In many ways it is a love story and it begins in the 1970s.
Paul Cummins, principal of a Santa Monica elementary school called St. Augustine-by-the-Sea, was looking for a music teacher and a colleague suggested he call a rustic canyon pianist named Mary Ann.
Mary Ann was not interested in the job, but she agreed to host a get-together at her home and introduce Cummins to the two teachers. But Cummins did not want the remaining two. He wanted Mary Ann.
At the age of 93, Cummins teaches at several schools and as a private piano instructor.
(David Butow/For The Times)
After meeting Mary Ann and hearing about her teaching techniques he told a friend, “She’s the best teacher I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Cummins talked Mary Ann into taking the job, and soon, she joined the faculty of a brand new middle school Cummins co-founded called Crossroads.
That was in 1971.
But 1972 was also a year of new beginnings. This was the year that Paul and Mary Ann were married.
Fifty-five years later, Mr. and Mrs. Cummins live together in the house where they met. And Mary Ann is still teaching at the Crossroads, among other locations.
“She’s 93 and has the energy of a teenager,” Paul Cummins, 88, said of his wife. “She’s kind of a weirdo.”
I can confirm this after spending several hours with her on Tuesday, juggling teaching at two schools and then rushing home to greet my private students.
At St. Anne’s School in Santa Monica, I watched Cummins harness the quirky energy of second-graders wielding xylophone mallets. she is using it orff schulwerk approach For decades, students create music in rhythm-driven ensembles of singing, dancing and moving.
Music teacher Mary Ann Cummins works with second grade students at St. Anne’s Elementary School.
(David Butow/For The Times)
“Two, three, four,” Cummins counted down, and his eager little group broke into song: “It’s my little light, I’ll let it shine.”
When the session ended, Cummins, who bakes more cookies than Famous Amos, sent each of her students out with a gift.
Next stop, Crossroads School, where the music level went up several notches. A high school keyboard class came first, followed by a music theory class, and Cummins handled both like a conductor leading an orchestra, showering his students with “well done.”
And then I followed Cummins to his home and watched him tutor two of his 18 or so private students. One, a 7-year-old girl named Birdie, was accompanied by her mother, who sat on the same piano stool as a student a generation earlier.
“Look, there’s something genetically wrong,” said Emily Cummins Polk, the youngest of Mary Ann Cummins’ four daughters. “She has incredible genes, but you can’t ignore the fact that she’s 6 years old and goes to yoga. She’s active seven days a week… and I don’t think she has any intention of slowing down.”
I told Polk that her mother seems equally adept at working with second graders and high school students, and that no one, including her teacher, has a clue about her age. This is partly because – especially with advanced classical musicians – teacher and student are speaking the same language. But there is more to it than that.
Mary Ann Cummins works with Kara Cheng, 10, at the Cummins home.
(David Butow/For The Times)
Polk said, “I think it’s because she has so many passions… and still approaches the world with the curiosity of a child.” “If she sees something in pop culture that kids connect with, she has to understand it. She’s into every world, whether it’s politics, movies, yoga, cooking delicious food, the Dodgers. …She just has a crazy lust for life.”
When she was a child, her parents joined a pipeline of international musicians who needed a place to stay while studying in the U.S. They opened their home for months and sometimes longer periods of time, Polk said, creating a vast extended family that has maintained close ties.
Anna Cummins, one of four daughters, said that music was a tool her mother used to “teach life lessons, far beyond the piano or music theory.”
Anna said, “She weaves together literature and philosophy and emphasizes that music should make you a more well-rounded person.” “It’s not about being a concert pianist. It’s about… connecting to something spiritual that’s bigger than yourself.”
When she was a young violinist, Anna said, her mother taught her that to continue improving, she had to put her ego aside and accept mistakes as part of the bargain. Anna’s daughter, now 13, takes lessons from her grandmother.
It should be noted that Paul Cummins himself is no lazy person. The longtime teacher, principal and arts supporter is still involved with the schools he helped start after Crossroads, including Camino Nuevo Charter and Tree Academy. And he is the founder of PS Arts, a nonprofit initially funded by musician Herb Alpert to help bridge the gap in arts education for thousands of public school students.
Mary Ann and Paul Cummins with their dog, Charlie, at their Santa Monica home.
(David Butow/For The Times)
a published poet, Cummins writes daily, and as he describes it, this means he is sometimes “nostalgic” or “anxious about the future.” But the shape of time is different for a musician, he said, and he once wrote a poem that captured the essence of his wife’s everlasting grace.
“I find myself staring into the studio, For forty-three years now: his focus is always, at every moment, on his students.”
Gina Colletti, director of the Elizabeth Mandel Music Institute at the Crossroads, told me that many of those students graduated elite music schools and moved on to professional careers, even as Mary Ann Cummins turned her attention to the next generation, and the next, and the next. For Cummins, teaching is “like the elixir of youth,” said Colletti, who was not surprised to hear that it took a little work for Cummins to open his door to me.
Colletti said, “I think it’s rare to find someone who does things without his ego getting involved.” “And I think that’s what Mary Ann does. It’s about the music. It’s always about the students.”
Cummins was nominated two years ago Steinway & Sons Teacher Hall of Fame. Later this year, a new performing arts center will open at the intersection, and the recital hall will be called The Mary Ann.
When music theory class ended at Crossroads on Tuesday, a senior named Lola Goetz asked me if she could say something about Cummins.
Mary Ann Cummins speaks with High School senior Lola Goetz, who cites Cummins as a major influence in her development.
(David Butow/For The Times)
“Without Mary Ann I wouldn’t be the person I am… the musician I am,” said Goetz, a classical and jazz musician and composer who began learning with Cummins in the first grade.
“Would you have said that if I wasn’t in the room?” Cummins asked.
“Yes,” said Goetz, who has several college options in front of him. “She’s so humble, but I want you to… know that she really is the best.”
Polk told me he is often asked if his mother ever slows down.
“And the way I look at it is he doesn’t have time to slow down,” Polk said.
Music, Mary Ann Cummins told me, is a language “that reaches deeper into you than other languages. It finds a place in you.” In theory class, she and her students took turns at the keyboard, trying to break down Chopin’s musical language.
It seemed to me that by asking what Chopin was thinking 200 years ago in a particular composition, she was indirectly asking her students what they were thinking now. About ourselves, about the infinite expanse of creativity, about the power of music to transcend borders, endure wars, endure through centuries and still inspire.
Cummins was in the moment, time suspended, his attention focused on his students.
“It feeds me,” she says. “Music is my life, and I can’t do it.”
steve.lopez@latimes.com
