The Olympics Primetime coverage has been a nightly ritual in our house these past few weeks—the Women’s 1500m Freestyle (go, Katie Ledecky!), the Men’s pommel horse routines (go, Stephen Nedoroscik!), and of course, Women’s Gymnastics (go, Simone Biles and Suni Lee!).

All of it is impressive—the vault, the floor routines, the high bars—but the balance beam routine takes me right back to grade-school gymnastics classes…

SCENE: World of Gymnastics, Thursday afternoon class, early 1990s

I'm wearing a light pink leotard with silver polka dots. I stare down at my bare feet on the blue mat, then peer around the shoulders of my classmates ahead of me in line to see a camel-brown balance beam that's taller than I am. 

Today, we're doing cartwheels on the balance beam.

Last week, we celebrated Independence Day here in the U.S. 🇺🇸

We went canoeing with Rory, I made a red, white, and blue charcuterie platter, and we reflected on the meaning of freedom, democracy, and independence and how this plays into our work as musicians and teachers.

And that led me to Benjamin Franklin. 

Franklin was a Founding Father of the United States, signing the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris, and the U.S. Constitution. There's also the famous story of flying a kite in a thunderstorm with a key attached to test his theory of electricity. 🔑

But it turns out there's a lot more to learn.

I climbed onto the stage, my black patent leather Mary Jane’s clacking across the hardwood floor. I sat down at the Kawai piano and placed my hands in C position. I was performing “A Short Story” from Suzuki Piano School, Vol. 2, which my teacher said was a challenging recital piece (I refused to listen).

I was 10 and perhaps overly confident because as I entered the final section, I caught a glimpse of the audience. The stage lights were bright and the room was dark—too dark to see anyone’s faces, thankfully, but it was impossible to miss the steady red light of the shoulder-mount camcorder my dad had perched on his left shoulder (remember those??).

The room grew quiet for a moment when the lights dimmed, but applause quickly broke out as soon as he stepped onto the stage.

This was the ninth and final concert in a year-long journey through the Beethoven Piano Sonatas (all 32 of them) performed by Eastman faculty member Alexander Kobrin.

Since September, he's presented a program of 4-5 sonatas in consecutive order on the 1st of each month, all from memory.

We were about to hear his first attempted public performance of Sonata No. 29 in B-flat major, Op. 106 (known as the Hammerklavier).