"It’s Meant to Be" I was born Patrik John Maiani, May 21, 1964. To say I was raised in an artistic family would be an understatement of the century. My grandmother was a church organist, my mother a flamenco dancer, my father a world-renowned opera tenor, artist in the oil medium, and both of my older brothers are musicians. I was in front of the piano before I could walk or talk. I started piano lessons at five with the church organist. At the age of seven, I was recommended to the best classical teacher in Santa Barbara, a third generation student of Chopin's. Chopin taught Reif, a concert pianist who taught Aida Ferris, another concert pianist who in turn taught Irma Starr, a tough German-Irish woman who devoted her entire 99 years to teaching piano. I was one of her prized students. At the age of 18, I turned down a scholarship to the Julliard School of Music in New York City, to study and work with my father; opera and composition. At the age of 20, I moved to Los Angeles, CA. and quickly became one of the top show pianists for the rich and famous, playing at movie premiers, Hollywood parties, private engagements and hotels. After a few years, I moved from Los Angeles to Monterey, CA, and then later to Hawaii and Palm Springs, CA, where I had a one-year contract at the Maxims de Paris Hotel. On my way to perform one Friday night, I was hit head-on by a drunk driver. Moments before the impact, just as I turned my head and braced for the collision, I heard a voice behind my head “It’s meant to be”.
Following the accident, I was no longer able to sit and play piano for 10 hours a day. I immediately moved back to Santa Barbara, where I began rehabilitating myself and teaching piano. Years later, during a piano lesson with my brightest student (a top math student who went on to graduate from Stanford with honors), I thought to myself, 'How can a straight -A honors student struggle so hard with reading basic piano music?' I realized that though we have grown technologically by leaps and bounds during the last century, our attention spans have shortened, and we want to learn with immediate results, or we lose interest. However, the method of traditional music notation has not changed much in 500 years. In my experience as a teacher, reading a treble clef and a bass clef is like reading Chinese and Arabic at the same time while nodding your head up and down, and juggling 10 bananas in time. So, I began to look at where my students excelled and where they failed in music, a journey that resulted in the book you now have before you, which presents a completely new method of musical instruction. Fifteen years later, with ten solo piano CDs, 40 original pop piano and orchestra compositions, and with hundreds of piano students to my credit, I invented this method. It’s a method to read, understand and play music in a new way. My patented system is called “EZ/MUZIK” and you might say that it was “meant to be”. I hope you love, and play, as much music as I do. Patrik “Piano” Maiani EZ/MUZIK (Patent #7,388,143 EZ as A b C*) |
"I Wish Every Day Was Christmas"