When Payam Khastkhodaei began teaching piano to a family friend’s daughter in his Bothell home at 16, he relied on the same method he had been taught as a kid—classical songbooks, rigid practice, and ...

My mother arranged for me to begin piano lessons every Monday evening at 7 p.m. with one of the most elegant figures of my childhood, whom I could never forget. She was the singular Genevieve Speckien ...