Walt Gschiel

Walt's musical journey started as a young child when he was exposed to music at an early age. His grandmother was a music teacher of various instruments and his aunt was a symphony cellist but he was exposed to piano, string instruments as well as woodwinds. He chose the piano, not sure why, and started formal classical training in 1966 at age 10. Obviously he learned the classics from The Masters and was taught by Robin Wood and Winifred Scott, two very accomplished concert musicians, who had just started The Victoria Conservatory Of Music. But as every kid was back then he had been exposed to The Beatles and all the bands that followed. Then came Ray Manzerak, Mark Stein, Jon Lord and his interest was turning to rock. Then he heard the Moog solo from Lucky Man as played by Keith Emerson and that was it. He asked Ms. Scott, who was his instructor during his 4th year if and when he would start to play popular music. She scoffed at that genre but did say that it would be explored in the ninth year. He couldn’t deal with another few years of endless evening practicing so he told his parents he wanted to give up the training. Probably a mistake but it was what it was. “During ... more...