Learning piano, or any instrument, in later years seen as a benefit

When Shawn Wright was 8 years old and growing up in South Jamaica, Queens, he had his heart set on taking piano lessons, but his family couldn’t afford them. So instead he bought a turntable, taught himself to be a hip-hop DJ, and tried to record a rap record, recalled Wright, now 55, of Deer Park..

Wright’s piano lesson dreams finally came true two years ago, when he’d recently retired as a New York City sanitation worker. He was weight-training at the North Babylon LA Fitness when Joe Graziose, 74, of North Babylon, stopped by to compliment him on a 355-pound deadlift — and casually mentioned he was a piano teacher.

Not missing a beat, Wright asked, “Can you teach me?” He took Graziose’s business card, spent  $800 or $900 on an electric Yamaha keyboard that sounds “like a real piano,” and has been taking — and loving — weekly beginner piano lessons. The half-hour sessions cost $45.

“I needed to do something else that wasn’t going to be so taxing on my body and I could relax while doing it,” Wright said of learning the fundamentals of piano while seated at Graziose’s basement baby grand. But piano lessons are also part of Wright’s “health is wealth” long game, which also includes eating right. “The mortality rate for Black men is not good,” Wright said. “I want to try to extend my life as long as possible and have a high quality of life, and I want my mind to be as sharp as I would like my body to be.”

For some, playing pickleball, solving brain teasers and maybe learning a new language check the boxes for aging well physically and mentally. But Long Islanders in their 50s or 60s are also taking music lessons for the first time (or the first time since high school) to try to keep their minds sharp and in tune. Eager to take advantage of music study’s potential brain health benefit, they rarely miss a lesson, and they take pleasure in mastering pieces from classical to rock, heeding that old Carnegie Hall chestnut about practice, practice, practice.

“Whenever I teach an older student, they are very enthusiastic,” said Patricia Chen Jones, a Hicksville piano teacher in her 50s. Although most of Jones’ students are Gen Z or younger, she praises older learners for making an extra effort by asking questions, requesting songs they want to learn and doing all their homework. “You can see they practiced by their improvement,” said Jones, who charges $100 for a 45-minute session.

If you have the disposable income, free time and patience, and you don’t mind being the only boomer in the room, a growing chorus of evidence suggests at least some brain health benefits for late-starting music makers. For example, a four-year study published in June by Kyoto University in Japan found that for people in their 70s, “learning a musical instrument later in life may help keep the brain younger for longer,” as well as benefit “brain regions tied to memory and learning.” The study also found that “learning and continuing to play a musical instrument may help delay or reduce some of the cognitive changes associated with normal aging.” 

A whole-brain phenomenon

Can strumming, drumming and tickling the ivories really get your brain firing on all synapses?

“Making music is a whole-brain phenomenon,” confirms Christopher Christodoulou, a clinical and research neuropsychologist at the Stony Brook Medicine's Center of Excellence for Alzheimer’s Disease.

“A symphony of brain regions coordinate their activity to allow someone to play a musical instrument," Christodoulou said in an answer to emailed questions. He said the brain regions involved in making or listening to music include the temporal cortex (perceiving melody and pitch), the cerebellum (musical timing), the occipital cortex (reading musical notes), the parietal cortex (eye and hand coordination) and the frontal lobes (planning and controlling motor movements).

“There is some evidence for it [playing a musical instrument] benefiting cognition, mostly for piano and keyboard,” Christodoulou said. He added, “That does not mean that other instruments would not be” beneficial. “I think there is general evidence for people to engage in hobbies that interest them and that they find challenging.”

New hobbies are good for you

When older adults take on a challenging hobby such as music lessons, “they are more receptive and eager to learn” because “they are learning for pleasure,” said Lisa Polito, 71, of Kings Park, a retired orchestra director at North Shore High School in Glen Head, a violin teacher for 45 years and an electric violinist in a five-piece band. That’s why she gave her husband, Ed Polito, 76, jazz drumming lessons for his 65th birthday.

Ed Polito, a retired sales engineer for Electronic Hardware in Ronkonkoma, began playing drums as a hobby at 11 years old, and he toured as a professional rock drummer for 30 years, so he jumped at the chance to pick up sticks again, this time in a more challenging music genre.

“Doing that changeover from rock to jazz, you are sharpening your memory,” said Ed Polito, who took lessons for seven years with instructor Matt Miller, of Freeport. Jazz drumming, he said, requires “a lot of brain work,” which he credits with improving his short- and long-term memory.

Not all are looking for the brain-heath fountain of youth. Meryl Fordin, 59, of Mineola, said “finding a more well-rounded hobby set” motivated her to take music lessons after retiring four years ago from teaching health and physical education the East Williston School District.

“I wasn’t sure what life would be like not working,” said Fordin, who in addition to gardening and exercising regularly in retirement took art classes and piano lessons. When she realized she “had this gnawing feeling to play the guitar,” an instrument she’d played as a teen, she bought an acoustic Yamaha, studied online and then found her perfect guitar teaching “match” in Thomas Marcial, owner/instructor of Guitar Logic in Mineola. “He’s very patient, and he likes good music,” Fordin said of Marcial.

Marcial, 57, of Mineola, who’s been teaching guitar “on and off” since his late 20s, said guitar playing benefits the brain because it requires “alertness” and “a hyperfocus in the moment.”

“You have to think a lot faster,” Marcial said of guitar-playing’s demands. “And you’re running on two planes — what am I doing now and what can I do to prepare for what’s coming up next.” Furthermore, he said, “you can’t play something well until you’ve committed it to memory.”

Fordin, who works part-time as the executive director of the Bellmore-based nonprofit Math Olympiads, said guitar playing’s biggest challenge is what she calls “motor planning.”

“To play a song you need to be able to map out the music and the best position of your fingers, and then you have to remember it and repeat it,” she explains. “It definitely makes my brain tired.”

With practice and planning, however, Fordin said there are “aha!” moments, such as mastering The Beatles’ “Blackbird,” and the weekend her daughter and a friend were visiting and she took requests, downloading the guitar chords from an app. “The first song that we sang together was ‘Californication’ by The Red Hot Chili Peppers, my favorite rock group,” she said.

A breakthrough moment

Wright had his own epiphany when, frustrated by traditional beginners' exercises, he brought Graziose the sheet music for the first movement of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.” He told Graziose, whom he calls “professor”: “I don’t care if it takes me a year, I want to learn how to play this.’ ”

Two years into living his childhood dream of taking piano lessons, Wright said the sonata “is the only piece I can play all the way through because I always practice it.” But his practicing is music to the ears of his spouse, Asia, 51. “I enjoy when he plays his music when I’m cooking,” she said, “and I definitely can hear the improvement.”