Mabel Gerber, a pianist who dazzled audiences at Carnegie Hall while staying grounded as a piano teacher in Norwood, died on Nov. 21 after a long fight with multiple myeloma, friends and family confirmed. She was 85.

Gerber was known as the neighborhood’s omnipresent piano teacher and owner of Gerber’s Piano Studio at 3230 Bainbridge Ave. It’s there she taught classical music and all its lyrical parts to hundreds of students around Norwood over the last six decades, often culminating with performances at MS 80 or PS. 8.

Gerber was born to Edward and Salome Gerber on Oct. 4, 1930 inside the same home she lived all her life–an apartment on Rochambeau Avenue. An only child, Gerber had an affinity for music borne of her mother, also a pianist and owner of the Bainbridge piano studio. At the age of 9, the younger Gerber would sit at the family’s Steinway & Sons piano, a tony instrument that, like Gerber, became a fixture in that apartment for decades.

After attending MS 80 and graduating from the High School of Music and Art, Gerber enrolled at the

Manhattan School of Music on scholarship, earning a bachelor and master degrees in music in 1951. She took her love of Bach, Mozart and Schubert, sampling their music at some high-profile venues.

She played at organizations such as the Educational Alliance, a storied recreational and social services organization in Lower Manhattan, later gracing the stage at Carnegie Hall in 1961 for some solo performances. Across from Carnegie Hall was Cami and Hudson halls, music centers where she and her students played for several years, delighting crowds with her Twilight Concert series.

“The concerts were real character building,” said Rebecca Citron, Gerber’s cousin, adding Gerber’s lessons went beyond “just sitting down at the piano.”

Having remained single her entire life, Gerber was survived by Citron, and her surrogate son, Richard Miranda, who met Gerber 40 years ago. “Her family was the students that she had,” said Miranda, hired by Gerber as the studio’s maintenance man. “She would take off her coat and give it to you.”

As Norwood’s Jewish population began leaving, Gerber, also Jewish, stayed in the neighborhood, eventually taking over the Bainbridge music school shortly after her mother passed. Her mind was seldom on profit, foregoing high fees just so the children can practice. She offered a half hour’s worth of private instruction to young students for as low as $8 in 1999 as a way to accommodate Norwood’s growing working class.

“Some kids are too poor to pay, so I don’t charge them,” said Gerber in an interview with the Norwood News in 1999. “The children don’t know. I just tell them their parents sent me the check. I try. I do my little bit. I do what I can.”

During school recitals, Gerber would remain by her students’ side in a show of support. “She got very involved with many of them, helping them to get into colleges, to auditions, some of them went on to do music,” said Citron.

Gerber, a gregarious conversationalist with a fondness for felines, also had a political side. A member of the now dissolved Decatur Democratic Club, Gerber would help cast light on problematic issues within the former 83rd Assembly District (now the 81st Assembly District), volunteering as a poll worker during election season.

In respect to her Jewish roots and wishes, Gerber was buried the day after her death at Mount Hebron Cemetery in Queens, the final resting place of her parents.

Back in Norwood, friends sat at Gerber’s shiva [a Jewish tradition of seven days of mourning following a death] held inside her apartment Dec. 5. Days before, Miranda spent days categorizing Gerber’s moments, taking stock of her memorabilia inside her one-bedroom apartment. Among them were old ticket stubs and playbills of Gerber’s performances at Carnegie Hall. Miranda considered Gerber a fond preserver of memories, always inclined to maintain keepsakes that stretched back to the 1930s. In the last few weeks, former students have stopped by Gerber’s apartment to pick up a memento to remember Gerber. As for the Steinway piano, it still remains. The music school has since closed.

admin

Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.