Just Being At the Piano

Harmony begins in the Soul, Long before the first note is Played There are many approaches to piano theory. They range from the simple technique of reading music and touching the keys, to playing-by-ear, but few have taken the inner path that begins in the soul. Mildred Portney Chase merged her piano lessons with the discipline of mindful Buddhist practice and created an experience that evokes not just music for the pleasure of the listener, but a journey that leads the student to a world of calm and peacefulness flowing from the soul out into the universe . . . ever-evolving day-by-day within the heart of the student.

Harmony begins in the Soul, Long before the first note is Played There are many approaches to piano theory. They range from the simple technique of reading music and touching the keys, to playing-by-ear, but few have taken the inner path that begins in the soul. Mildred Portney Chase merged her piano lessons with the discipline of mindful Buddhist practice and created an experience that evokes not just music for the pleasure of the listener, but a journey that leads the student to a world of calm and peacefulness flowing from the soul out into the universe . . . ever-evolving day-by-day within the heart of the student. She writes: "Just being at the piano egoless is to each time seek to reach that place where the only thing that exists is the sound and moving toward the sound. The music on the page that was outside of you is now within you, and moves through you; you are a channel for the music, and play from the center of your being . . . You are at one with yourself and the act, and feel as if the playing has already happened and you are effortlessly releasing it. The music is in your hands, in the air, in the room, the music is everywhere, and the whole universe is contained in the experience of playing."

MILDRED PORTNEY CHASE (1921 1991) was an international concert pianist, teacher, author, wife, mother, and grandmother. She first began to play the piano by ear before she could speak. After growing up in Los Angeles, Mildred was granted a four-year fellowship to Juilliard, where she studied with famed Russian pianist and piano teacher, Josef Lhevinne. Back in Los Angeles, she performed with Peter Yates in his Evenings on the Roof concert series, then taught piano at the Los Angeles Conservatory and at the University of Southern California Graduate School of Music. She studied Eastern philosophy and culture which influenced much of her peaceful techniques, practices and theories.