Paris: Colette Maze has been enjoying piano for greater than a century, and continues to be drawing hundreds of followers on social media.
Born in June 1914, earlier than the outbreak of World War I and when certainly one of her favorite composers, Claude Debussy, was nonetheless alive, the French pianist practices 4 hours a day and is about to launch her seventh album, “108 Years of Piano”.
From her condominium overlooking the Seine river in Paris, Maze strikes cautiously between the three pianos in her lounge, however retains a youthful enthusiasm.
“Me? I´m young,” she says with a smile.
“Age is not something I´m interested in. There are people who are forever young, amazed by everything, and then there are people who don´t care about anything and never loved anything, even their man — can you imagine?” she provides.
– ´Piano is my life´ –
Maze was a piano instructor for a lot of her life, and it was solely after turning 100 that she began constructing a major fanbase — by her Facebook web page.
“She gives people strength — that´s why she has such crazy success,” stated her son, journalist Fabrice Maze, including with delight that she is among the few individuals over 100 releasing albums.
She nonetheless remembers the sound of “Big Bertha”, the large cannon utilized by the German military throughout World War I, however most of her recollections revolve round her instrument.
“When I was little, I suffered from asthma and my mother would play violin with my piano teacher — it would calm me,” she says.
“Piano is my life, my friend. I need to feel it and hear it,” she provides, earlier than providing a rendition of Debussy´s “Reflections in the Water”.
Maze started enjoying at 5, and regardless of reluctance from her mother and father, she received a spot on the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris with academics together with the famend Alfred Cortot.
Cortot was recognized for a way of enjoyable all of the muscle mass of the physique — which Maze credit with sparing her from arthritis.
The different secret to her youth? “I did a lot of dancing,” she says. “I need to feel my muscles, my abdominals, my thighs, my arms. All that must be alive.” (AFP)
