Submitted by Blake Bowers
“Flying a plane to Calgary is what it took to continue with piano lessons,” said Edgewater resident Barry Moore, describing his upbringing. “On the way back one evening, the passes through the Brisco range were socked-in and winds were so strong over Canal Flats (we) could finally barely sneak by the Luxor and (we) got back late to find our neighbor’s cars parked shining their lights on the runway so we could land.”
It was a great privilege getting to spend time with Barry, a local raised here in Edgewater. I got to hear some of Barry’s story and be serenaded by his masterful piano playing skills.
When asked what it was like growing up in Edgewater Barry said “it was the most perfect place in the world… It was like a story book, the Danish and German settlers’ houses had red or green roofs and their houses were mostly built by the same European-background craftsmen.”
Barry got into playing music owing to the powerful influence of his grandmother, a trained singer, his mother’s well-looked after piano and talented babysitters giving him lessons. By the age 13 he was playing for a classical violinist at local events. One particular recital Barry was playing and overheard the old ladies talking whispering that he was way too young and that the girls played so much nicer than he did. That fired Barry up to practice six hours a day for years and become accompanist for 40-years of the Lockwood Quartet. Eventually Magda Hasail, a Hungarian concert masterclass instructor, warned him that he must devote his life to playing because it was a matter of life or death.
At one Lockwood Quartet practice, he was accompanying a bombastic Greek nightclub singer, Dmitri Geogeacopoulous, here at a Danish family’s homestead on the outskirts of town when Dmitri suddenly pushed him off the piano bench shouting “here you sing, I play!” This was because Barry was advertently playing a Spanish rhythm rather than in a true Greek style. He says this was a shock-treatment learning experience that forced him to pay close attention to musical flavours .
I asked Barry why piano is so important. He said “it is the instrument that pulls all other players together and supports other instruments as they synchronize but leads, encourages and prods them giving them their place to shine…Playing the piano you learn to be self-sufficient yet learn to value any person that can come into your life to play the other part because suddenly you don’t have to do the whole production anymore which encourages one to be sociable.”
According to Barry “music can be an offering of a time capsule.” On the night of a big wing-ding held at the Edgewater hall Barry didn’t want to play. Admonished by one of his brothers, he realized it would be selfish not to share his talent. So he rushed home, grabbed his music, raced back and launched fervently into ‘Moonlight Sonata’. Afterwards he talked to old timers seated along the benches, Surprisingly they teared-up and were speechless by dearly recalled music they had heard played at home when they were kids. It brought back memories of the gracious society they once lived in.
Words of wisdom and advice for the aspiring artist from Barry: “Be authentic, try and find your peer group for reinforcement and stimulus to keep working with. Seek new input so you don’t end up doing the same thing all the time. Don’t stick to the tried and the true. Get outside of your comfort zone even if it means getting pushed off the bench.”
