Well-Known Piano Teacher Known for His Jokes Died in May

First, Ronald Graham played the accordion — at 10 years old he was already being asked to play for radio stations in Fortuna, where he lived.

At the same age he started playing piano. His parents would put him on a Greyhound bus each Friday night to San Francisco — five hours away — so he could spend weekends with world-renowned music teachers. He was that good.

As an adult, he was even better. He made music his life, moved to Pleasanton and impacted many people, family and friends say.

Graham, a classical pianist who wowed crowds and ran a piano studio in town for 20 years, died in May at age 62 from a heart attack. 

Along with his wife, two daughters, a son and three stepdaughters, he leaves behind hundreds of local piano students.

"Not only was he one of the best instructors in the area because of his skills, he was the most patient person," said Graham's wife, Nooshin Asbagh.

"He had students who would come back from college during the summer and they'd ask him if they could take lessons before they went back. It was a long-term relationship. They all really loved him."

Asbagh said she and Graham were in downtown Walnut Creek on May 22 having lunch when she and her daughter decided to do some shopping. He stayed behind at one of the bookstores. A few minutes later, he called and told her he was having chest pains, but by the time Asbagh got to the book store, he had passed out.

He was taken to the hospital, but doctors couldn't revive him.

Graham and Asbagh, along with some of the kids, had been planning a trip to Hawaii and Turkey this summer to celebrate their anniversary.

"We had planned this with our children, and I didn't want to tell them we weren't going," Asbagh said. "So we're still planning to go."

At the time he died, Graham had a roster of 40 piano students. Asbagh said it's tough to count how many people he taught, but it had to be hundreds. After his death, emails and pictures, cards and letters came pouring in.

"That tells me that he achieved his goal in terms of passing on this joy of music," she said. "They miss him so much."

Asbagh herself had been one of Graham's students. Back in the 1990s, she was going through what she calls a sad divorce. He had started teaching one of her three daughters and Asbagh, in her late 30s at the time, signed up for lessons.

"He was such a warm, wonderful man — such a supportive person," she said. "We just started to get closer and closer and we've been together ever since. That was 14 years ago."

After they married, the pair traveled to Croatia, China, South America and Europe, among other places. Graham had a wide range of interests and a joy for life, Asbagh said.

She said that although she misses him a great deal, many memories give her peace. Usually, it's a joke that he told or some quotation he'd read out loud from a book. He loved jokes, to the point where his students would remember ones they heard so they could tell Graham at their lessons.

"He would wake up in the morning telling jokes," Asbagh said. "He would call up friends and say, 'Hey, I just wanted to tell you this joke,' and if they didn't answer the phone, he'd leave it on their answering machine."

Asbagh said Graham also loved the Giants, and would explain the intricacies of the game to whoever happened to be sitting nearby. When his team made a nice play, he'd jump up and say, "Did you see that?"

"It was fun to watch him with so much passion — at times it was more fun to watch him than the game," Asbagh said.

Graham lectured all over the Bay Area, including at California State University, East Bay,  and Evergreen State College. He was a past president of the Music Teachers Association of California and former chairman of the National Guild of Piano Teachers.

Asbagh said she still talks to him. She tells him that she's not going to close down the studio — the two teachers who were working there full time will take Graham's students. They're signing up new students, too.

"Every moment, I still feel like he's with me," Asbagh said. "I talk to him, I write to him, I read to him. Last night, I told him that I'm not going to give up on that studio — that it will stay open as long as I'm around.

"I know I'll see him again," she said. "I'm looking forward to that."

To sign up for lessons, call Nooshin Asbagh at 925-462-5645. For more information about the studio, go here.