What a difference a teacher makes! A teacher can either make you or break you. Jackie experienced both! She is grateful that the negative experience of her childhood has in no way limited her passion for the piano as an adult. Her only regret may be the decades of delay in exploiting that passion.
Though born and raised in New Jersey, Jackie Zins has lived in Washington, DC, with her family for over forty years. Her husband is a lawyer, and they have two adult children (one lives in DC, and one lives in San Francisco). Her husband’s job-search brought the family to the area when she was 26, and they have never left. As a practicing lawyer herself, Jackie divides her time between her work and her music activities. She started playing the piano at age 7 but stopped in junior high for two reasons. She did not really love it at the time but was forced to go to lessons by her parents, and she had a strict authoritarian teacher who terrified her and succeeded only in driving her away from the piano. As a result, Jackie did not return to the piano until she was 50!
As an adult, she resumed lessons with an amazing teacher named Gregory Sioles at Levine School of Music. Under Gregory’s tuition, her love for the piano blossomed. Rather than being pressured by her parents, Jackie was motivated to practice and perform because she wanted to. She progressed well, but unfortunately after two years with Gregory, she developed severe arm pain from playing too much and too repetitively and was forced to stop. Even after her arm healed, she was working so many hours as a lawyer that time was limiting, and ten years passed before she decided to find a teacher and try piano again. She returned to Levine, but by then Gregory had left to teach at University of Louisiana so she was matched with another great piano teacher named Andrew Harley.
Jackie considered Andrew a dream teacher. He was the one who introduced her to the AMSF and encouraged her to perform. However, six years ago he also left DC to lead the collaborative piano department at Eastman School of Music in NY. Andrew recommended Jackie’s current teacher who is Leander Bien, a name familiar to several AMSF members who are also Leander’s piano students. Jackie continued performing with the AMSF and found that the unintimidating venues and the supportive atmosphere were fantastic for her confidence. She has remained active and has performed both solos and duets in Cadenza, Encore, Intermezzo, Sonata, and Duetto recitals. She intends to ramp up her participation this year.
Jackie truly enjoys playing piano duets, so much so that she and her partner, Nancy Thaler, participate in the annual Kinhaven four-hands workshop in Vermont held in the summer under the direction of Leander Bien. Though Nancy recently moved five hours away to rural Pennsylvania, their commitment is such that Nancy returns to DC every couple of months for three days of intensive practice with Jackie. They are currently working on Schubert’s Andantino Varie in B minor, Op. 84, No. 1 for Kinhaven next year. Last year they played Schumann’s Six Canonic Etudes Op. 56 for four hands. Jackie loves the Romantic composers, so it was no surprise that Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms were three of her favorites. In addition to the Kinhaven workshop, Jackie is also involved in two piano groups and a performance class which meets once a month with different teachers at various members’ homes.
At 70, Jackie still works part-time and has no plans to retire. Having passed the bar in both NY and DC after completing her studies at Princeton in NJ and Yale Law School in CT, she is an experienced lawyer. In fact, in her job as a lawyer, she has worked as Deputy Special Master for the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund as well as the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Fund under Special Master Ken Feinberg. Though she leads an extremely busy life, Jackie makes time for several hobbies which include gardening, hiking, reading (she’s in a book club), and traveling. She and her husband plan to travel to Japan for their next adventure.
Given that Jackie is an accomplished pianist, it is ironic that she is the only musical member of her family. Neither her parents nor her two siblings were musical, and though she encouraged her own son and daughter to take piano lessons as children, neither one of them stuck with it. Nevertheless, from her personal experience, Jackie has several words of advice for aspiring musicians. In addition to stressing the infinite value of a good teacher, she says, “Practice mindfully not repetitively. Make your practice interesting by changing it up. Take a break when you aren’t focusing any more. Come to love your practice sessions. That’s where you spend all your time. Play for friends. Play for people as much as you can. Enjoy yourself!”