My Gurus – Helen Jamieson

Paris days – Colin McMordie and Madame Savitsky

My start as a music professional was probably unlike many of my peers. After a musical upbringing, a determined rebelliousness took me, not to the hoped for university music department or music college, but off to Paris to earn a living and learn French.

A few years later, an impromptu performance of one of Satie’s ‘Gnossiennes’ by the flamboyant Irish art dealer Colin McMordie at his small gallery on rue Bonaparte inspired me to return to the piano. I squeezed a rented upright into my tiny studio and signed up for lessons with the 89 year-old Madame Savitsky at the Conservatoire Rachmaninov (which had a renowned café serving blinis and pirog aux choux, and was staffed by grumpy Russian ladies). Madame Savitsky had met Rachmaninov himself and was rather inclined to long periods of reverie when asked about her long teaching career since leaving Russia at the time of the revolution, where she had witnessed her own husband being shot. I used to drive her to the station in my Mini after lessons, and I remember having to brace her with my arm at traffic lights, so unused was she to travelling in a ‘motor car’. Any repertoire post Chopin was ‘modern’.