- April 26, 2024
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Stella Pola, 97, began playing piano at 10. An hour lesson cost $1, but after the first year, her family couldn’t afford it anymore. This did not make her stop. Her teacher, seeing a talent in Pola, gave her free lessons a couple times a week. By the time she was 15, she was playing large pieces and eventually went to school for music.
Wanting to give that joy of piano back to young students, Pola began teaching piano herself. Fifty-five years later, the past 33 of them spent in Flagler County, Pola continues to mold young musical minds.
“I have developed a method, which is not truly original, but a compilation of concepts that I use which is very successful,” Pola said while sitting in her living room, with two pianos and a wall of sketched portraits of famous composer’s adjacent to her. “I treat it as an extension as ones education. It’s a fundamental music education, just like any other subject.”
Pola went on to quote Plato siting that music is one of the three great disciplines, along with math and philosophy.
“Today, it’s a little bit more difficult with students because they have instant gratification,” she said. “In music, it doesn’t happen that way. You have to practice, coordinate, use math and create. It is really a very complicated concept.”
The complexities of learning music, Pola said, make better students in other areas.
“I want to stress how important music education is in the education of a child,” she said also noting that most of her students have been honor roll and scholarship students. “Even underprivileged students, if they have music in school, the students perform much better.”
Pola’s current students will perform Saturday, Jan. 26, in a concert that she said might be her last public concert.
The program will feature music by Beethoven, Chopin, Rachmanifov and Copeland in addition to pop and jazz composers.
“If I can make a child a better person through music, then I feel I have done my duty to society,” Pola said.
Students performing Saturday are Janine Jao, Johanna Ceballos, Grayson Bertaina, Joshua Ceballos, Lilia Yefimov, Nina Eustaquio, Ernest Ardon, Barret Manfre and Justin Punsalan.
The concert is at 4 p.m., at Palm Coast United Methodist Church, 5200 Belle Terre Parkway.
