Miss Elena’s story

In 1979, we (my husband Alexander and I) came to the United States as political refugees from the USSR. Both of us had just two suitcases and $200 (we were not allowed to take more than that from Russia), and I was pregnant. After spending a few days in New York, we flew to Los Angeles.

My husband’s English was good (he worked in India for two years for the Ministry of Foreign Trade of the USSR). I could read and write in English well, but I had no speaking skills. That’s why at the beginning of my immigration I was sure that I would never be able to teach music in the United States.

Within a week after arriving in Los Angeles, my husband found a job as a plumber’s apprentice, with a salary of $5 per hour. In Russia, he graduated from the Moscow University, the best university in the country, and worked as a journalist in the Moscow publishing house, newspapers, and magazines). I was accepted to the College of Business to study bookkeeping: my writing and reading skills were sufficient to pass the entrance test. Before entering that college, I had no idea what accounting was.

The first month in college was tough. Every night Alexander had to help me with my homework. Then, I started to enjoy my studies. I loved the typing class. Typing came naturally to me (probably, because I was a pianist). The math – I always loved it.

The English class… well, the two best students in this course were two foreigners, myself and one Japanese girl. Both of us could barely speak English, but we would always get scores of 95-96 for our written work. And my favorite subject? Bookkeeping! As soon as I got the hang of it, I thought it was fun.

At the same time, I was continually thinking about the jobs I had in Russia (a pianist and a music teacher), and sometimes, during lunch, I studied American music theory books, learning English names of the whole, half, quarter notes – just in case.

Six months later, I graduated from college with all A’s and a certificate that I typed 75 words per minute. I was ready for the future in the accounting field, but that future never happened: in March 1980, our daughter Dasha was born.

At that time Alexander had two jobs: an employee in the liquor store and a shoe salesman. While staying at home with my baby, I placed an ad in the newspaper advertising myself as a piano teacher. We prepared a long list of possible answers in English, in case somebody would respond to my ad.

Soon I went to my first piano student’s home. That nine-year-old Afro-American girl, Renelle, lived about twenty miles from us, and I had to drive there in old Pontiac Grandville that we bought for $700. That car used to break down every other day and consumed more gas (eight miles per gallon) than I was able to pay for with my lessons (my fee for 1/2 hour lesson was just $6).

From Renelle, I learned many new English words. One of the first was the word “wrist” (an important word for the piano teacher). Then, other students followed, and I started to raise my tuition fee. A year later, when I had fifty piano students, my husband dropped one of his jobs (shoe salesman) to spent more time with our daughter.

One day an adult student of mine who owned two Montessori preschools, asked me to teach music to the kids in her school. I agreed. To enrich and supplement my pedagogic experience in Russia, I bought many books on teaching music to preschoolers, and I studied them thoroughly. I also purchased a lot of different percussion instruments and an electric keyboard – those preschools did not have pianos.

In the beginning, it was just awful. I was used to highly disciplined Russian children, and those California kids didn’t want to listen to me. They would bang the instruments on the floor (many of them were broken right away). Children would yell, scream, and run around. After several tough months, I was able to handle those kids quite well. I found other preschools interested in my music programs. Eventually, I got myself into twelve preschools in West LA.

Some parents of my younger students would ask me: My child is three years old. When can I start giving him piano lessons? I used to answer that children of this age were not ready for private piano lessons (they should be at least six years old), but at the same time, I thought: how could I help these parents with developing the musical abilities of their children? How can I prepare them for private piano lessons?

At that time we lived in a tiny old house; the rent was $250 a month. We decided to use one room for my group music lessons. We moved my piano there, made a grand staff on the floor (the prototype of the one I have in my studio now), and started to develop a program for teaching introductory piano classes for young children. I read many books on international systems of teaching music to young children.

My very first group had four students: Taylor (red-haired boy, age 3), Anthony (age 3), Taylor (blond boy, age 3) and my daughter Dasha, who was almost 3. The beginning was slow, but the results exceeded all my expectations. Very soon, my students’ mothers started talking to other parents about  “that wonderful little class with  Miss Elena.” I was besieged with phone calls.

To find time for such group lessons (I called them Music Workshop) I had to stop going to piano students’ homes, and from that moment on, my piano students had to come to my house. After a few years, we moved to a bigger house, where Alexander made me an excellent music room full of music teaching aids. And a year later, in May 1985 (just a few days after we became U.S. citizens), we moved to our own house.

It was a duplex (our tenants lived upstairs) with a large attached garage that had been converted by a previous owner into a large room. My husband transformed it into a music room. For the next three years, that former garage was our Music Studio. Since our house was on a cul-de-sac,  the driveway was huge, our clients could park ten cars there!

Now it was time to think about hiring piano teachers: I just couldn’t teach all piano students myself. We placed an ad in the Russian newspaper and started interviewing the teachers who responded to the advertisement. In 1988 we had to rent a whole building in the commercial area to accommodate ten piano teachers and all my group classes. Our studio became the most significant music school in West LA.

Living in a city famous for its movie industry, I had quite a few children of celebrities. I taught all three grandchildren of Lucille Ball (unfortunately I have never met her, just her daughter Lucy Arnaz, the mom of these kids), two grandchildren of Shirly Jones, grandson of Gregory Peck, both children of John Candy. I was teaching Sydney Simpson (from age 3 to age 5). I met her father twice, but the name O.J. didn’t tell me anything. Somebody said that he was a famous athlete. So what? I never watched sports on TV. But I liked his wife Nicole a lot. She was always very friendly.

By 1990, we decided to take a break from this frenzy of activities. We closed the business, rented out our house, and moved from Los Angeles to Vermont’s woods. My husband was finally able to concentrate on writing his fiction book. And I, after three months of doing nothing (that is, just hiking, canoeing, bicycling, cooking, reading, and participating in the PTA activities), realized that I just was not able to live without teaching music.

I started giving concert-lectures for the Elderhostel and piano lessons at the local school. During the second year in Vermont, I also taught Russian to a group of Vermonters who wished to conquer this challenging language. It was fun! They wanted to learn Russian songs. After they perfected their favorite song – Moscow Nights, we started working on favorite songs from Russian movies.  I accompanied them on my small electric keyboard.

It was quite a sight: in the middle of nowhere (in one of the rustic buildings of the sports center in the Northern Vermont forest), during the season of snow and then rains and mud, a group of middle-aged Americans was singing Russian songs.

In 1992, we decided to move to the warmer area, to Florida. On August 20, we came to Miami to find a house for rent. Hurricane Andrew put a halt on our plans to settle in Miami, and we decided to go to Moscow and stay there for a year.

Why Moscow? For two reasons: 1. Alexander had a book ready for publication. 2. We always wanted our daughter Dasha (she was born in the USA) to study in a Russian school – to improve her Russian and get to know our motherland.

That year in Russia was exciting and challenging. Dasha went to the eighth grade of the Russian school, and for the first two months, she cried every day… Well, I think Dasha will tell you about her year in Russia much better.

Dasha’s story

Two weeks after I became the eighth-grader, my parents spontaneously decided to move to Moscow for a year. I enthusiastically embraced their decision. The thought of spending a whole year with my grandparents, whom I had never seen, was a dream come true. As for going to a Russian school, I could handle it.

Little did I know that the year in Russia would be one of the most frustrating yet rewarding experiences of my life. My first class at the school in Moscow was Russian. The teacher, Svetlana Vsevolodovna (whose name I learned to pronounce after a week of grueling tongue exercises), immediately put me to work with the rest of the class.

The activity was a dictation from one of Dostoevsky’s works. As the teacher read aloud from a book, the students scribbled violently in their journals. I only managed to write every third word that the teacher dictated. My spelling was dreadful. No euphemism could be found to describe it.

The next class was algebra. Although it was an entirely new course for me, I was confident upon entering the class because math was my best subject. However, the sight of my first algebra problem, with its multiple xs and ys, quickly brought me, no, threw me down to earth. I felt betrayed and deceived – for the past seven years I had used only numbers in math. What were letters doing in math problems?

Asking the teacher for help proved to be as difficult as solving the algebra problems. In Russia, one’s elders are addressed by their first and middle names. I racked my brain for the teacher’s name. Was it Galina Ivanovna or Ivana Galinovna? Or maybe it was Galya Igorevna?

What amazed me most of all about my classes in Russia was the depth of our studies. It seemed like each teacher was preparing us for a future career in his or her subject. For example, one of our geography assignments involved memorizing the locations of all of the coal mines in the Ural Mountains!

The teachers themselves amazed me as well. They were eccentric individuals who were passionate about their subjects. Although they were usually strict, their actions were unpredictable – I never knew if a teacher would insult or praise a student.

It took me three mind-exhausting months to adjust to life as a Russian student. Besides being at least one year behind in every class, I also had trouble understanding my teachers and my books because each subject had its Russian jargon. I spent many sleepless nights crying, pitying myself, and cursing everything that was Russian.

After several months of intense studying and complete immersion in the Russian language, I caught up with my classmates and started getting fives and fours (the Russian equivalents of As and Bs) in all of my subjects.

My life in Russia became more enjoyable as I started taking advantage of Moscow’s rich culture and the proximity to my grandparents. That year was a real test of my endurance. It rewarded me with more than just fluency in Russian and awareness of Russian culture. It taught me that success does not come easily.

Miss Elena continues

After two months in Moscow, I got bored, despite all those beautiful ballets, operas, and classical music concerts that we could attend almost every day. I contacted the American Embassy and was hired as a choir teacher at the Anglo-American High School located at the Embassy compound.

One day I gave a demonstration lesson of my Music Workshop program to the children and parents living in the compound. Everybody liked my demonstration class, and soon I formed two groups of students. A month later, as the word spread out around the community of foreigners, I started teaching at two places off the compound.

In one apartment (its occupant, the father of my student, was the bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal, and the mother wrote for Newsweek), I taught two groups of kids whose parents were American journalists stationed in Moscow. One of the parents was David Ensor, whom you could see quite often on CNN.

In another apartment, I taught two groups of Music, Mommy & Me classes. The children were Americans, the nannies – Russians. The kids spoke Russian to their nannies and English to me. I taught in English and explained to nannies in Russian what they had to do in my class with their children.

That year in Russia was significant for my husband Alexander: he published his first book, a collection of stories, novellas, and a novel under the title The Fields of Lost Battles.

In 1993 we returned to the United States and moved to Lake Placid in upstate New York. There I started to teach my group lessons again. However, by November, we understood that upstate New York was too remote and too cold for us.

In February 1994, we went to Florida to find a place to live. Somebody advised us to see Boca Raton. What was Boca Raton for us at that time? Just a small town south of West Palm Beach. We were directed to go to Mizner Park. We went there, and two hours later decided that Boca Raton was the right place for us.

After moving to Boca in July 1994, I realized that this area, packed with the country clubs and retirement communities, was created for my concert-lectures. During the next ten years, I played at Breakers and Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Boca Raton Resort, Woodfield, Broken Sound, Boca Pointe, Polo Club, Boca Grove, Boca West and other exclusive country clubs.

Also, I performed for many societies and social clubs, such as the Opus Society, National Society of Arts and Letters, International club, Welcome club, and others. Also, my Music, Mommy & Me, and Music Workshop classes became very popular.