Part 2: Dr. Michael Coonrod -- Classical Pianist, Recording Artist, Educator, and Arranger specializing in music for the Left Hand Alone

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Everybody deserves good teaching, whether it's a beginner or it's extremely advanced. It's not like I teach the talent so much. I teach the person and the talent together. I always say the person is just as important as the talent. I'll teach anybody who wants to work hard as a mission. And a person needs to realize that failures can be very helpful unless you quit. You have to pick yourself up and keep going and you'll be successful. Discouragement is always followed by some kind of encouragement. The most important thing is have a good attitude and positive attitude to help students not be so self-critical.

You want to be better. Right. That's why we practice every day. And it can be stressful. Maybe we will have competitions coming up or, or any reasons.

Right.

Because interlocking, just like conservatory. But with Kunrat, we are always— yes, of course we work hard, but he wants to make sure that we have a balance. Our studio class, he wants to make sure that we are all not too stressed. And it's all about the balance.

Hello, piano enthusiasts! Welcome to The Piano Pod with me, Yukimi Song. Today, we're diving deeper into the second installment of this season's 9th episode with extraordinary artist and educator Dr. Michael Kunrat, who served as a distinguished faculty member at the renowned Interlochen Arts Academy for 46 years. In case you missed our captivating Part 1 conversation exploring his teaching methods and philosophy, don't worry, you can catch up on all the excitement on your favorite podcast platform right now. A warm welcome to all our new listeners! This podcast is your all-access pass to the captivating world of piano. In each episode of The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song, I interview a guest speaker who has been breaking exciting new ground in the industry, Please rate the show and review it on your favorite podcasting platform because every rating, review will help people find my show. And as for our faithful listeners, I want to extend my heartfelt gratitude for your loyal listenership. Since 2020, we've been exploring how to make classical music resonate in fresh ways with today's audience. To keep bringing you these episodes, my show relies on your support. Every contribution aids in covering essential podcast expenses. So click the PayPal link in the show notes or visit thepianopod.com to donate. I'll personally mail you The Piano Pod's logo sticker as a token of gratitude. So my friends, here is Part 2 of The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song featuring Dr. Michael Kunrat. Please enjoy the show.

What's great about being a teacher is I'm a teacher too, and I learn from my students quite a bit. I think it's the reciprocal relationship that I love about with my profession. So any lessons you learn from students?

Yes. Oh, yes. Yeah. I learn a lot from students. I learn to listen what they're saying. I mean, if something's bothered them in life or they can't do something, they worked hard, they can't do it. I listen to them. Now, if they didn't do something because they didn't practice, well, they're out the door. I don't like that at all. But they really try hard, but they didn't make so much progress. Discuss what it is. And so they have to tell me these things. Let's see, it's important to be available between lessons. I mean, if you're having a lesson 2 hours away, you can't expect to have the teacher be with you all the time. But here or the neighborhood, you can get involved with the students' lives. I have a colleague who goes to somebody's tennis match whenever possible. I try to do that for my grandson. Yeah, there are other interests that people, if people have balance in their life, they're not just playing the piano constantly and that's all they're doing. I mean, it takes a lot of time and effort to do that, but if you just do that, you're a little bit one-sided. I'm grateful for my University of Montana training at an undergrad school because I studied liberal arts, French literature, English literature, British writers, art history, anything that had to do with creativity, it helped my music. So it's important to not be so self-centered or just focus on total piano, although they have to be taught that you have to practice a lot more than you really are.

Right, right. Yeah.

And that's— if you practice more than 6 hours, you're likely going to hurt yourself, or else it's going to— you'll get brain fog. That's, that's tops. And it's different for other— for different people. Some students with small hands can strain more easily, so you don't want them to practice too much, too many hours or in the wrong way. Teacher really needs to supervise how they're practicing. Sometimes I will watch somebody practice to see what they're doing. Other times I'll have students watch me practice to see what I do, because practicing means something different in the learning process. You always say, well, don't just run through something. But at the end, you can run through things 3 times in a row. That's very helpful. I learned that from Conrad Wolff, my dear teacher from Peabody, person who wrote the book on Artur Schnabel's teaching and taught me great things. And he said, one of the best things is just go through a piece 3 times in a row, like seeing a movie 3 times. You know what's coming up. But at the beginning, you break things apart in Schmörg method. One little thing I learned from the student is stretching my fingers. I'm gonna show this to you.

Okay.

It looks like just a contortion. I do it every day and I get my students to do it every day. Is to stretch the webbing between the fingers. So the— can you see that? Mm-hmm. G into the perfect fifth with 2 and 3 causes the elbows to go out and to go down, and then slowly twist it so it's the opposite. The elbow's in, the fifth finger's down, and the thumb down. You just go back and forth. Kind of like, I don't know if people know what Silly Putty is, you know, if you stretch it slowly it moves, if you stretch fast it snaps. You don't want to snap. And then you do it with, well, I can't do it here because I don't have the fourth finger. The left hand's 3, 4, back and forth. So be mindful of the elbow going out and then in. And in, then 4-5, 4-5. I mean, and if a small hand can't do it, go to a perfect 4th.

Thank you with all these practical tips to philosophical topics in terms of teaching.

So now let's switch gears and chat about your life as a pianist and recording artist.

First of all, how did you discover the love for music? Did you grow up in a musical home, and what was the turning point for a young Michael Kuhnroth to start developing a passion for becoming a pianist?

That's really an interesting subject 'cause I like many things. I was never adamant about playing sports in groups. I liked individual sports like tennis and swimming, skiing, but we're talking about age 5 and 6. I remember my parents said, "If you're not gonna practice, we're not gonna give you lessons." "Oh no, I wanna play piano." So my teacher arranged the theme from Zorro. It's a show that I liked as a kid and I still remember it. 'Cause, let's see. And I liked it 'cause you could do this at the end.

Yes.

That inspired me to practice it a little bit more. I mean, I liked nature. I was at that time in Arizona. I loved, I was in the frog and toad stage, although in Arizona it was in the snake and lizard stage. And scorpion stage. I like critters. I like hiking out in the woods. I always liked that. And back down in Montana, up here where there's a lot of pine trees, I just dearly love being out there and lying in the grass or the pine needles. It's one of my favorite smells is pine needles warmed by the sun and hearing the trees, the wind blowing the leaves in the trees. It sounds a little bit like the whoosh of a petal when you lift it. So I had cap guns when I was a kid, but I've never wanted to be a hunter just because I had cap guns as a kid. As I said before, it's interesting how the early teenage years, all of a sudden the fire, fire in the belly starts. For me, I guess I was 10 years old and I loved the Rachmaninoff C-sharp minor prelude. Everybody knows that, of course. But my teacher said it's too hard. And so I took that as a challenge. And so I went and learned it and memorized it and then played it for the class in school. And so I think that's a lesson for us all to realize if kids have a passion to learn something, we need to listen to that. If it's something that's way beyond them, I think it's wise to say, well, just put that on the piano and we can do that someday. But here's two pieces that are very much like that. For example, instead of doing Rachmaninoff, you could do Kabalevsky and try to meet them halfway. Don't be discouraging. Don't be negative. Always be kind of positive. But that piece was— I was able to do it. And then another experience I remember was being with my grandparents in Missouri. And I went to the small town store and I found a copy of Rachmaninoff's Second Concerto. Which everybody loves. And I was just fascinated with it. And I started practicing that incessantly. And then by the time I was a sophomore in high school, I was able to play it with my high school orchestra. So that created— that was it. Then I started practicing a lot. The senior year in high school, I got up at 5 in the morning and practiced 2 hours before breakfast. And I go to high school. And then I go to the university afterwards and practice 2, 3 hours. And then come home, do homework. I wanted to do it. I wanted to do it good right away. My mother would say, you know, you just can't do it overnight. I said, yeah, I want— time's a-wasting. I'm interested to see how that passion is developed in others. And I usually ask them. It's hard to pinpoint. Those milestones in my life.

Yeah, but everybody has that sort of, you know, moment where, oh, you realize, oh, I better practice more because I like it and I love it. You know, I love the way it makes me feel afterwards. Yes, I—

But also students will say, oh, I practiced for 3 weeks. I don't feel like I got better at all. And we have to counsel them. We don't see gradual progress. We see all of a sudden they're there. And then all of a sudden, we're there. You'll notice it gradually. But also if you have different goals, yearly goals, monthly goals, weekly goals, daily goals to say, I'm gonna spend 15 minutes on this passage of 4 measures, then you get better. And you don't get better by just running through things. You have to address the issue and you have to just say, well, what technique is this that we use? Is it rotation? Is it arm? Is it wrist?

Yeah.

Okay.

So where were we?

No, it's great. But now, who was your mentor?

We are so very lucky if we have at least one person who believed in us. And for me, it was Lys Schennhut, a Dutch pianist who was 10 years old when the Germans invaded Rotterdam. He has really vivid memories of that. I think in his later life, he was a hoarder. If he saw a kerosene lamp that he liked at a garage sale, he'd buy 7 of them. I mean, it had to do with him growing up and he didn't have food. He didn't have shelter. He didn't have wood for fires. And yeah, can you imagine growing up during that Holocaust? It's terrible. But he would tell me, if you can make special moments, a few special moments, then you're successful. And so that was, and he said, I'm capable of doing that. So that That just stimulates me to believe in what I'm doing. Now, the other person was Konrad Wolff. I spoke about him earlier, a biographer of Artur Schnabel. I learned some great things, like the line is the most important. You got to keep a line going because piano sound decays with every note. You have to make sure you keep on going. And there's a way of doing that that sometimes makes it just as linear as a violin, a string instrument. But I was playing Schubert B-flat Sonata for the Liszt Society, and he was there. And he had to catch a bus or train. He had a commitment. So he was there for the first movement. And he wrote me a little note, which I still have. And it says, I'm furious I have to leave, but I want you to know you're doing everything right.

Wow.

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Oh, that made me I really love Schubert's music.

And, uh, which you have the entire CD dedicated.

Yeah.

Schubert.

Yeah. Two CDs in that, 150 minutes.

Uh-huh.

It's just, it's just that that music fits my personality. Uh, Beethoven's great. Uh, Beethoven often is very, very aggressive. I mean, dramatic. Schubert's dramatic is also, but in more elegant style, elegant way, except maybe the Wander Fantasy as well. Beethoven-esque. But in the rest of my life, I would like to spend time with Schubert's music. And my dear colleague, we both love the music of Schubert, and she asked to help her know how to play the Fantasy in F minor. And I wanted to do the Brahms Piano Quintet for two pianos. And so we did both those together.

I want to know a little bit more about your musical career. Any memorable performances that you experienced that you can share with us today?

Well, in 1994, I was granted a sabbatical leave, and so I was asked to play a concert at the Chopin Academy of Music in Poland and also in Poznań, another town. And so I played George Crumb's Christmas Suite, George Walker's First Piano Sonata, really important works of the 20th century in America. And so that's what they wanted. And Poland is really interested in 20th century, 21st century music now, a leader. And so they wanted to know what American 20th century music was all about. So I went there and I played, I gave a master class, I showed them how the Christmas Suite was conceived and I played it for them. That was really a wonderful experience for me. Also, I played Chopin's 3rd Scherzo for one of the Polish teachers who's a renowned Chopin expert. I remember the main thing she said was, "Chopin wanted his music in time." play it in time. And that resonated with me because I don't really care for self-indulgent music. It's not elegant. It just draws attention to, oh, I'm so musical. But you can create the respect for one's playing by promoting the composer and not going overboard. That's what I like about Schubert. I mean, it can be just so gorgeous. But if you stray from the tempo, too much rubato, too much retard. It seems to lack the elegance. So I learned that from her. That was one experience. The other two influences were, or memorable experiences, were playing these concertos. One was the Kinji Bunge Concerto for the left hand alone that I commissioned. And I was so very lucky that when I lost my finger, colleagues, friends, family collected $30,000 for me to commission music for the left hand alone. And so I had played Kenji's music before. I saw him in Maple Mountain. He was the guest composer, and I had played his music. And it's— there's a lot of jazzy rhythms, not jazz like in Gershwin or Duke Ellington. It's just syncopated and really attractive to to general audiences as well as my colleagues. When I selected Kenji to be the composer, my colleagues said, "Oh, I was hoping you would choose him." So I premiered that with our semi-professional orchestra in town of Traverse City, the Traverse Symphony Orchestra, and I played an encore of the Danny Boy for my left hand. So it was very touching to see that I had made lemonade out of the lemons.

It's amazing that you are continuing to perform despite of, you know, life's curveballs. But, um, yeah, it's great.

The third thing was playing, uh, the Chaconne in D minor by Bach, but arranged for the left hand alone by Brahms. And the ironic thing was I learned that 3 months before I lost my finger because I loved it. But like 3 weeks after the amputation, I was teaching at the Amalfi Coast Music Festival in Maiori, Italy, and I played that, you know, with a bandaged right hand. And I also, in subsequent years, I did the Kenji Bunch Concerto with the second pianist. Those were memorable experiences for me.

Now that you mentioned about your finger, you know, so let's talk about your finger injury first before we are getting into your recording, you know, CD albums that I have here with me today. But I know you mentioned that it happened about 8 years ago, 2015?

2015. I was 65 years old and it was Memorial Day. Well, memorial day weekend. Yeah. So it was very memorable to me.

You were taking your students somewhere, right?

Well, it was before graduation and I wanted to have one last get-together. So we had dinner and then they wanted me to take them to Interlochen's property, which butts up to our fence. And so we have 12 acres. So I hiked over there and I jumped over the fence and I don't know how it happened, but I was wearing a padded glove, but I had my father's big ring on that finger. And so when I jumped over the fence to try to find a way for them to get through the fence, it got hung up and the other side was 10 inches lower. I didn't realize that. And so I'm here to tell you that shock happens instantly. Not shock like putting your finger in a light socket. It's just you completely lose strength. You can't believe it. Didn't bleed very much, but, you know, I was holding it up like that when holding. And so they found a hole in the fence and they pulled me through it. We went to the house, which is only a football field away. My wife drove me to the hospital and they called an orthopedic surgeon. And people were saying, oh, we can fix that. It'll be okay. It'll be okay. But it's pretty mangled. And he said, you know, if you cut it off, we can suture it on again. But when you mangle all those nerves, there's only about 10% chance you'll be able to have the finger. He said, because you have insurance and you're a pianist, we're going to try everything. So in the middle of a rainstorm, thunderstorm, they flew a jet helicopter up from Ann Arbor University Hospital to pick me up, and they had to take me in a gurney to try to find the helicopter. And we went all the way down there. My wife didn't go because she needed the car, so she went and then drove the next day. And so they got me there. So within 4 hours of the injury, 5 hours of the injury, they did a 3-hour surgery. It was supposed to have been some kind of innovative Chinese experimental surgery. And then they put my hand in a plastic billowy hot plastic thing with a hair blower going through it to try to get the blood flowing. They even put leeches on the end of my fourth finger to see if You know, they still use leeches.

Really? Oh my God.

But they didn't sense anything of interest, so it didn't work. So after 3 days, it was obvious that it wasn't working. So I just say, okay, take it off. So I'm really grateful that they took the whole thing, because if it was just half, it kind of hit my way. So there's 2 things I remember instantly. Number 1, I'm really grateful it didn't happen to a student. I mean, I've had a career of performing. I have 5 CDs. Well, 4, one is 2. And then, you know, I'm 65. I'm 73 now. I've had a good life. But to have it happen as a teenager would be horrible. And the second thing I'm grateful for, it happened with the weakest finger. If I would ever strain my hand, it was always the 4th finger because the 4th doesn't lift very far. My colleague says, you know, you sound better now. I don't know if I can believe him, but I do know that when I was a kid, I was really adamant about substituting, substituting every finger to make it legato. I avoided advice against it till finally I realized it's more constricting than just playing the tone. So a good tone can be produced by your finger or a pencil. I don't have a pencil, but it's a matter of— I mean, you can, in other words, it's not so good to— unless you're an organist, you have to do that. But so there's two with octaves. It's hard to play 5/4 with octaves. I play 5/3. But if you play 5/5, it works. So I do a lot of 5/5 for octaves and having strokes to make, like a marimba, you play with a certain pressure, it comes out a nice tone. That's how I adapted.

But you mentioned about shock. I can't imagine the shock, right? But then tell us about the process of recovery because that's another phase after you really see the shock, you sense the shock. Now, next phase would be physical and emotional recovery process. And how did you maintain even through then? How did you maintain your passion for music and stay motivated?

Well, I was really lucky that I played the Chaconne of D minor in Maiori in the festival. That kept me going, and it was successful, and they liked it. And one Italian man, he came up and he kissed my hand, and, you know, they're very, very emotional over there. And so I got a lot of feedback that way. I also realized that my colleagues were building this incredible fund for a Left Hand Concerto. I mean, these things that happened wouldn't have happened otherwise. So I can't say I'm grateful to lose a finger, but it turned out okay. And I subsequently found out I can play with both hands. Like on the Dedication recording, I did that with 9 fingers. And there's 3 left hand pieces on the Chaconne, the Scriabin Left Hand Etude, and my Danny Boy. But everything like the Symphonic Etude of Schubert, Schumann, I have to confess that I can't play first inversion chords that well. For example, in A major, the first inversion is C sharp, E, A. But you know, you don't want to do 1, 2, 3, 5 because it stretches the hand. It's a strain. I can do that if it's really slow, but ordinarily I just leave it out because that's the note you voice out anyway. Instead of playing— because you got a lot of tonic notes anyway. So I can play many things, but I can't play Chopin etudes or Liszt pieces, which is okay. I've done enough of that in my life. I want to focus on the composers I just mentioned— Bach, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, and they tend to be chordal. Rachmaninoff might be difficult because there's a lot of fast scales in Rachmaninoff. And, you know, just interested in playing beautiful music. My colleague, Hae Min Kim, and I, we played recital and we did overture to Candide by Bernstein arranged by my good friend Chip Miller. That was really fun. I can do that. There's not too many scales. But then we did the Schubert Fantasy in F minor. That has some scales in it, but mostly chords, broken chords. Yeah, the fugue. I mean, I can do fugues. And then the really difficult part was the Brahms Piano Quintet. Used to be a quintet, string quintet, and then Clara said, let's make a two-piano sonata of it. And then finally, he arranged it for piano quintet. That's its final form, but the piano sonata is definitely fine. My colleague, who's a violist, says, I like the two-piano version better.

Oh yeah?

Yeah, there's some few notes I— there's a lot of fast notes, but a lot of octaves and chords. And so that satisfies me because I have some balance in my life in my retirement. For decades, I've wanted to build a diorama of my home city of Missoula, Montana, in the middle of the Rocky Mountains with a train running all around it.

And you're building right now.

That's right. So I spend 5 hours a day on that. We did that recital. We're going to be doing some more, play for church. For church choir. I work with the Boy Scouts as an adult leader. You know, that keeps me busy. And for anybody who's retiring, I would give advice. Don't retire unless you have a project, something to do. You want to go back to work doing something else. But I wanted to be retired. They even asked me at Interlochen, could you come back and teach piano lessons for people whose major is something else? And I said, no, no, I really want to be retired.

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What advice do you do you have for other musicians facing, I wouldn't say similar, but very difficult life's setbacks right now due to life's unexpected curveballs? What kind of advice do you have for them?

Well, I feel a little self-conscious for saying certain things like this is the world's worst thing, but you know, I could have lost an arm or a leg, or people come back from war or automobile accidents. I mean, Compared to that, this is nothing. I can still play with both hands, but still it was shocking. I would say count your blessings. There's many really good things that have happened to me because of that, and I'm grateful. So many wonderful students who keep in touch, uh, the collection of money for the guest artists for Interlochen, students and faculty. Stay positive. I mean, I'm really lucky. I've I have a wife of 52 years, 3 wonderful children, 4 grandchildren. Uh, yeah, I'm really fortunate to have some good things happen to me.

Po Kiewang, so we talked about, he was the one who introduced me to you, but he was practicing your Danny Boy on the left hand.

Yes.

And then I remember seeing one video clip that he was practicing on Instagram or something. Anyway, can you tell us about the arrangement? So did you compose or arrange pieces before that, before your injury? Or is there something new?

Ironically, about 25 years ago when I was playing bagpipes as part of my balancing act, I really loved "Dinah Boy" because it's one of the most beautiful songs ever written. And so I arranged it for two hands. It was for a ceilidh, which is a Scottish party, but I lost it. And then all of a sudden this finger thing happened and I thought, oh, it's really— I bet I could do that for left hand alone. And it took me a long time to figure out how I was going to do it because I wanted to have counterpoint in it as well as the melody. And then the arrangement I'll send it to you if you're interested. It's not easy. You have to really work hard at voicing because you have to play the melody like it's a voice, but then you might have the melody— so I arranged that and it's been a nice encore to play. And I played it for the assembly at Interlochen when I was— my last week there. I played it in the Móvicos Festival and I finally recorded it on the CD you have.

The dedication CD, yes. Well, we're going to talk about your recordings now, but Where can we get these CDs?

Everything except the dedication is on Spotify or YouTube.

And then dedication, if they wanted the CDs, should they contact you?

Yeah, you can, they can write to me. Email? Email, kuhnradmm@interlaken.org.

Okay. Now I will list that in the description so that my audience can reach out to you and then get the CD. So speaking of CDs, so I have all 5 of them, but actually this has 2 of them inside. So 5 CD albums here with me. I want to particularly know 50th Anniversary Favorites. And also you, we talked about Dedication and also The Life and the Music of Albert James Fillmore. So let's start with 50th Anniversary Favorites.

Okay, open the COVID the jacket, and show, show us the picture of my mentor, Lucien Hutt.

Yes, which you mentioned about him.

I dedicated this with him in mind, a Dutch pianist who studied with Wronski and Baba and the famous piano duo team, and they had studied with Arthur Schnabel, so I have that connection there too.

So now let's talk about the other album titled The Life and Music of Albert James Fillmore. Could you share more about Mr. Fillmore, his background, and your connection with him? Additionally, what inspired you to undertake the production of this particular album?

Well, he's a dear friend, um, about 80 years old, and he had a cottage up here at Crystal Lake, and he would come up to visit, and I knew him in like 1987. He was composing these preludes for piano. And he wasn't trying to do unique things in contemporary vocabulary. He called it the Muse of Chopin. And he just loved the preludes of Chopin and decided to write them in the different keys. And they're short, but they're not insipid at all. They're on wonderful harmonic progressions. Some of them are very difficult and some of them are good teaching pieces. So it goes from C major to A minor to D major to B minor. My adult students really love them. And so he had a cottage in Owasso where he was born, literally, and he also was professor emeritus at the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit. But he never drove because his father told him, you're accident-prone, you don't drive. What a thing to put on a child. So he was always bumming rides. So we would take him down to Detroit. If I'm in Detroit for a conference, we'd come up and I'd take him to his cottage. So I would sit with him and watch him compose these pieces. And he was somewhat of an Anglophile. He, he loved William Blake, his poetry, and he wrote songs, lovely songs. And so he passed away after living with us for a while. He was recovering from hip injury and he was in a nursing home with people who needed extra help. But he didn't need help. He just— his mind was right there. So my wife took care of him for half a year before he went down to Detroit. He did. Yeah, he developed a staph infection in his hip, and they couldn't— see, he broke his hip, but he had a staph infection. They couldn't operate until he got rid of the staph infection. He never did, so he passed away from that. And I wish I had made this CD before he passed. Passed away, but I'm continuing his legacy by bringing it to teachers in Michigan. I wish I could find other ways of promoting it because my wife desktop printed all the preludes and also this piece for organ and orchestra, Variations on What Love Is This. And so it's a beautiful CD with a biography, 40-page biography that she wrote on his life. And she's the one to do it because she knew him really well. They had the preludes and the orchestra piece and biography and children's choir pieces and the songs by Roberta Visi. And it's a great anthology of music. And we, we did that.

Wonderful. Yes. Yeah, there's like a really chunk of book, sort of like a booklet inside of the album and talks about, you know, the legacy of the composer. And also his— some anecdotes documented with his handwritten letters. Sometimes you see, and photos from his childhood and the, the, his, the, the houses that he used to live in. Interesting.

And he did study with Nadia Boulanger, 1939. He was over in Paris, and they had— because the Germans were invading France, they had to get out Immediately on a ship, he was one of the last ships out to come over here, and she always told him, just follow your heart, compose what you want to compose instead of being forced into something. Wonderful man, and we miss him.

I listened to the preludes, very beautiful. In many ways, they are like many romantic literature, the piano literature, the feature of romantic period, but also sometimes you can hear hint of impressionism as well.

Yes, and Schumann. The F minor is very Schumann-esque, and the F major is very Gershwin-like. My favorites are the E major, the B major, C minor, B minor, A-flat major.

Yeah, I need to listen to them again, but thank you so much for sending me all these CD albums to me. Um, I'm enjoying listening to them. You have such a long career as a pianist and piano teacher. So what's the secret to a long career in performing arts? It's not easy.

Well, it's, it's my life. I mean, I love my wife and my family, of course, first and foremost, but my reason for being is, is to play the piano and to share that with students and performances, of course. And so that's, I've known that ever since I was Well, I guess I said I had the passion when I was 13 or 14, but I played the piano my whole life. I think that music should be shared, not just playing for yourself. Although it's good therapy to play these pieces for yourself. I've been reliving the spin, the Gretchen. My wife said, "No, why are you doing that?" I said, "Well, because I love it." I don't need to perform it anywhere, but I would like to share it with people. So human interaction is really important to me when I give a concert, just like I tend to not like receptions because you can't talk to one person for any length of time. I like the one-on-one visit. I guess I've done it my whole life and I feel it's part of my heart. And I enjoy getting to know the composers. And seeing what's maybe in their heart. That's why I like teaching piano literature, because I did it from the point of view of the composer, showing the students how it was written, how they must have been thinking structurally, harmonically. They just don't wake up and do this great piece, right? They do rules, and they don't sound like rules, that sound creative. If you analyze things, you know what's going on.

Now, uh, this question is for you as a music educator, a piano teacher. So how has music education evolved throughout your teaching career and what are the most significant—

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Changes you've observed?

The obvious things is the technology, the recording, and the cell phones. When I was a high school student, the present my parents gave me was a portable tape recorder. It was this big and it was reel-to-reel. And I used it a lot. It was portable. It was heavy and awkward, but I used that into graduate school and it was very, very helpful. Nowadays you put higher quality in your pocket, of course.

Yeah, absolutely.

Those things are obvious, the change, but For students, well, we can say that the focus is a lot diminished just because of the media and television. And when I listen to movies from the '50s, there's these long swaths of speaking. But nowadays, it's very short periods. You think they can say one sentence and then they cut and then they learn another sentence and they— that's not the rule. There are exceptions. There's some really great acting in like deep dialogue or monologues and dialogues. But generally there's less focus. I mean, look at these clips between the TV shows or the— they're telling you all about the TV shows and the movies. And so you see half a second of this and you go to this and you go to this and it just makes me nervous. Just fast, fast, fast. But for students, I don't know, people are people. Maybe the styles, you know, the styles of clothing is so much different. I see really smart students, much smarter than me. I mean, this student, a very special student, Davis, he's going to Yale now, and he can take so many different classes, and he plays piano like I want to hear piano. He hears the harmonies. He can play a fugue. He knows what chord structure is. He's the ideal student, but he's a whiz at math. And he takes different courses in economics. And I think, what's he going to do? There's so many things, paths he could follow. One thing I failed to mention before is that I think students need to realize that you can't just follow one path and expect to do this, for example, be a concert pianist. There's certain options that most of us take, and the most common one is teacher. And if you're not people-oriented, and you don't really care to share with people, what are you going to do? You're not going to perform all the time. It's hard to make a lot of money playing. I play concerts, but I don't make money to live. I teach. So you have to really enjoy people to be a teacher. So I can't tell the difference, so much a difference in people. People are people. I mean, the language, I mean, the foul language is everywhere in music and even interlocking. We just try to dissuade that. I don't hear it so much, but when you're in public, you hear these words that are offensive to me all the time. In that regard, I'm kind of old-fashioned.

So how relevant is classical training in today's, this very fast-paced society?

I think that it can really encourage longer attention spans and more focus and more dwelling on sensitivity. I mean, the ancient Greeks used to have music therapy. Some persons, just all they did was sports. And triathlons and football players and coaches today, just strong. That's, that's their reason for being. You need to balance that out with things that are more gracious and sensitive, dance, music, art. You need to have, here's that word again, balance. It's important. It's so easy to be just doing piano, piano, piano. That's all I'm doing in my life. My balance is getting out in the woods and hiking and camping and canoeing. It's mostly music, but I balance it with many other things too. And then the Greeks, they knew the value of therapy. That can't be one-sided. I'm hoping that that could be a model for kids these days. That's why I say balance is really important. Balance can make, like if you go out in the woods and just lie in the grass and just relax and relax your muscles, then when you get back to practicing, you're more relaxed. And you actually practice better.

And that place like Interlochen allows you to do that because surrounded by nature, that's so, so enriching as a young student, you know, to experience that while practicing. Then you get out in the nature and being able to—

And they take walks because we live on 1,200 acres and it's all wooded. They like to take walks, which is good. But I like to take students out in the canoe, turn over the canoe. That's fine. You just get up and get the water out. And you gotta immerse yourself in it or take them out into a kettle. A kettle is a depression in the land that used to have a glacier in it and carved it out. So there's a place that's emerald green water. It's beautiful, but you have to get in the mud. I like to get hot and sweaty and hiking, but I really like to get cleaned up even if it's a cold stream. That's the kind of nature I'm talking about.

Wow, that's so nice. What is your thought on our duty or gift as classical musicians to society at large?

I don't like to be one-sided and say classical music is the best thing in the world. Like Peter Q. Bach says, "If it sounds good, it is good." I mean, people like country music. I like it. It reminds me of Montana. Hip-hop, jazz, there's all sorts of really, really great music, good quality music.

Oh, do you like hip-hop too?

Oh, sure.

Oh, yeah.

See, if there's a Simon and Garfunkel from the '60s, I love that. It's still prevalent. The Beach Boys, of course, the Beatles, high-quality music. It's not just 3 chords. I think classical music has 3 chords, but it also has modulations and it has structure to it. It can really elevate a person's mind and also hopefully sensitivities to the sound. I mean, fugues, you know, the pendulum has swung so far. Renaissance, Baroque. Renaissance was kind of a classic time, and you go to Baroque and it got to be more romantic, and then you got these thick fugues no one could follow anymore. So went over to just 3 chords with Galuppi and Tartini and Haydn, Mozart, and then you get to Beethoven, which is you can't follow the, the gross fugue, and then you go back to I mean, it's just always swinging back and forth. There's all different kinds of classical music. But of course, Peter Kubocki said music was always, was once new. The old music was new at one point. So who's to say what popular music is? Popular music was Brahms' Hungarian Rhapsody, Liszt's Rhapsody, or Brahms' waltzes or dances. That was a hard question to answer in grad school. What is popular music? How's it different from classical? Well, as we associate classical composers, it can be considered archaic and old, 16th, 17th, 18th century. But when you perform it, it's there right then and there. It's not like going and seeing a museum and it's just stationary objects. It comes alive. I always say that we are recreative artists. We breathe life into the music. It's like taking, cloning a dinosaur and making it live again, if that would be possible ever. So it's not creative. We like to be creative in the way we recreate other person's music.

Now, what's the next phase and next goal in your life?

Well, I was so excited that my dear colleague, the collaborative pianist here of the second year, asked me to play a recital with her. We did 3, and that happened exactly when I played piano for almost 55 years. To tell you the truth, I'm a little tired of memorizing. And so I want to be more relaxed in my life, and I spend time building my HO scale model railway diorama of Missoula, Montana. That's a big function, but I don't want to do that all the time. But I'm not getting out of music. I want to play chamber music. And so we did this two-piano recital, piano duet recital. We're going to do more of that. So those are two aspects of my life. Travel. I want to travel. We just, with my wife, we took our granddaughter and her friend, age 19, to Portugal and Spain, Barcelona and Wonderful.

So lastly, any message, advice for young musicians and piano students?

Try not to be so concerned with yourself, what you're going to do, because along the way you're missing out with meeting friends and having a balance in your life and going skiing or doing other things that are, that are more social. I see some students who are phenomenally talented, but they don't know how to relate to other people, and I think, what kind of life are they going to have? Gonna have to learn that it's not just all about me, me, me, me. So be careful with that. Have a positive attitude. Count the blessings you have, the good things in life. There'll always be trouble things, and you have to downplay that. My colleague, who's no longer living, said, accept the negative, dwell on the positive.

Absolutely. Wow. Thank you so much for this fun, inspiring— what an rich conversation we had, Dr. Conrad.

Wonderful host. It was just really a pleasure getting to know you and answering the questions.

Oh, thank you. Same here. But before I let you go, we have one more thing to do. It's called The Piano Pod with rapid-fire questions. So this is the part of the show where I get to ask fun questions to each guest. Now, here's a little twist. As silly as these questions may sound, your answers may reveal who you truly are. So, I'm sure, ready or not, please answer them with the shortest responses as possible. No explanation is necessary.

Wish me luck.

Okay, yes. So let's start with easy ones. Level 1. What is your comfort food?

Italian lasagna.

How do you like your coffee?

I'm allergic to it.

Coffee?

Caffeine.

Really? Oh, wow.

Okay. Okay.

So what do you drink in the morning?

Water.

Water? Sounds great. Cats or dogs?

Dogs.

Sunrise or sunset?

Sunset, particularly dusk.

Oh, beautiful.

Summer or winter?

Spring. No, no. Okay, you have, um, um, um, summer.

Paper book or ebook?

Paper.

Level 2: What skill have you always wanted to learn but haven't had the chance to?

Build a model railway.

Okay, which you're doing right now. Yes. What is your word or words to live by?

Balance in your life.

What is the most important quality you look for in other people?

Genuineness, sincerity.

Name 3 people who you inspire you, living or dead.

Lucian Hutt, David Holland, Conrad Wolff.

Name one piece in your current playlist.

Uh, Schubert B-flat Sonata.

Level 3: What do you believe is the key to a fulfilling life?

Listen to my wife.

Good answer. The last question, please fill in the blank. Music is blank.

Human interaction.

Beautiful. Thank you. So that concludes this episode of The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song with Dr. Conrad Koehler. Thank you, Dr. Conrad, for joining my show today and sharing your stories, insights, and expertise. So for listeners, if you want to find out more about Dr. Conrad and his incredible work and legacy, please reach out to him via email at kumradmm@interlochen.org, right?

Yes.

Okay.

And I will list that information in the description. You can listen to his recordings on all major music streaming services, Spotify and YouTube and so forth. And thank you to my wonderful audiences and fans for tuning in today. If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate and review it on whatever podcasting platform you use. Remember to hit the thumbs up button and subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song on social media to get the latest piano news via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. I will see you for the next episode of The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song. Bye everyone. Bye, Dr. Kumrat. Thank you so much.

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Sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Void where prohibited by law. 21+. Terms and conditions apply.

You're listening to a podcast right now. Driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're into podcasts, Chances are you have something to say too. With RSS.com, starting your own podcast is free and easy. Upload an episode and we distribute it to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and more. Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads just like this. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Start your new podcast for free today at RSS.com.