As I have been writing for Piano For Retirees for a few months now and people are starting to hear about this blog, I often get quizzed as to why even write about piano playing retirees in the first place.
The answer is actually a very simple one – there are actually quite a lot of people that play the piano in their retirement. You would probably be surprised, most people that I communicate with in one form or another are quite surprised. There is this perception out there that people that play the piano (or any other instrument for that matter) are primarily students or kids. The other group of people that come to mind are the professionals, the ones that playing the piano is all or part of what they do to earn a living.
Most people seem to not realize that there would be a huge number of adults that play the piano in their spare time because they simply enjoy playing. While there are always some adults undertaking formal piano lessons, the vast majority would just be enjoying the skills that they already developed (probably when they were a child).
Another group of adults are the people who either learned to play the piano as a child and then quit before they had enough skills or they had always wanted to learn to play the piano but when they were a child they did not have an opportunity to learn. How do I know that there are a lot of people out there that want to play the piano but don’t have the skills (or enough skills)? I have crossed paths with so, so many over the years.
Ever since I started teaching the piano at the age of nineteen, I have had so many people casually tell me that they have always wanted to learn to play the piano or that they had piano lessons for a little while when they were a kid and quit and now they don’t remember anything. Over the last few decades I would have had literally hundreds of adults tell me that they really wished that they could play the piano and feeling like that it’s all too late to get started.
The point of my musings is that if you want to learn to play the piano, or re-learn to play the piano, then you are not unusual or different at all, in fact it is quite the opposite, there are many adults (especially retirees) that are turning their wishes into reality by taking piano lessons. In fact, according to one of the helpful sales people at my favorite music store, since COVID started sales of pianos bought to be played by retirees has never been higher.
So if you have been toying with the idea of playing the piano, don’t put it off or come up with reasons why you can’t or you shouldn’t play the piano in retirement. It truly doesn’t matter whether you think you will be any good or whether it is something unusual (which it is most certainly not!). The only thing that really matters is the enjoyment you get from playing the piano.