I always loved music, and had some beginning classical style instruction the year we lived in France (71-72). I loved listening to music but the piano instruction I had wasn't really enabling me to do what I heard on records. My Mom, in about 1973, suggested that I could take lessons from Phil Gallo, our next door neighbor - I was about 12 and he was then about 22 I think. Phil had been playing keyboard in bands for some time.
I had a book of Beatles sheet music, which I tried to play by following the notes of the arrangements. He said “look at these things above the guitar diagrams” - i.e. chord names - and started explaining what you can do with them - that was the beginning of my musical journey. I remember him showing me a “shuffle” pattern and talking about there being different “turnarounds” that could come at the end of a 12 bar blues. The "blues scales". Some theory - practicing the different chords up and down the chromatic scale. The Mehegan books. At some point he sent me to Russ Messina, his teacher. A strange footnote is that Phil's sister Linda, who used to babysit us, got married and Russ Messina's band played at the reception. He was on accordion, which was a whole thing with him that I didn't get involved with.
After I wasn’t taking lessons with Phil, I remember many visits to his house next door and him showing me an organ, a clavinet, a piano with weights on the keys to build strength - tons of music he was listening to or working on. For instance "Hard Times" as done by the Crusaders. He advised my Dad to get me a Fender Rhodes which was the key to my surviving junior high and high school. That Rhodes saw me through playing in school and eventually out in Buffalo through high school.
Phil has always had the greatest feel and rhythm that I could never match. I still remember him playing Ray Charles tunes in their living room in 1985.
Some time ago, maybe 10 or 15 years ago, Phil found some of the many things by or about my Dad on the internet and sent a message to my Dad asking after me. So we have corresponded via email since then. He was for a while playing in and leading the band at a prominent church there, GLIDE, and through that I was able to see and hear him playing on the internet. He also has shared recordings from his studio with me.
More recently, I wanted to get some sort of keyboard, and he advised me what to get, which has worked out great. Some of my own choices for keyboards have not been wise, but this one has served me well.
So Lisa and I went to California, and we met up with Phil and his wife Rhonda- he gave us a great tour of San Francisco, ending with a visit to a little bar where some friends of his were playing. Unfortunately I did not get to hear him play on this visit.
The impact of Phil's teaching and mentoring on me would be "impossible to overstate".