Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Alice S. Olson playing the piano

On Christmas Eve my mother tried to play us a recording of her grandmother, Alice S. Olson, playing the piano in 1977 at 91 years old. She couldn't get it to work that day, so I've been working with it and now I'm able to put the recording here on my blog for my family members to listen to. The easiest way to do this was to make it into a video, and so I just put up a photo of piano keys there as a place holder image while the music plays.

So this is my great-grandmother playing two hymns in 1977.  She was a very talented piano player and used to improvise the accompaniment to silent movies.  At the beginning you can hear Florence, Mom's cousin, introducing Alice.  Florence has told us that there was no piano music in front of Alice while she played, so this is all from memory, and pretty amazing at 91 years old.


I will also put up a recording a little later of her voice, but for now it's just her playing the piano.

4 comments:

Ross and Kathy said...

That was pretty cool. I'll be happy if I can simply shovel food into my mouth at 91.

Barney Family said...

Just in case you couldn't place the tune, the first one was Lead, Kindly Light (h.97) and the second one was Abide With Me! (h. 166). And, to clarify, was that Mom's dad's mom?

Breanne said...

Yes, Mom's dad is Robert and his mom is Alice.

heather said...

That is so amazing and such a beautiful thing to have in your family. How neat!