Piano-Teaching Pair Personally in Tune

Invariably, John Perry’s name comes up when talk turns to master teachers of the piano. Yet after eight years on the faculty at USC, he is what he calls “the best-kept secret in Los Angeles.”

“I hardly have any recognition among the concert-going public here,” he says, with a smile on his face, while wife Ann, who is on the music faculty at UCLA, nods nearby. “All things considered, it’s pretty surprising.”

Perry’s reputation puts him among the elite keyboard coaches. Yet none of the four major recitals he has given locally since his 1979 arrival in Southern California--he transferred from University of Texas at Austin--has been noted in the press. That may partly be a matter of timing: The most recent one--despite a considerable advertising budget allotted by the sponsoring USC music department--collided with the Southland appearance of the Pope, a concert by Leonard Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic at Hollywood Bowl and the many activities of the Los Angeles Arts Festival.

However, a narrow slice of Perry’s musical spectrum comes into focus tonight when the 52-year-old Minnesotan and his wife play Bartok’s Double Piano Concerto with the Pasadena Symphony at its seasonal opening.

If Perry were not balancing his act between performance and teaching, chances are he would be cultivating a stronger public profile. Economics, he explains, played a big part in his early decision to take a faculty position--he joined Oberlin College on graduating from the Eastman School of Music. “One can’t be sure of earning a living while waiting for the concert bookings to come in,” he says.

“John never went after engagements,” explains Ann. “He tends to take the offers that come his way, and mostly those are chamber music rather than solo performances. Without being aggressively single-minded--and I can say this for myself, too--career advancement in the commonly understood sense just doesn’t happen.”

She says the stigma of a faculty job is considerable for concert musicians, pointing out one pianist who omitted a university affiliation from his press brochure on the advice of a manager.

John says the designation “faculty artist” is a pejorative. “And there’s truth to it,” he says. “Some musicians who are not great performers take refuge as faculty members.”

The Perrys, married since 1984, found each other as teacher and student. Ann says her father, a music professor, knew of Perry and recommended that she study piano with him.

She followed him to Los Angeles, at which point their relationship as unequals ceased. And now, with Ann memorizing their busy, divergent schedules (“so I know which two hours we’ll be able to spend together”), they maintain independent lives. John gives roughly 40 performances a year, across the United States and through parts of Europe, while she is just beginning to build a solo career.

Tonight finds them both in the same place: Pasadena Civic Auditorium.