Whose shoulders do you stand on? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I was five, my Grandad’s piano was a thing of continuing fascination. I’d been smacking the keys randomly since I could reach it, and they lived only a three minute walk from my own home. But I was beginning to experiment with pressing notes in sequence and trying out different levels of force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My grandmother convinced my parents that I would be able to have piano lessons without the expense of a piano of my own if I was taught and practised on Grandad’s piano. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mrs Hollins taught me from the age of five until I moved house in my early teens and decided to teach myself the blues and do my own thing. And until my first piano arrived in our home I went round to play on at my grandparents’ house every day after school. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I learned the foundations of my craft at that piano. My Grandad was a church musician – a tenor, a cantor, a pianist and organist. I remember swinging a piece of music that I was learning, shaping the rhythm the way I wanted it, and him being gently astonished because he could never have done that. He was a man of dots and decorum. I grew up to be a musician that bends rules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a very real sense I stand on his shoulders. When he passed away in the 1990s I inherited the piano, his metronome, tuning fork and organist’s robe. It’s fair to say I fill it a bit more thoroughly than he did, and he was taller than me so I look more like an ersatz batman than a serious figure of musical significance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And yet, it was comforting to me that I could still wear it for a wedding and at divine service this weekend as his wife, my grandmother, passed gently into the glorious inheritance of heaven. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr J W Clayton 1928-1996
Mrs P Clayton 1932-2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They are no longer here to encourage and enable me, but their investment into my skills and talents is as real as that very robe. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Whose shoulders do you stand on? When I was five, my Grandad’s piano was a thing of continuing fascination. I’d been smacking the keys randomly since I could reach it, and they lived only a three minute walk from my own home. But I was beginning to experiment with pressing notes in sequence and trying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":66,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,14],"tags":[7,9,49,48,5,47],"class_list":["post-65","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-music","category-news","tag-andrew-clayton","tag-church","tag-church-music","tag-inheritance","tag-music","tag-robe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.notejuste.com\/not\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.notejuste.com\/not\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.notejuste.com\/not\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.notejuste.com\/not\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.notejuste.com\/not\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.notejuste.com\/not\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67,"href":"http:\/\/www.notejuste.com\/not\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions\/67"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.notejuste.com\/not\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.notejuste.com\/not\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.notejuste.com\/not\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.notejuste.com\/not\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}