Alameda Musician Eric Myers

Growing up in the small town of Olean, N.Y., Eric Myers, now 33, played drums and piano, performed in the high school jazz band, and sang in the chorus. 

He was, he says, a "music nerd."

Then, as a slightly rebellious teenager, he and his older brother formed an alternative rock band called Speed Queens. "We were great admirers of groups like Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr," he says. "It was anti-MTV."

Then in college at Bard, a small school in upstate New York, which Myers describes as being "smack dab in the middle of nowhere," he majored in music, which was not unexpected. He also majored in Chinese.

Nine years ago, Myers moved to the Bay Area to study music composition at Mills College, and since 2005 he has taught piano at Alameda's Starland Music. Four years ago, he began working with Melody of China, a San Francisco-based non-profit dedicated to performing and promoting Chinese classical, folk and contemporary music.

Why Alameda?  At first, Malka [Myers' wife] and I thought we would live in Oakland because Mills is there. Then someone suggested Alameda. I liked the Victorians, which remind me of the charm of some of the small towns in New York. And then when we saw the beach and decided we wanted to live here. Our landlord was great. He rented to us even though we were grad students and didn't have jobs at the time. Nine years later, we still have the same landlord.

What was it like leaving small-town New York? I spent one summer in Tianjing Normal University after freshman year in 1996. It was amazing because I'd never been to China. After graduating from Bard, Malka and I took jobs teaching English in a private school in Suzhou for about eight months. It was a great experience and I'm glad we did it.

Did you feel very "other" when you were in China? Yes, very much so.  We were actually quite the spectacle. People had no qualms about standing and staring at us. That was quite an experience being the outsider.

How much time do you spend teaching at Starland? I start about two in the afternoon and go until about seven or eight every day except Sunday.

Do you like it? I do. I find it rewarding.

What are the moments you like most in teaching? When a student surprises me by doing something he didn't think he could do. 

What kind of music do you write? My pieces have classical and jazz influences. When I write I usually start by improvising on the piano and if something happens that I really like, I'll write it down. Then I follow the flow of where it's going.

I wrote two pieces for Melody of China, "Meandering Streams" and "Butterfly's Beginnings." That was interesting because I'd never written for a yangqing (hammered dulcimer), guzheng (table harp), and erhu (two-stringed fiddle). 

What else do you compose? I recently finished my first string quartet. 

Do you have a schedule or place for writing music?  I don't have a specific place where I usually compose. There are certain situations that lend themselves to ideas coming out. For instance, if I have an hour between lessons at Starland, I'll noodle around and sometimes something happens. There is such a thing as inspiration. 

Sounds like you give yourself the time to play. Yes. I don't adhere to any strict schedule. I don't try to force it out of myself. I just let it happen. I think that's the best way to cultivate creativity. If it's in there somewhere, it'll come out.  If you give it time and if you put yourself in an environment where there are the tools—whether it's musical instruments or whatever—where you can mess around, you'll increase the likelihood you'll come up with something.

Listen to some of Myers' compositions here.