Memoir - A Great Teacher

I started my musical experience on the violin, and continued playing the instrument throughout my educational years; however, my love for and attraction to the piano began around age six or seven, with a kind and gentle man whom I outgrew after a few years.
My father decided to have me enroll at the Eastman School of Music, as we were residents of Rochester, New York at the time.
I was assigned to a teacher whose name was Jerome Diamond, who taught at the college as well.
My first impression was my being intimidated by this elegant, lean, really strikingly intense man, with aquiline features and black hair accompanied by a manner, though pleasant, redolent with authority.
The first few lessons transfigured my sense of what "work" really meant. His demands upon what I did during those early days formed the base upon which a sense of true measurement, as regards the techniques of practice, meant in the clearest possible terms.
As the weeks, then months passed by, I became aware of the elemental power of communication this man possessed, and the degree and nature of my progress that resulted, which began to form a wordless bond between him and me.
His (at times) almost brutal demands upon me were accompanied by the occasional slap on the back when he liked what I was doing, and his wonderfully clear voice would, at times, rise when he encouraged me to go that one extra step. He truly was a great exponent of what "Gradus ad Parnassum" meant. His own training certified his approach to the piano. He studied with two of the great exponents dealing with the piano; one, Isidor (sometimes Isadore) Phillip, one of the last giants of pedagogy who carried over from the 19th to the twentieth century, and also Josef Lhevinne, the legendary pianist. Diamond had studied with both of them in Paris. Fortunately for me, Diamond divulged much of what these two great figures gave to him; therefore, a very important aspect of my thinking came from this great legacy. In other words, both Phillip and Lhevinne were, in a sense, my pedagogical grandfathers. By the way, part of my European training came from Phillip himself, with whom I studied for a short period (he was in his nineties at the time).
As the years moved on, Diamond increasingly became more than the great communicator he was.
His kindness and abiding interest became a combination that formed a loving relationship between him and me. His wonderful act of secretly sending some of my compositions to the great pianist Alexander Brailowsky (see my April blog by scrolling the archive link in my blog to that month), then arranging for me to meet Brailowsky; this during my teen years, was something that will always be in my memory.
After going on with my education, I returned eventually to visit Diamond, and then a social phase of our relationship began; that is, every time we visited Rochester, we spent time with him and his wife and young son. This phase of our relationship went on for a few more years until leukemia struck this talented and loving man down while barely emerging from middle age.
The loss to me was accentuated even more so by way of his interest in my life experiences; for instance, even though he was strongly opposed to my being on the high school baseball team, I noticed that whenever I pitched in a game, he was there watching me. He even followed my activities at the Community Playhouse, appearing in the audience whenever I appeared on stage in a play.
After his passing, I was overcome when I found that, with all of the students he had worked with over the years at Eastman, he left much of his piano music collection to me.
I can never describe my feelings for this man - all there is to know is that he will forever be a large part of who and what I am.