The Piano Teacher Who Stayed After the Recital

In 1987, a piano teacher named Margaret Ellison in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, watched her student David — a twelve-year-old with a stutter and hands that shook before every performance — freeze three bars into a Chopin nocturne at his first recital. The audience shifted uncomfortably. David's fingers hovered above the keys like birds afraid to land. Margaret did not rush to the bench.…