I moved to Toronto from Winnipeg to study improvisational piano music/ playing with Casey in the early 80s. It was a big deal being 20 in a new city, getting a student loan, getting an apartment, getting a roommate, getting accepted to York University. I met Casey the first week and he said I had to audition, he only accepted 20 and 60 applied. Hadn’t I been accepted into this program? What a rip off. I blamed Howie Moscovitch, my older brother Ronnie’s friend. He had done 2 years of music school at York and when he came home for Christmas he came over to play with Ronnie and heard me playing and got excited and said “there’s a guy at York teaching what you’re doing”. Now I’m screwed because I got so excited that there was such a possibility as this guy teaching this amazing thing and it took me 8 months to get all of this together, and now the man who was my reason for relocating says he only selects 20 out of 60 people.
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He sat on a couch a few feet away from the baby grand piano. I stated my plea again – please just let me into this class because I came from another province blah blah blah… He yawned, said play something and didn’t look up from his newspaper. I played an imitation of a Keith Jarrett piece which in truth I never came close to sounding like. A few seconds into my playing, with peripheral vision I sensed the paper put down, him get up from the couch, walking over and standing behind me. Instant relief, knew right then and there I would be in the group of 20. There is only one reason a pianist stands behind another pianist.