Pinny Ostreicher's first Afikoman Gift

"I f you don’t count drumming on the pots and pans I received my first instrument a melodica when I was around five years old ” he remembers. “I had the afikomen and my parents offered me a trip to the top of the Twin Towers. I said ‘No I want an instrument to play.’ And so I received a melodica (a portable keyboard played by blowing air through a flexible pipe that’s attached to the side of the instrument). My great uncle Reb Dovid Felberbaum z”l of New Square taught me how to play the classic song ‘Ki Lashem Hamelucha Umosheil Bagoyim’ and that was the first tune I learned. Next someone showed me how to play ‘Moshe Emes.’ I picked up more songs by ear. I had no teacher no lessons but I just kept practicing. By the time I was 11 I had taught myself a little about harmony and chords and was proficient enough to play at a family sheva brachos and at 14 I played for an entire camp kumzitz.”

When Pinny eventually went for his first lessons from a master pianist in Israel the teacher said “About playing music I have nothing to teach you. We can begin with musical theory.”

Encore advice

Which songs should you ask a singer to perform? Mainly his own says composer and performer Boruch Sholom Blesofsky. “When singing at a wedding I do a much better job of singing my own material than other people’s songs. I don’t think I sing other people’s music that well and I think that may be true of a lot of singers who are also songwriters. Performing music that I have written myself completes a picture like nothing else.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha Issue 686)