The sign of a great community is one that lasts a lifetime. That’s what I observed when I accompanied my husband to a celebration of his piano teacher’s 65th birthday.

Patricia Chen has been teaching piano for decades. She’s one of the top piano teachers in the Denver area. Her students range from the dedicated adult who plays for fun (my husband) to the serious teenager headed for a music conservatory.

Patricia is a short, pudgy, woman, Chilean (her husband’s Asian surname name belies her fiery Latin American temperament), with the presence of a colonel. She provides a rigor and discipline to her teaching that few kids get in school, and combines it with a love for the feeling and nuances of music that is infectious.

My first tip off that I had entered a community built on Chen’s remarkable wisdom was the program for the celebration–a concert performed by her former students. The bios for the dozen plus performers were impressive. Many had majored in piano performance in college, won prestigious competitions, and performed with symphonies. The concert was mesmerizing, each piece played both technically and musically to the level of a professional. The opening piece was a piano duet, played by a molecular biology researcher at the University of Colorado and a piano prodigy who has been teaching since the age of 14.

Even more interesting: many former students did not teach or play professionally and had traveled across the country to be a part of the concert. Two are college students in California, one majoring in physics and the other in electrical engineering. Another is an energy policy reporter in Washington, D.C. Another had flown in from Chicago, 6 months pregnant with her third child.

For one former student, her last lesson with Chen was in 1988. She had driven from Boise, Idaho, picked up her mother in Salt Lake City, and continued on to Denver to play in the concert. I talked to the mother at the reception afterwards. She talked about driving through snow storms to deliver her daughter to her lesson. It was that important.

I wondered about what these students had experienced with Chen that made the bonds so strong. I approached the electrical engineering major at Stanford.  A tall thin man, he was quiet and shy, mirroring the sensitivity of the Liszt piece he played so masterfully. When asked about his experience, he said simply, "She was much more than a piano teacher." I wish I had had the presence of mind to probe further. He went on to say that being at the concert was a way to see old friends–other students he had known when he studied with Chen.

In addition to individual lessons, Chen holds a monthly salon at her home, where students play pieces for each other and give each other feedback. Years of attending these salons, along with Chen’s remarkable wisdom in how she teaches, had created a vibrant community.

When I asked my husband what made this teacher different, he noted several things–knowledge of the repetoire, willingness to set the bar high without being overbearing, and sense of humor.  It stuck with me that this woman knows how to push her students towards excellence, to get them to achieve more than they imagined. That is something her students, especially those who studied with her during their childhood and adolescence, never forget.