In pandemic, music hitting all the right notes
When Harold Smarkola was a young boy, he had two dreams: to break the sound barrier and to learn to play the piano.
He fulfilled the first in 1972 when, as a second lieutenant at Craig Air Force Base in Selma, Ala., he flew faster than the speed of sound while at the controls of a T-38 Talon jet aircraft.
The second dream took a little longer — and a pandemic. With encouragement from a friend, Smarkola, now 71, started taking piano lessons for the first time in his life in May.
“While I was in the military, I never had the opportunity or the drive to take lessons,” Smarkola said. “Learning to play music has helped me cope with the pandemic.”
Music soothes the savage breast, the saying goes. In 2020, it proved to ease pandemic stress, too.
More people wanting to play or start learning music has given a boost to music teachers, instrument retailers and those who repair and restore instruments. It’s similar to the sudden increase
in interest in home gyms, sewing and family activities that lead to a run on inventory in gym equipment, sewing machines and puzzles.
Music teachers say they’ve seen a dramatic increase in new students, including adults, over the past year. That was the talk at September’s leadership meeting of the Music Teachers National Association, according to Martha Hilley, president of the nationwide organization that has approximately 19,000 music-teacher members.
“It was amazing the number of students that teachers were saying they have on their books now,” said Hilley, who is also professor emeritus, group piano and pedagogy at the University of Texas at Austin. “People have all this time on their hands, and they want something that’ll make them feel productive.”
While students like Smarkola are taking music for the very first time, others are returning to it after years, even decades.
Chancey Blackburn recently started playing piano after a hiatus of more than half a century. She quit after graduating college and, as a radio-industry nomad, never had the opportunity to pick it up again.
“I moved 40 times in my career, and it didn’t make sense to drag a piano around with me,” said Blackburn, 73, a semi-retired media-evaluation expert. “But I always missed playing.” Then she happened upon a piano for the taking during last year’s Texas Public Radio office garage sale prior to its move to new digs. “The universe was putting this free piano in front of me,” she said. “I knew I had to start taking lessons again.”
Practicing up to an hour and a half a day, she said, lets her leave behind all the negativity and focus on the music.
“Reading the headlines, I feel very fortunate that I’m healthy and happy,” she said. “The piano has made it possible for me to get through all the calamities.”
Parisa Sharif said that when the pandemic started taking hold back in March, she found herself playing the violin for hours a day.
“I never played that much, but it was so relaxing when things were so unsettled,” said the 23-year-old University of Texas at San Antonio English and biology major.
It’s not only adults who are suddenly learning to play. San Antonio music teacher Thomas Masinter said he’s rarely been as busy as he’s been these past several months.
“I’ve gotten a flood of new kids whose parents want something to keep them busy now that sports teams, school clubs and other activities have been canceled,” said Masinter, who also repairs and restores pianos and composes music. “I’m probably teaching 30 percent more students today than I was last year.”
But the increase wasn’t continuous. He said his teaching load dipped over the summer before roaring back in the fall.
“I guess people started looking around and realized, even subconsciously, they weren’t feeling too good about things,” he said. “They wanted something to do.”
The surge in interest in music has also boosted the bottom line for some San Antonio Symphony players who have been on hiatus for much of the past year and who, even in normal times, often supplement their income by giving private lessons.
Mary Ellen Goree is the the principal second violin with the symphony. Though most of her violin students are in middle and high school, she also has six adults taking lessons — more than she’s ever had.
“I teach exclusively over Zoom, and I think many adults find it easier and feel safer not having to drive to my studio,” Goree said.
More than one of these students has expressed how playing an instrument is a great relief. “They tell me they look forward to my lessons because it gives them something to think about outside their job or any problems they might be having,” she said.
Though learning to play an instrument is rarely easy, adults don’t face the same pressures as children. “They don’t have to prepare for recitals and worry about grades, so they usually find it more enjoyable,” Goree said.
Music lessons are also relatively inexpensive, once you get past the cost of the instrument. In San Antonio, lessons generally range from $50 to $90 per hour, according to A.J. Collins, who teaches advanced and competition-level piano.
Collins said her schedule is so maxed out she recently started accepting students on Monday mornings, which she’d previously kept open as personal time.
This surge in interest in learning and playing music has resulted in a simultaneous rise in sales of musical instruments.
According to the market-research firm Statista, total revenues from musical instruments are expected to grow 8 percent this year, led by wind instruments (10.5 percent), followed by string instruments and parts and accessories (9.2 percent), and pianos (5.5 percent).
Demand last year was so unexpectedly high and the supply chain so disrupted by the coronavirus, it led to a shortage in inventory, according to John Michael Ramirez, a salesman with Guitar Tex on Mccullough Avenue. “They’re still playing catchup,” he said of manufacturers, many in China, which was one of the first regions to be hit by the virus.
And it’s not just new instruments that are in greater demand. Restorers and repair shops report seeing an uptick in business.
“That business had sort of disappeared for me, but suddenly I’m getting people bringing in old pianos they suddenly want restored,” Masinter said.
He recently restored Collins’ 1896 Beckwith piano that was hher great-grandparents’.
“I paid $6,000 to have Tom replace the strings, the hammers, the felt and restore the cabinet,” she said. “Tom said it’ll never be worth that much, but we’ll never sell it. I already told my son that someday the piano will be his.”
Someday, then, it may help ease his way through a rough patch, too.