Two North Okanagan women are happily proving that it's never too late to add music to your life. They take lessons, practice their scales, and play in recitals along with five and ten-year-olds, but find that there are advantages with age. One of these is that their mothers are not making them do it!

"I'm just pleasing myself. I wanted to do something else musically," said Sandra McLean, a 54-year-old business owner with a very busy life. "I've been singing all my life, but I never played piano."

McLean sings first soprano in the choir at Knox Presbyterian Church and in a community choir that was Scott Singers and is now called Counterpoint. This year she had the thrill of a lifetime when she went to New York City to sing Imant Raminsh's compositions in Latin with 160 people at Radio City Music Hall.
A few years ago she was preparing some children to sing at church when she thought how great it would be if she could accompany them. So she found teacher Sharon Fuhr and a piano and began to take lessons. As a child in Scotland she had watched her sister take lessons and participated in family musical evenings and learned to read music at school, but never learned to play.

Now she finds that the piano helps her learn her choral music. "One helps the other," she said. "I'm learning one for church now - banging it out one-handed." She believes that adults learn slower than children, but probably practice more, so get results at about the same speed. "I don't get a tune in my head until I've played it 25 times," she said. "My challenge is getting my fingers to go with my head!"

She is following the Royal Conservatory without doing the exams and is presently at level five. She enjoys the sonatinas and other classical pieces she plays and her favourite composer is Walter Carrol.
She has played in three recitals so far and vows not to get so nervous next time. This year she played for an adjudicator and was "a basket case," partially because of the different piano with music in a different place, but she is glad that her teacher pushes her.

McLean's goal at the moment is to play "Flow Through Me" at an offertory sometime this year when the regular pianist is sick. "Everyone should have a challenge going on in their life," she said. "For me it's the piano."

Unlike McLean, Joan McConomy had 17 years of piano lessons as a young person. But that was a long time ago. "I gradually lost it after I was married," said the almost 80-year-old. "I had four girls and one son two years apart and I didn't have time."

McConomy and her husband Ernie grew up in Montreal, then later lived in Ottawa. They moved to Vernon 15 years ago for the lakes and the golfing. Her busy lifestyle also included cross-stitch, bridge, curling and grandchildren.

She tried to play piano once a few years ago and was unhappy to find that she couldn't remember the notes. Ernie said, "Why don't you do something about it?" so two years ago she did. She found teacher Diane Nault in the Yellow Pages and used her keyboard for a month. "The music was all in my head and just had to come out," she said. "I felt it was gone, but she reassured me that it wasn't. She didn't know where to start me, so I started at grade four level and went through that pretty fast." Encouraged, she looked for a second hand piano and, finding that it would cost nearly as much as a new one, bought a new apartment-sized Pearl River that she loves.

It helped McConomy that a friend of hers had gone back to piano one year before she did and loved it. "I can't do it at the level I'd like to, but I don't have to play the hardest music there is," she said. "It's still there, even if it's not as much as when I was 19." She played classical music before, but now enjoys playing popular as well. She is learning Autumn Leaves and likes to play solos by Richard Clayderman and popular tunes such as Strangers in the Night and Love Story.

She practices nearly every day because she wants to improve and said she will play in another recital if Diane wants her to, even though she was quite nervous the first time. "I've never played for as many people," she said, "six and seven-year-olds as well as adults."

Like McLean, McConomy thrives on challenge. "I like to play harder things all the time," she said.

August 2006-Lynn Dewing