When I came to Brown in 1971, over 50 years ago, I found that Brown was a bigger pool to swim around in than I had expected. With no requirements, and in those days lacking any academic counseling, I often felt that there was something wrong with me because I didn’t have an obvious path forward. My roommate suggested I audition for piano lessons. Whatever it was that I played, Arlene looked at me with a big smile. She was game to teach me.
Arlene was such a good person, such a fun, lively person, and she took an interest in me. She was just ten years older than me. She never talked down to her piano students. Her criticisms often started, “Have you ever thought of this —.” She liked to talk to people, she liked Brown, she liked Providence, she liked to cook. She loved her family. She loved going home to Cleveland on vacations, shopping with her mother for Japanese ingredients. She fussed over the cream cheese brownies that she brought to recitals. She sometimes took her sister Marilyn, who was going to RISDE, and me on expeditions, or had us over for supper. I remember Arlene frying perfectly delicious fish that her dad caught on Cape Cod, for breakfast. It would possibly be frowned upon in today’s world, but I sometimes came over and had a nighttime lesson, after supper, after Geraldine and Eliot went to sleep. Brian would go back to work with his thermos of coffee; there were toys scattered around the piano. It was wonderful, fundamental. There was no affectation. It was the essence of an honest musician’s life, Arlene’s world.
In terms of piano and music in my life, Arlene simply turned me around. She had a concept of tone, of rich sound, and of how to produce that sound at the keyboard, that was completely eye opening to me. She talked about how a pianist’s physical rigidity or inflexibility would stop the sound. I didn’t believe it at first. And this was typical of Arlene, she was perfectly willing to get in the weeds with me and play single notes for an hour to prove her point. We’d take turns, covering our eyes and listening to each other play a note. Just a note.
Because Arlene had this discernment of sound, of initiation and decay, the ability to produce different kinds of legato, and overall such richness of color, her playing was beautiful to me in a way I think is very rare and special. Her melodies were bel canto, beautifully sung. Beyond that, the voice was particularly contemporary and direct, in the way Miezcyslaw Horszowski sounds unhackneyed and modern.
As a piano teacher myself, I know what an achievement it is just to get the student to learn the notes, to get from A to Z, to be comfortable playing a piece. Arlene was interested in hearing something deeper. When she sat at a concert, I noticed that she crossed her legs and seemed to focus on her shoes, just listening. I emulated her. I would have liked to be her, and I guess I idolized her. Eventually, I realized she had other students to be get to know and I had to go out into the world myself. The last time we were in contact was after Arlene’s father died. For years, I’ve been thinking I would arrange to stop in Providence for a visit. We always think that there’s more time. I extend my deepest sympathy to Arlene’s whole family, and to her students and colleagues.
Alice Jaffe ’75