ROBIN SPIELBERG composer/pianist

When I was a little girl, my mother and I would take walks to collect the colorful autumn leaves that had fallen to the ground. I placed my carefully selected maple, elm, pear, oak and walnut leaves into a plastic bag. They were orange, yellow, crimson, red, green and gold. When we got home we’d find the biggest books in the house, usually the dictionary and a few encyclopedias and we’d place the leaves in between the pages. Weeks later, we’d take them out to admire them.  A few times in school our class would iron the leaves we had collected in between pieces of wax paper and display them on the windows of our classroom. The pieces were so beautiful when the sun shined through.

When I was a teenager, my mind turned to a different kind of Autumn Leaves, as in the song by Roger Williams. Alan Wolfe, my piano teacher, showed me a billion ways that song could be arranged: as a classical piece, a jazz standard, as swing, as pop, as a rock anthem. It was a “flexible” song, and enduring song and just as colorful as the leaves I had collected as a young girl.

Roger Williams died this weekend. He was an amazing pianist and composer and his legacy will live on, long after the colors of Autumn have faded.