My Special Memoir of Jim Bloch

My special memoir of Jim Bloch

The death of Dr. Joseph Bloch came as a terrible shock to me as well as to my wife, Atsuko when I learned it from Victoria Brand of the Juilliard School. We have lost a great man and we miss him very much.. Jim Bloch was 18 years senior to me. He was not my piano teacher but has been a great teacher in my life. A walking dictionary to many of his music students, he is a walking statue to look up to for me ever since I met him. He is a gentleman every inch. I can never forget his gentle smile, tasteful striped tie and carefully chosen words. I came to know him about twenty five years ago through my daughters, Emiko and Rumiko working with him at Music Camp in Victoria, B.C. when I was fifty while I had been working as an accountant for a Japanese trading company in New York.. Jim was an impeccable model of idealism for me to follow -- especially after our respective retirements. He is intelligent and curious, bright and cool. I wish I could read an inch-thick book at his speed. I wish I could cast a spell upon everybody with the way he does with his smile and easy wit. Only what I could please him was to show my oil paintings I began to draw after retirement. I vividly remember one or two episodes with him while we chatted in my house in Yokohama. One Sunday afternoon when I came home so excited after I had played golf , I said to him “Jim, I played golf today with company clients and saw an age-shooter 69. It’s unbelievable, Don’t you think so?” then he said “ So what? Takao. I think I could do that, too.” He was so cool but so warm at the same time. Another episode happened inside the train one day when I asked him why the landing day by the Allied Forces in Normandy was called "D-Day". He kept a long silence without any answer and said finally with a sigh,” How idiot I am! I should have remembered it.” I didn’t care but he did, and sent me a month later an article from The New York Times telling that the first D is an emphasis on the day with a stammer -- he finally answered. Joseph Bloch had helped my wife, Atsuko a great deal in starting and running The Music Center Japan established in 1987, after The Music Center, New York run by late David Bradshaw and Cosmo Buono by introducing recognized, talented pianists to her. With those brilliant artists, The Center, a tiny Juilliard, has been successfully growing at Salon Collina, a small music hall attached to our private home in Yokosuka. I learned that the professor had visited Japan innumerous times since early 60's, staying here and there. But on his last half-dozen visits in 90’s, our home, rabbit hutch, became his lodging. After 2001, as he could not come to Japan any more because of his age, we visited his beautiful home, instead, in Larchmont, New York rather regularly every spring and fall until last year, bringing up some Japanese young artists for his kind review and pleasure as the main program for our Music Seminar in New York together with the other programs, such as the Juilliard School Tour and US-Japan Joint Concert at Carnegie Weill Hall where Jim used to come. I remember celebrating his 80th birthday at Il Duomo, an Italian restaurant, Upperwest in Manhattan and on his 85th birthday contributing my words to his encomia as one of his close friends. That was a great honor to me. .

March 31, 2009 Takao Nakanishi