Many years ago I was a Jazz instructor at Oberlin Conservatory of Music. I had many wonderful students who went on to do some pretty amazing things in the music industry. About a week ago, I received an email from one of my former students from Oberlin named, Adam Cole. I was blown away after speaking with him. He has been doing some incredible things with music and young people, co-directing an Academy of Arts, working as a pianist, composer, author, and so much more. I want to introduce his music, work, and let you see the heart of my featured profile artist, Adam Cole.
Adam Cole suffered from severe stage fright until he was 35. Despite this, he still managed to work as a pianist for the Atlanta Ballet, and to share the stage with such jazz greats as Nicholas Payton and Marian McPartland. He worked around Atlanta as a jazz and classical musician for many years, searching for ways to become the musician he felt he was inside.
Through a combination of experiences in the piano school at Georgia State University, his work with the Feldenkrais Method(TM), and his experiences teaching children, he eventually became the musician he had always dreamed. Wishing to extend the reach of his passion, Adam decided to create opportunities through his books, music and workshops, whereby anyone at any level could grow beyond their idea of what they can do. Along the way he also found time to put his passion into fiction, representing the struggle in story.
Adam is a co-director with Katherine Moore of the Grant Park Academy of the Arts. He is the author of numerous books about music and music pedagogy and has taught piano and voice to beginners and professionals for the last twenty years. He speaks and blogs across the country on the surprising benefits of music education for business and personal growth.
Here is a post from him. Check out his blog at www. acole.net
A Small Act of Kindness
Once a guy named Joe did me a kindness. I’d like to thank him, but I can’t anymore. So I’m going to tell you this story instead.
Joe (not his real name) and I went to high school together. He was good-looking, great at sports, and had a sense of humor that made people afraid not to be his friend. In other words, he was a lot of things I wanted to be.
I can’t say we were friends. I’d like to think we were, but really we just knew each other, took some of the same classes, sat at lunch with the same folks. Even so, he was important in my life.
When we were in 9th grade, we took a drama class together, and everyone in that class had to perform a monologue. I was a huge drama geek, and I went all out on a scene in which I was a dying soldier. The best thing that ever happened to me in that class was, when my scene was over, Joe said, “Adam, man…” and put his thumb up.
You can’t imagine how important that moment was to me. In those days I felt completely friendless, and all I had going for me was my performing ability. For this popular, strong kid to say to this drama geek that he’d seen me, that he’d recognized that I’d done something well, and that he valued it, meant more to me than any feedback I think I’ve ever gotten.
As the years went by, we continued to know one another. I never had the feeling he particularly liked me, not as a friend, and I didn’t think that was going to change. But I always felt he respected me, maybe even was a little bit jealous of me for being geeky and weird and not afraid to be me, and I really liked that, even needed it.
After graduation, we didn’t see each other again until our 15th high school reunion. I caught a glimpse of him near the end of the evening, talking with some people. We caught each others’ eyes and a funny thing happened: we both nodded, and then didn’t approach each other!
It was like we both knew we’d have nothing to talk about. And yet there was still that moment of recognition. I often wondered about that moment, and vowed to do it differently at our thirtieth reunion, if I saw him.
I won’t see him. He passed away last month. The knowledge of it hit me far harder than I thought it would.
I can’t imagine what his wife must have experienced, finding her beloved husband gone. I’ll never be able to put in a box the unending emptiness his two kids will feel throughout their lives. And yet, I’m devastated just at the loss of the little bit he gave me, which was actually so huge.
I doubt he ever realized what he meant to me, what his gesture meant. He was just being Joe. And maybe that’s the gift I wanted to share with you.
How many people have you done that for, and probably without even knowing it? Just by being you? Changed someone’s life, helped them, without any sense that you were important at all.
You are important, immensely powerful, absolutely necessary. If Joe could change my life with a little thumbs up, can’t you imagine what all the things you do for your family and friends means? Since we don’t, maybe even can’t, acknowledge this to each other in real life, then recognize it in yourself and save your own life.
Thank you, Joe. I recognize you, I give you a thumbs up. You did a good job.
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facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/AdamColeMusic/?ref=bookmarks
Website: http://www.acole.net/index/
Grants Parks Academy: https://grantparkarts.com/who-we-are
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