EXCERPT FROM SARA’S JOURNALDecember 16, 1998
Near Urrugne
Cote Basque
My older brother David began his music training at the age of six. My
mother dragged my twin, James and I along to sit on the floor and listen to the lessons.
The teacher, Dawn Milligan, set out the notes on the staff just like Wilfred’s violin
teacher does today at Highgate. Children clapped and sang do re me fa so la ti do.
James decided to play drums instead. I joined David at the piano, and
then the organ. I sang along to the easy-listening hits we were taught in the ensemble
classes: You Needed Me, Sometimes When We Touch, Yellow Submarine. My father made
recordings and printed programs for evening performances: The Mighty Midget of the
Yamaha Organ. David took up the guitar and the saxophone and we sang in a youth choir.
My mother accepted her role as chauffeur and we spend our afternoons in the car, in the
waiting room, in the classroom, which was stacked with upright pianos and electric organs.
James and I mixed coffee and sugarcube syrup in styrofoam cups when we were not in
classes.
We played a game in the car. We listened to the radio and named the
time signature of each song. At home my mother played chords on the piano and I told her
if they were major, minor, augmented or diminished from another room. She clapped and I
repeated the rhythms. Older and wiser David played the games to win hockey cards. He built
a massive and valuable collection.
When I was seven my brothers and I formed a band. It was called The
Genn Family Ensemble. We played Beatles covers and a few Santana hits. Our band was a
great success in the living room. James had a sparkly-blue drumset. My dad painted Jamie
and the Pussycats on the bass drum. We played Day Tripper and Black Magic
Woman and I sang The Beatles’ Winchester Cathedral in a high-pitched
chipmunk squeak.
David and I rode our formal training through the Royal Conservatory.
Our teacher Dawn, took a two-hour ferry from Saturna Island every other Saturday. Four
hours each of classical piano and music theory ensued. In high school David’s
interests deflected to Band. He spent his summers at a Jazz camp and when he came home he
plugged in his instruments. By eighteen the pressure of my classical training had long
climaxed. I chose my focus for further study and my attention completed its transposition
to Art.
Today David eats, breathes and sleeps music and its industry. His life
revolves around writing and performing and recording. He also swallows the tasteless pill
of contracts and lawyers and record deals. His love of music is his oxygen.
Music for me is a body part. Singing rates high on the pleasure scale.
There was an emptiness at university without the piano. After fifteen years of intense
music-life, of long Saturdays spent indoors, of animated speed Bach competitions with
David, there is no turning away from Music’s voluptuous potential.
