Bob Granner was my favorite teacher in boarding school. He showed up as a bouncing musician and liberal at our school in the l960s, took up smoking and drinking with our renegade pastor, Bob Dewey and started directing musicals. Here we were, a small bunch of American kids in India, putting on The Music Man, The King and I, and other dramatic performances! I loved singing and acting and got into the adventure. Bob was friendly, funny, wild, and well loved by all (except our fundamentalist brethren, who were likely offended by his alliance with the Devilish Mr. Dewey.)
Now 80+ year old Bob lives half-time in the same area of India, has tons of friends all over the world, and still plays the organ and piano with gusto. Here’s Bob giving me a little taste of Mendelssohon. He has some arthritis and didn’t practice this, so he did not present perfection. But I so enjoyed his little mini-concert in the hills of South India, and I hope you do too! The piece is called Duetto- Duet. Listen for the soprano and tenor lines that sing in duet.
Bob has the touch!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=so2N43d45aE
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Add Yours →Thanks so much for the accolades, Cynthia…. we did, indeed, share some wild and wonderful times together in those old days…. was it fifty years ago?? Can’t believe that. Thanks, too, for posting this Mendelssohn beauty. I still love to play, especially on a new Yamaha Baby Grand piano that my son, David, has so graciously provided for my home here in South India. I have to ask everyone who listens to forgive my less-than-perfect performance. I don’t make apologies for my arthritis or for any of those inevitable blunders. As I tell my students and as I try to put into practice myself: “The ideal for any musician is to approximate the Ideal of that Music that is Implanted in our Minds…. anything short of that is just a recognition of our humanness. The Ideal of the Music Always Exists, and it is Perfect.”
I so enjoyed this! What a grand friendship you’ve cultivated with your nonconformist teacher over all those years.