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great a toll on his hands and his arms, and he wasn’t able to play
in a manner to do his musical ideas justice.

That led Walinsky on what he calls a “healing journey.”
“I tried a whole variety of different modalities,” he said.

Walinsky went to chiropractors and alternative healers.

“I went to somebody who was a rolfer (comparable to a
masseuse); you get worked over really good with that,” he said,
laughing. He also went to a surgeon who recommended surgery on both
hands; he was not ready for that.

“What I eventually bought into was the idea that if I don’t
change the way I was playing piano, then it wouldn’t matter if I
got the operation because then (the carpal tunnel) would set up
all over again.”
That led Walinsky to a piano wellness teacher in Cherry Hill,
New Jersey, named Sheila Paige. Paige, a classical pianist herself,
teaches the Taubman technique, which teaches musicians how to
play in ways that don’t harm their body.

It took Walinsky about five years of study with Paige to feel suf-
ficiently comfortable with the new technique to concertize again.

“It really takes quite a bit of time and practice to incorporate
that into one’s playing,” Walinsky confirmed. “Especially when
you’re playing up-tempo stuff — that stuff has to be right there,
literally at your fingertips.”
Rehab this extensive, no matter one’s predisposition towards
positivity, is an ordeal that can test patients and families, but
Walinsky’s support system — his wife Nina and his daughters,
14 DECEMBER 19, 2019
Lou Walinsky performs at Inglis House in Wynnefield, his second of three
performances in 2019-2020 sponsored by the PA Council on the Arts.

Courtesy of Lou Walinsky
Sonia Gordon-Walinsky and Naomi Walinsky-King— hasn’t
wavered, in part because they know that Walinsky needs music,
and needs to be able to play his way, to feel whole.

“My dad’s music for him is very much like prayer, and I feel
that my artwork is like prayer also,” said Gordon-Walinsky, 37,
an artist specializing in Torah-centered calligraphy, whom the
Jewish Exponent profiled earlier this year. “I feel like (playing
music) is pretty much as essential as drinking water, for him.”
But it’s not just for her father’s own personal fulfillment that
Gordon-Walinsky encourages him to keep stoking the fires of his
musical passion; it’s for hers, too.

“Listening to his music, for me, is life affirming. It connects
you to something good; it puts life in perspective.” Gordon-
Walinsky said. “Some pieces, like his rendition of (the traditional
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