THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 10, 1994 TAG: 9407080324
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 22 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LAURIE ZIEGLER, CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: Long : 125 lines
When a group of children recently went to Jeanette Winsor's home to play, they didn't hit softballs or ride bikes. Instead, their fingers ran up and down a keyboard and their feet pedaled away on a piano.
It was recital time at the home of Winsor, a piano teacher who turns her living room in Indian River into a homey concert stage about once a month. Parents and grandparents settled into wing chairs, the couch or one of 10 folding chairs neatly arranged in front of Winsor's two pianos. Then, they watched 30 or 40 minutes of performances of less skill than a Vladimir Horowitz, a famous Russian pianist, but with just as much intensity.
``It shows them that if they really work with something in life, it pays off,'' said Winsor, who has been teaching piano for 20 years.
Winsor, president of the Tidewater Music Teachers Forum, gives lessons six days a week at her home and once a week at the Governor's Magnet School for the Arts in Norfolk.
She also performs solo with the Hardwick Chamber Ensemble and as an accompanist with the Virginia Beach Chorale.
To prepare for this recital, students held rehearsals and practiced their pieces over and over. At least one student even changed her diet.
Kristine Estioko, 14, of Virginia Beach, ate a tuna fish sandwich for lunch with hopes that the fish would improve her memory. The idea came from one of Winsor's fellow musicians, who read about the mnemonic attributes of tuna.
Winsor says it's worth a try.
``Law students were told to eat tuna before the bar (exam),'' she said. ``Horowitz always ate fillet of sole before he played, so we can't be too far off the mark.''
Winsor also tells her students to stay away from sugar, caffeine and heavy starches on recital day. She tells them about the instinctive fight-or-flight response that triggers sweaty palms and thumping hearts as they approach the piano - the eyes of audience members following their every move.
``Your brain thinks it's a tiger,'' she said, ``but it's just a piano recital.''
After a brief awards ceremony, in which Winsor handed out certificates and trophies to students for a variety of accomplishments, the recital began.
Kristine Estioko was the first to face the tiger.
The mood among the parents was congenial though a bit nervous, with newcomers exchanging whispered greetings like families in the church before a wedding. A student's father, Bob Sieloff, stood by the kitchen door, video camera ready.
Kristine, a seven-year veteran of recitals, walked with composure to the piano and seated herself on the bench, while Winsor announced the name of the first piece she would play, a work by French composer Claude Debussy.
``I say to myself, `Don't mess up. You can do it. It's no big deal,' '' Kristine said later.
With her head bowed slightly in concentration, she played several pieces, her fingers stretching across the keyboard. Sometimes, she crossed one hand over the other. She touched the keys softly or crashed them down with startling, booming chords.
Apart from the tuna sandwich and practicing, there is no trick to make the nervousness disappear, Kristine said.
``You're going to get nervous at every recital,'' she said. ``You just have to calm yourself down.''
The mood lightened as the next child, with an orange and bright-green ribbon around her ponytail, knocked out ``Clowns'' and ``Wobbly Old Witch.''
The younger children bowed with extra zeal after playing, relishing the applause. When the youngest, 7-year-old Tabatha Sieloff, sat at the piano bench, her feet didn't reach the floor.
Twelve-year-old Emily Zimmerman, who has taken lessons for 3 1/2 years, drilled the keys through six pieces. They included ``The Battle Hymn of the Republic'' and an old recital favorite, Robert Schumann's ``Soldiers March.''
And what do the students do if they hit the wrong note?
``You just keep going like it was in the song,'' Zimmerman said.
As Melanie Hatfield, 9, of Virginia Beach rose to take her turn, her mother placed her fingertips together and sat still.
Pushing out her upper lip in concentration, Melanie sailed through five tunes, ranging from a dreamy ``Conch Shell'' to a jarring ``Woodchopper's Song.''
When she finished with the last piece, a Spanish folk tune, Melanie lifted her hands from the keys with a flourish and smiled. Her mother, Carol Hatfield, breathed a sigh of relief and smiled, too.
Barbara Byers of Great Bridge, a parent, said she likes to watch her fellow parents as much as the students during recitals.
``You can always tell who belongs to the child who's playing,'' Byers said. ``They kind of perk up, tense up a little bit.''
Byers said playing in recitals has given her son confidence in performing in front of others - whether it's playing the piano in Winsor's living room or reading a story aloud in school.
Most of Winsor's students initially take piano lessons because their parents want them to, she said.
Byers, for example, said she took piano lessons when she was a child and thinks it is essential for a well-rounded education. Her son, Zachary, 8, said although the lessons were his parents' idea, it's OK with him ``because I get to learn a lot of new tunes.''
But it isn't easy to persuade children to take on a long-range project such as learning to play a song on the piano, Winsor said. In the past four or five years, she said, the struggle to get young children interested has become more difficult.
One way she tries to get them hooked is by awarding trophies the night of the recital. This time, there were three first-place winners: Emily Criner and Zachary Byers, both of Chesapeake, and Tabatha Sieloff of Virginia Beach.
``I don't have grand visions of them all growing up to be concert pianists,'' Winsor said. ``I would like for them to grow up and be patrons of the arts, so that they can learn to appreciate art and not just sit down and push the remote and be entertained.''
Amie McLane, 15, of Indian River decided on her own to take piano lessons because ``my sister was taking dance and I wanted to do something else.''
After Amie spent a year taking lessons and practicing on a keyboard at home, her family decided to make a $1,600 investment in a used piano. Amie is now teaching her 14-year-old sister, Jenny, how to play.
Amie said she likes playing because it's ``soothing,'' but she doesn't feel that way about recitals. She didn't play in this most recent recital because she had played in another two weeks earlier.
Amie plans for the recitals. She has her family watch rehearsals, ``so I can tell my weak spots.''
``I'm not nervous in front of people,'' Amie said. ``I'm just nervous that I'm going to mess up. . . . I cannot memorize music at all. It's so hard for me.''
But things always turn out OK. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by BAXTER JOHNSON
Jeanette Winsor oversees her youngest student, 7-year-old Tabatha
Sieloff of Virginia Beach, during a recital at her home.
by CNB