunt Pinky. The trip, a birthday present from my parents, came on the kitten heels of an unfortunate incident involving a bottle of vodka mixed with Hawaiian Punch, a football player named Mark, and a front closing bra that didn’t close on time. Hung-over, I had green skin and the kind of spiraling nausea that leaves one woozy for days. Grounded? Not me. My parents drove me to the airport and delivered me to the gate of the Allegheny Airlines terminal. I’m guessing Mom and Dad assumed the swoop-dee-doo motion of the flight would be punishment enough. Even when sober, I’ve always suffered from motion sickness.
The View from Here
A Piano Girl classic: A German castle on a lake, a determined June bride, an angry man in a wheelchair, an injured musician—sometimes the view from the piano seems like a Impressionist painting. Beautiful, but only when seen from a distance.
Life from the Other Side of the Steinway
It’s not always a Steinway. Sometimes it’s an ugly-looking, beautiful-sounding white Bösendorfer concert grand or a Yamaha conservatory grand with a high-gloss mirrored surface, so polished that I can see the mood of the evening staring back at me. Sometimes the instrument I play barely qualifies as a piano. Sometimes it’s an Army-surplus spinet made by a firm that is a subsidiary of a toy company. Sometimes it’s a beat-up upright piano with four broken strings—and when I press a key I can hear several distinct tones fluttering together and laughing at me with their out-of-tuneness. Sometimes it really is the perfect Steinway Model B, a seven-foot grand with a sound warm enough to make me stay at the piano forever, just listening. I play. I make music. I am the tall blond woman in the strapless cocktail dress, and I sit in the corner and play the piano.
Music of Goodbye
Let’s celebrate! Nineteen years ago the Goldsby family moved to Germany. Here’s a look back to 1994 and the day we left New York City.
Sing! Finding the Backbeat and Holding On Tight
Robin Meloy Goldsby has a few things to say about singers, and, this time around, they’re all good.
