Fathers and Fatherhood: My Father’s Piano

Kristina Olsen: My Father‘s Piano

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Sometimes you don’t learn to appreciate a father until after he is gone. The narrator of My Father’s Piano has that piano to remember her father by. And it represents all of his best qualities in her memory of him. I put this song in a mix of songs I made for me and my wife, which I called Bittersweet. These are songs of warm nostalgia, tinged with regret for those which are gone forever. There are many songs like this, but it is the mark of a great songwriter to capture these conflicting emotions well. Kristina Olsen has done that here.

My first acquaintance with Kristina Olsen was at a small folk and folk dance festival held outside of Boston. (Hey, Boyhowdy, ever heard of NEFFA?) She presented a workshop on unusual musical instruments from Victorian England. Olsen had several of these with her, and could play all of them.