The Youthful Miss Jean Anderson

The people who we love and leave us behind on this earth, live on inside us; and as each one departs, we set another place at the table in our hearts. They tie us more and more to a place in the past and make the now seem like an ever more distant place. When enough people from this elite group die, you find there is no one left to tell. I think this is where the notion of heaven lies. A place connected to your memory that holds all these people. When the balance is tipped and it’s time for you to go, then the comfort is knowing that you can finally ‘join them’. This is for when the world becomes a place populated with strangers and the people you love live entirely in your memory. I can see at that point why one might say, ‘enough is enough. It’s time for me to go’. The only antidote to this perhaps bleak outlook is to fight like tooth and nail to stay connected in some spiritual sense with generations younger than yourself. It is a struggle against a force of nature that endeavours to introduce cynicism of thought as a kind of precursor to shut down, but it is a struggle that you can part win with the aid of art and music.

Miss Anderson, my wonderful piano teacher for many of my formative years, epitomised the power of music to keep one young. Though close to 60 when I met her, she had an impish bounce in her step and a cheeky glint in her eye. She was naughty in the most delicious way. She claimed that teaching young people piano was the tonic that kept her young and I believed her.

Miss Jean Anderson (actually, Mrs Jean Hunt, but Miss Jean Anderson kept her maiden name in her professional guise and I’m so glad that she did, as the sound of it rings out so beautifully in my psyche) is responsible for so much of what I am able to do at the keyboard.

I was aimed in her direction by my piano teacher at the time, Mr Eric Stephenson. A 9 foot tall man (or at least that’s how he seemed to me) with the straightest back, and an ever present smoking pipe in his mouth. He was lean, immaculately dressed and as determined a man as I’ve ever met. An educator with a goal in mind. To provide musical education for the less fortunate children of Hillingdon, a borough at the far reaches of West London where I was raised. Through sheer bloody mindedness he acquired influence and the required position to start a music school and various youth orchestras in my local area and they were a true revelation. Hearing of a 9 year old boy (me) who was playing the piano accompaniment for hymns in his school assembly (reluctantly I might add) he attended in secret and decided that I was worthy of his attention. He approached my mother and taught me for free…for FREE…for the next few years with the sole aim of getting me into the Royal Academy of Music as a junior exhibitioner; essentially a Saturday school attendee of one of the most prestigious music schools in the country.

He achieved that aim (with some work on my part obviously) and aged 12 I was sent for my musical education on weekly Saturday morning trips on the London Underground, up to Baker Street, past the queuing tourists of Madame Tussauds and up the iconic stairs to a centre of classical music excellence. Mr Stephenson had long ago decided that I should continue my piano education under the tutelage of Miss Jean Anderson. Clearly his influence ran further afield than just my local area, as, sure enough, she was allocated to me.

Though I had not really felt any ownership of my childhood due to this juggernaut of adult pushing and prodding (and as a result was never actually sure whether I even LIKED music) being under the watchful eye of Miss Anderson was a true oasis in the desert. Don’t get me wrong… I was scared of her, though she was only ever kind. But she had that thing that all great teachers have; I never wanted to let her down. She was diminutive in stature, but her commanding New Zealand voice made up for it. Raven haired (as I’ve seen said of her) with a delightful smile and a laugh I always wanted to prompt. I was politely cheeky with her. Just as far as I dared. If ever I had cause to take a lesson at her home in Harrow, West London, she would answer the doorbell only when she was ready to do so. Whether that meant a 30 second or a five minute wait for me. This was in respect to any music that was occurring in her house from either herself or a pupil. Music came first and I learned that very important lesson on the silent (and sometimes cold) doorstep of her home.

Many years after I had ceased seeing her, having left the Royal Academy in slightly abrupt and rebellious circumstances aged 15, she showed up at a concert of mine with my trio at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. Whilst standing at the merchandise table talking to audience members after the show, I was suddenly aware of a diminutive figure to my right waving a newspaper article at me. It was Miss Anderson and she was flagged by her daughter and Mr Stephenson. My jaw dropped and I hugged her, elated to see her again. In the noise and confusion of trying to talk to lots of people at once I struggled to understand what she was trying to show me but she seemed a little vexed. But only in the style in which she would playfully tell me off as a child, when I was being precocious and needed bringing down a peg or two. I kept trying to buy space between talking to other people to pay attention to what she was trying to say, but before I knew it Miss Anderson was moving towards the back of the crowd, with her daughter lovingly scolding her for being ‘naughty’. Despite my best intentions she was gone before I could drag her back towards me and I never saw her again.

Since then I have worried what was in the article she tried to show me. Perhaps it was something I’d said that didn’t quite match the standards that Miss Anderson would require of her pupils. If so I would lovingly and gladly concede any misplaced word in deference to the lofty position she holds in my head. Perhaps I spoke ill of Bach or underplayed the importance of Hanon in my daily practice.

Talking of which…The other day I was playing Bach and it suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t done the obvious 21st century thing of looking her up on the internet. Seeing as she was in her early 60’s when she taught me and seeing as she was involved in a side of music that the internet doesn’t tend to find glamorous, I nurtured little hope of finding her. ‘Perhaps there will be a nice obituary’ I thought. To my amazement, and to the internets credit, she has a wikipedia page. And, if it is to be believed, she is still going strong at the tender age of 100 years old!

Best of all, I am listed on that page as one of her pupils which, to my delight, stirred a feeling inside me that is extremely rare to find. One of true unadulterated pride! The kind of pride borne out of mere association with a person that I hold in the highest esteem.

Though it may be hard to understand; above and beyond any kind of accolade or kind word, this small mention in association with her means more to me than pretty much anything else. Such is her place in my heart. Perhaps this wikipedia entry was the piece of text that she was trying to show me from the crowd at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Who knows? I have tried to reach out to her via a couple of contacts, but to no avail. However, she remains one of the most important people in my life and any youth that I have left in me I would gladly reflect back to her for her remaining days. Just to see that impish bounce in her step once again and know that music does indeed, as she always insisted, keep you young.