Two teachers moulded him
Paul Anka credits the musical training he received in Ottawa,
Like many teenagers, Paul Anka was a keen music student.
He started in high school studying the drums, the trumpet and music theory. But that wasn’t enough, so he asked his mother if he could take private piano lessons.
Right around the corner from Anka’s home on Clearview Avenue lived piano teacher Winnifred Rees.
Anka’s mother signed the young lad up, and once a week for two years, he was under Rees’s stern eye.
“She was very strict, very English and I remember the tea and cookies she used to make for me,” said Anka by phone from his California home. “She was terribly proper and she had very curly hair.”
When her attention drifted, he remembered in an interview, he would break out a boogie-woogie on the piano and she would have to tell him to stop and go back to playing scales or practising Beethoven, Chopin and Brahms.
“It was boring in a sense because you had to start with the rudiments of music, the scales and all that classical stuff,” said Anka. “But it gave me the technical aspect that got me into the whole pop thing that I was hearing at the time.”
In high school, Anka “wasn’t a bad student, but my mind wandered now and then because of the passion I had for music. But I had my moments of being good in certain classes. My typing was pretty good at 70 words a minute, but I hated shorthand and got thrown out of shorthand class.”
Anka’s musical journey is one that many young people follow and it’s proof of the value of music education in a young person’s life. So it seems fitting that he’s bringing his years of experience and success to the Southam Hall stage on Saturday as the special guest of the annual NAC Gala, which helps fund the National Youth and Education Trust. The event has raised more than $8 million over 16 years and helped an estimated one million young musicians.
Anka said he had plans to attend The Juilliard School, a performing arts conservatory in New York City, but his life changed when the song Diana took off.
“I had hopes to go to Juilliard but obviously Diana got in the way.
“My parents knew at a young age that I had this writing talent, and I was singing in school and in the choir.
“I was listening to records and spending all my paper route money on records and that’s why they put in touch with Mrs. Rees,” he said.
Rees wasn’t his only teacher.
The other person who had a big influence on his musical career was Frederick Karam, who was choirmaster at St. Elijah Syrian Antiochian Orthodox Church. Anka sang in the church choir along with many of his friends.
“With Dr. Karam, I learned more of the classical music, and he taught me singing placement. His brother Eddie became my musical conductor for many years beginning in the mid-1960s.
“Karam was extremely strict and when he wanted you to do something he just stood over you until you got it done. There was no humour with him, it was very serious. And if you didn’t do it, you were out.
“So between Karam and Rees that’s where really it all started and ... I had the wherewithal to sit down and pound out my personal music,” he said.