Meet Paul Orgel, my piano teacher

Today we wanted to spotlight one of many incredible individuals continuing to cultivate creativity through the pandemic. SMA Laura spoke to her piano teacher, Paul Orgel, to learn more about his story.

1. Please tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got interested in teaching piano.

 I grew up with parents who took me to concerts and played me a lot of music and I loved music from an early age. There was a piano at my grandparents house but not my parents and I just spent hours and hours playing the piano when I was a little kid.  I eventually had piano lessons that were pretty good and I seemed to want to be around music. Piano was my instrument and when it became time to go to college I realized that it was what I wanted to be doing most of the time, so I went to conservatory.  I'm a performer as a pianist, so I'm playing solo and playing music with other people. Pianists all teach so I started teaching at a pretty early age, right out of college.  I found that I really enjoyed teaching, so that's something I've done over my career. 

2. How does your work compare now to before the pandemic?

The pandemic has canceled all in-person concerts, I usually play a fair number of concerts over the year, and I haven't played anywhere in public since late last fall. Not having those concerts really isolates you as a musician, from performing and from your audience. I'm actually about to do a concert that's going to be live streamed, so it will be back in the concert hall but with no audience. It's with some other players so I'm really excited to be doing that this month. In terms of teaching, of course, I haven't seen any students in person for close to a year. It's all been online and I'm not a very technological person, I see students from the iPad screen on my piano and  that's a very different experience. The sound is so different, and there's not the presence of the other person so it makes a lot of things harder. Students have been great in adjusting, but the teaching is different in some ways. It is very compromised for me especially with sound, a lot can happen in music with sound quality and that's gone. You have to guess about the sound on the computer, no matter how good the connection is it's not the same.  it is easier in some ways, at 29 minutes past the hour I can still be doing something else before a lesson at half past. It is a strain,  I feel more tired doing a lesson online then I do in person. 

3. How are you and your colleagues coping?

UVM has stayed open in person, there was all always the option of going and doing things in person, but because of my age I am slightly more at risk, so I didn't do that.  I am isolated from my colleagues, we are all on our own trying to teach in the safest way, some of us have just done it from home. The idea of being part of a department with people that you see and interact with- that's been nonexistent for me during this time. Although, piano teaching is still a very one-on-one thing, I don't teach classes or share things with colleagues that much, but I certainly haven't played any music  with any colleagues.

4. What does a typical day of work for you look like?

Well this would be true ,somewhat, before the pandemic, I practice the piano a lot, and I've practiced more now because there are fewer things to do and there are fewer places to go out or travel, I'm not travelling for the most part, so I will practice always in the morning for a few hours. I'm exercising more, I'm going to the store more because we aren't eating out, my wife and I are cooking more, we're spending a lot of time shopping and cooking, it's the main entertainment. In the afternoons generally I'm teaching, so I am teaching online. Doing stuff outdoors, until it gets to be too cold here too.

5. What is your biggest challenge right now?

Staying vital, and keeping things interesting and alive for the students. Also being patient, being patient might be the biggest challenge. We have to be patient for vaccines, we have to be patient to get back to some kind of normal. Whoever thought this would take so long, I thought it would take like a month or two last year. 

6. How does it feel to be working during this pandemic?

I am always thankful to be a musician, and I am thankful to be a pianist because we don't need other instruments to play wonderful pieces, and in a way I'm thankful to have the time to learn more music. I feel lucky to be working because I'm basically self-employed, so I haven't had to give up working like people who might have been laid off, who were working at a business or something, so I feel lucky in that way. All of my students continued online, some of my adult students didn't continue because they didn't want to do it if we couldn't get together, but I feel lucky not to have faced hardship or layoff.

7. What advice would you give to people during this time?

When I travelled across the country I saw a lot of people who weren't wearing masks in states with poor handling of the pandemic. I would tell people to adhere to sensible guidelines- distancing and masks, just like anyone else. 

8. Masks4Missions is all about promoting mask-wearing as a positive and selfless act. What encouragement would you give to people to continue wearing masks at this stage of the pandemic? 

From what I understand, it's the major way to prevent spread, our numbers would be much lower if there had been a mask mandate, which I believe there is now, I think Biden did that on his first day- wearing a mask in public, that's what we're told prevents this. 

-Laura Zhou-Hackett

Paul Orgel is a music professor at the University of Vermont, and teaches private piano lessons from his home in Shelburne.