A love for music

Teacher, student share backgrounds of piano, adoption

Joan Cronk

Special to the Gateway

Piano teacher Kimberley Joe and her youngest student, Mia Filand, have more than just piano lessons in common. They are both adopted and were born with a natural talent for music.

Joe grew up in a loving and musical family. Her dad, Walt Friesen, owned a piano store in Gig Harbor. He bought and sold pianos and was a top-notch turner, and Joe’s mom, Lois, taught piano to neighborhood children.

Mary Beth Gilbert, a well-known piano teacher in Gig Harbor, was one of Joe’s first piano teachers, and Joe credits Gilbert with instilling her with a real love for the piano. The Friesens told Joe early on that she was adopted, and, even though Lois was an excellent piano teacher, Joe seemed to have a special connection to music.

Joe said music was more in her mom’s head.

“She was educated in music,” Joe said, “but I just had it. Mom would play a simple tune and, even at 5 years old, I would cry because it was so beautiful.”

Lois told her daughter she just knew she “came from music.”

And she was right.

More than 30 years later, Joe connected with her biological parents and found they were deeply involved in the music industry.

Mia, who is 5 years old and was adopted from China by parents Eliza and Darrin Filand, seems to have a natural talent for the piano. She recently completed her seventh lesson with Joe.

Eliza said as soon as they brought Mia home when she was 15 months old, she started to sway to music.

“She has a memory for songs and can sing them word for word,” Eliza said.

Even though Mia couldn’t speak English when she came to the United States with her parents, “music was something she keyed in to,” Eliza said.

The Filands were pleased to find such an accomplished teacher in Joe.

“She is patient, makes Mia feel comfortable and reinforces her,” Eliza said.

Although Mia may never be able to meet her biological mother, she and Joe have talked about the fact that they are both adopted and that they share a love for the piano.

Joe is busy teaching lessons nearly every day in the studio her husband built for her. Although she loves to teach music, she loves to play and compose as well.

“I love to play the piano and sing,” she said. “I love to compose, and if I’m not careful, I can do a good two hours a night.”

As a busy high school senior at Peninsula High School, Joe found that when the stresses of the day got to her, music was her savior.

“It was always a release for me to come in and play and be separate from everything,” she said.

Joe said she especially loves the romantic period and composers like Chopin, Liszt and Mendelssohn. She began her piano teaching career in high school and recognized right away that it would be a great career for someone who wanted to stay at home with children.

After college and marriage, she began to teach piano on a nearly full-time basis. Joe’s students range in age from 5 to 50, and she teaches beginning students and more advanced students.

Joe finds younger students have an amazing flexibility with their fingers.

“The older students understand the lesson right off the bat,” she said, “but their hands don’t move as well.”

The Joes have one daughter, Kassia, who is 16 and is an accomplished pianist in her own right. She has started teaching as well and currently has about four students.

With 25 students to teach every week, Joe stays busy, but she said she loves it. Some of the students have half-hour lessons, and some lessons are 40 minutes long, but every day, Joe said, “they are in and out, boom, boom, boom.

“The day goes quickly, and it is so interesting,” she said.

Joe teaches every day and is never very far from her piano.

“My hands,” Joe said, speaking fondly of her musical career, “are in it every day.”