How music works, Hiromi edition

Do you want to know how music works? Watch this clip of Hiromi Uehara taking a piano lesson.

Here's some quick and crude observations from an email I just sent to a friend:

A younger Hiromi takes a lesson. Alas, not in any language I can understand. But at least you get to see a lot of supple fingers. And the left-hand gesture at 10:22. This is getting really interesting. But you have to watch their whole bodies, no?

You know about the lizard brain, right? Well, within the lizard brain there’s the worm’s brain (the reticular activating system, RAF). How does the RAF modulate whole body motion and the “long line” of the performance? There must be some kind of hierarchy of motor activation, from whole body/trunk, to arms, to fingers, whatever.

And it’s interesting how easily they slip in and out of intense playing mode.

So much to observe. So much to understand.

And the moments they play together. You notice how sometimes the teacher only tracks Hiromi on a note here and there, not every note in the passage.