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Call it serendipity, the law of attraction or just a funny little coincidence.
But, I believe if we pay attention there are signs that let us know we are on the right path.

At one point in time I was deciding if I should study music or art. This thought was constantly on my mind. It consumed me. At the time I was participation in a focus group of some sort. The large group of participants was separated into smaller groups and led to different rooms. Each room had a name. The room I was in was called the Berklee room. Berklee is a music school in the area where I live.

My current piano teacher got her Master’s at the school where I work.
Also, the bus I take to get to my lessons is bus #88.

I know I have more but I just can’t think of them off the top of my head.

I have another story but it would require some explanation that might end up being too long.

So… any other interesting, coincidental stories out there?

I don't get the #88 bus part...

Rosanna,

You gonna kick yourself in the behind when you figure it out!!

I think it's the way I wrote it. The bus has nothing to do with my teacher going to school where I work.

I take the 88 bus to my PIANO lesson....

Hmmmmmmm......88.....bus......if you have a 61 or 74 note keyboard, I guess you're outta luck. You'll have to 86 the 88....10-4 good buddy?

Sax is my main instrument and my classical piano teacher's cousin happens to be Sam Rivers who is one of the saxophone greats. He also plays great piano which he learnt from his mother. He visits her in Seattle every now and then. Maybe I'll get to meet him next time.

OK Triyche,

I am kicking myself now!

Stop,.....think.......THEN speak!.

Great topic Kymber. Here's my coincidence.

Many years back, I started searching my city (San Diego) for pianos/keyboards. Saw an ad in the paper for a digital Roland. That sounded good so I made an appointment to see it.

When I got there, I immediately noticed that this was a high end digital piano and probably couldn't afford the asking price. Turns out the previous owner had recently passed away. His passion was ... New Age piano - the same as mine.

I told her that I was a piano teacher and taught New Age piano. She then insisited that I take the piano for FREE! That and a bunch of electronics as well.

I stuffed the piano into my hatchback and drove it home. This piano is the exact one I now use to give lessons on.

I sometimes wonder if this man knows in some sense the gift he left because it has influenced many people ... including myself.

-------------------------------
Play New Age Piano
http://www.quiescencemusic.com

I like this topic too, Kymber.

While I can't say that any of my pianos have come from anyplace special, I have always found a smile in remembering that I share a birthday with Franz Schubert and that my mother shares hers with Rachmaninoff.

I was in Germany about three years ago and had just quit my job at a college there, and was living on a little bit of savings but running low on money. I had a little May-Berlin upright piano that was really loud for a little studio piano (but maybe some of the loudness also came from the old wood flooring.) Anyway, I played with the windows wide open in the summer, and it could be heard outside on the street, and one day a neighbor approached me outside my apartment and he said that he liked my playing, and that his girlfriend worked at a hotel where they were looking for a pianist. I called and got the job and made enough money to have that be my main job for about nine months, and it also paid for applying to grad school. It was really coincidental because I was running out of money right at that time and it would have been hard for me to get most jobs because my German isn't perfect. Also, I never would have made that much progress on the piano in nine months if I hadn't been performing for people three times a week.

The entire story of my return to music is full of coincidences. The first one, I think, is most spectacular.

At the age of 29, I was in Texas taking care of my ailing mother. At that time, I wasn't making any music at all, and hadn't for about 10 years; I thought my music days were long over. I had been a talented teenager, but decided to go for practicality rather than soul, and ended my music studies when I went to college.

While in Texas, I spent my days at home with my parents, taking care of my mother and working at home in the family business, with my only excursions outside the house being grocery-store runs. When I was at the health-food store one day, by pure chance, I noticed a flyer on a bulletin board that advertised something called the "San Antonio Ragtime Society". I started attending meetings, met a lot of wonderful people, gradually returned to playing and serious practicing, got into performing for the first time in my life, composed my first rag and then 16 more, recorded a CD (currently working on another CD, actually), performed at more festivals and venues than I can believe, even did a 2-hour solo concert in Montana - but it all started with that one random flyer in a random health-food store in a town that is not at all known for ragtime.

And I could have missed that flyer. I could have gone to a different grocery store, or just not gone to the grocery store that day; or the ragtime society folks could have skipped this grocery store in deciding where to advertise; any one of a million obstacles could have intervened between me and that piece of paper.

Moral of the story: eat health food. It's good for you.

I've been looking around for a jazz/pop piano teacher in my area for a long time with no luck, and just found out a great one lives right near me, same city, just a few minutes away. www.sumitonooka.com I'm going to start lessons with her in January.

Not only that, but in reading her bio I discovered she had studied years ago with my cousin's husband, www.charliebanacos.com , a great jazz piano teacher up in Boston. Small world after all.

Charlie Banacos? That's a coincidence!

I never thought I'd come across a fellow PW member who is related to Charlie Banacos . Many jazz greats have and continue to study with him.

I was just thinking of Charlie Banacos the other day. Does anybody know how to contact him? All I can find is a PO Box address and was wondering if anyone knows either his email address or phone number? I know he typically has quite a long waiting list for study, and I'd like to get on the list ASAP.

Another cCharlie Banacos oincidence:

I take singing lessons at Longy school of music where he is a faculty member...

I almost bought my first music teacher's house, thirty years later. She was long gone and the house had been on the market for years. My agent and I were dickering with the family over the price and another agent sold it out from under us over a weekend. It's a nice old Victorian, actually on the National Register.

I contacted a teacher in another forum who had "welsh" in his username - turned out to be within driving distance and is now my teacher...