Image: Mon Shop Vintage

Musicians don’t always come from musical families. My uncle Leif, on my mother’s side, was a trained baritone, guitarist, and music teacher, so I knew the music gene was in there somewhere. But my parents were not trained musicians, though they liked listening to Elvis, John Denver, and the 3 Tenors, and my mother did enjoy singing and playing the autoharp.

This fact didn’t hinder my dad, when they met with a new piano teacher who wanted to know more about the parents.

The teacher asked him, “Do you, Mr. Cremasco, play any instruments?”

At home we had this little, yellow Fisher-Price Grand Piano that had rainbow-coloured keys and came with a book filled with popular nursery songs. The keyboard played an octave (8 notes) and each note in the music was coloured to correspond with a key. Oh did I mention that a different animal popped up for each key? If I remember correctly, most songs were in the key of raccoon.

Anyways, my sister and I played it from time to time but it was my dad who really took to mastering it. He could play the whole book and was very proud of himself.

So when the teacher asked him if he played any instruments, he answered rather truthfully, “Well, I doooo play a little piano.” Thankfully the teacher’s questions stopped there.

So maybe I was wrong about the family lineage. After all, as my dad once stated, “Most musicians play in black and white, but I play in colour!”

Perhaps, as with many things, my dad was simply ahead of his time.