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Jan Michael was 6 when her parents rolled in a piano the day after Christmas.
“I remember the day,” says the Akron resident, who turned 90 in April. “It was what’s called an upright grand — beautiful instrument, Knabe. And lessons started right away, next day, and never stopped.”
Her parents had an inkling that Michael was brimming with musical potential, but even they couldn’t have foreseen that their daughter would end up in master classes at Tanglewood Music Center taught by world-class composers and spend her entire life with her fingers tapping the keys.
Her first encounter with a musical big shot was when she was 9, living in Akron. A new piano teacher, David Kahn, moved into town from Rochester, New York. It was perfect timing, as Michael’s mother had been searching for a new teacher all summer since the family moved from Berea, away from their musical neighbor who had been teaching Michael since she was 6. Kahn was looking to open a piano studio in Akron, but when Michael’s mother called him about teaching Michael, she didn’t get the answer she was looking for.
“He said, I don’t take children. I take only advanced adult students,” Michael recalls.
Still, Michael’s mother asked if he could listen to her daughter play to get some advice on whether it was worth it to keep investing in lessons. He agreed, and when they met up, Michael sat down and played a piece.
“He sat down on the bench next to me after I was done, and he said, I’ll take her,” Michael says.
That was the beginning of an invaluable mentorship.
Michael remained his student until she was 18, and during that time, he taught her in a collegiate style — that meant pieces beyond lesson books had to be memorized. Kahn got her into performing at school, women’s clubs and competitions, and he sent her to college-level instructors to learn music theory when she was 12. Michael recalls some of her favorite pieces she played at that age, like Beethoven’s sonatas and “Rhapsody in Blue.” And she was certainly learning from a deep well of knowledge.
Michael explains that while Kahn taught her, the line of talent goes much further back. Kahn was taught by Russian pianist Arthur Friedheim, who was taught by Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, who was taught by none other than Ludwig van Beethoven.
“That’s my lineage as a student,” Michael says.
Their techniques trickled down to Michael as well. Many female pianists played with soft, animated hand motions, and she tried that once at a lesson.
“[Kahn] said, We don’t do that,” Michael says. “I did play like a man. I had a strength.”
Her lessons steadily continued before coming to a halt when she was a teenager. Michael’s dad died, and she stopped playing piano for three months. After taking time to herself, she started back up.
“I went back to it with more fervor,” she says. “I went over an emotional bump. I just found myself with my music.”
After graduating from high school, Michael applied to Tanglewood Music Center, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer academy. They told her they already had their pianist spots filled, but they ended up accepting her anyway. She was their youngest student at 18.
It was an unforgettable experience for Michael. She took hour-and-a-half master classes with just 10 other students, and the teachers were renowned composers like Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein. Michael especially enjoyed classes with Bernstein, whose most known work is “West Side Story.”
“There is such a thing as genius, and he was it,” Michael says. “You just enjoy the nearness. You laughed, you asked questions and he would demonstrate things.”
She spent her time at Tanglewood savoring those master classes, as well as every Boston Symphony rehearsal, student orchestra rehearsal and opera rehearsal she could get to. She even met Eleanor Roosevelt, who came to perform with the Boston Symphony.
What came next? “I came home, and there was this handsome Marine,” she says.
She married that Marine, Burt, who she was friends with in high school, and they moved into an apartment in California, where he was based. The property owners, who had a piano and lived adjacent to them, let her come over whenever she wanted to practice. Soon after, she became pregnant, and they moved back to Akron a year and a half later when Burt’s tour was up to raise their family. During that time, she accompanied singers and conducted a choir at a synagogue.
Conducting had been a dream for Michael for a long time, and she told her parents about it when she was around 14.
“My mother said, Well, you know, there are no women conductors,” Michael recalls. “It hadn’t fazed me. I said, Yeah. And she said, So you’ll be the first one.”
When she was about 30, an opportunity arose to play at Weathervane Playhouse. Michael was a classical solo performer first, so she felt some hesitation. But she took a leap of faith and joined “The Fantasticks” at Weathervane in 1962.
She stuck around for next year’s show, “The Threepenny Opera,” serving as the orchestra conductor in the pit, which was just her on piano and drummer W. Scot Sexton.
She became musical director for Weathervane in the late 1960s, and she taught the singers and conducted the musicians in the pit — and of course, still played piano. “By how I conducted something, you can actually guide people,” she says. “Loved it.”
One of her most memorable shows at Weathervane was “Chicago,” in which she and seven other musicians played the entire show up on the catwalk above the stage. “That thing used to sway. But it was great for the show,” she says.
How did she feel about her piano being that high up? “The sound level was wonderful, but you would never get me to do that again,” she says, laughing.
Another favorite was “1776,” about the signing of the Declaration of Independence. “It was a big show,” she says. “The music was fun to do, and the cast was fun to work with.”
Weathervane continued to provide a steady stream of music to teach and performances to run. Michael did about two shows with Weathervane each year, and by the time the curtain closed during her last show in 1992, she had been in 50-plus productions. Now a plaque in the Weathervane lobby dedicates the pit to Michael and Sexton.
She gave her piano to her grandson and now “noodles” on her electric keyboard, playing her favorites by Dave Brubeck, a contemporary song stuck in her head or a ditty she writes herself. Although she spent her entire life engulfed in music, playing for crowd after crowd, training with world-class composers and mentoring younger musicians, she now plays alone.
Eighty-four years ago, she sat down at a piano for the first time. And through music, she found herself. “It’s mine,” she says passionately.
She returns to the bench and plays for herself.
