SUN VALLEY : Braille Opens New World for Blind Musician

A shotgun blast to the head 11 years ago robbed Rick Johnston of his world of vision, but a unique Sun Valley school that teaches Braille music to the blind is opening up a world of color.

“It’s a dream come true,” said Johnston, 28, a Burbank resident who got his first guitar on his 17th birthday, two weeks after the shooting. Like most every other blind musician, he learned to play by ear. “I never thought I’d be able to play real music,” he said.

To Johnston, real music is jazz, with all its color and complexity.

And until he started taking lessons at the Southern California Conservatory of Music in Sun Valley, jazz was out of reach--something hidden behind a door, which he might get a metaphorical glance at through a peephole. The man who has opened that door for him was Braille music instructor Richard Taesch.

“I never thought there’d be a reason to seriously learn Braille,” said Johnston, taking a break from a lesson with Taesch, a guitar strapped across his lap and his seeing-eye dog, Eli, sprawled on the floor before him.

The conservatory, which opened in 1972, is run out of a strip mall along Sunland Boulevard. But the work by Taesch, who began Braille music instruction there a year ago, has started to make waves among the blind.

“I admire what he’s doing,” said Bettye Krolick, a transcriber and Braille music authority.

By setting up the program, Taesch has created the first Braille music program independent of a school for the blind and one of only two in the country--the other is in New York--where blind students are taught to read music in Braille, said Krolick, who lives in Fort Collins, Colo.

“Most blind students go to sighted schools,” Krolick said. “But the sighted schools don’t have teachers familiar with the (Braille) music code. There’s been a tremendous need for this. Many college students graduate from schools with music degrees that are meaningless because they are still illiterate.”

The lack of Braille instruction forced Nenita Dround, a 37-year-old blind singer, to drop her music instruction at Los Angeles City College. It had been too frustrating to learn without being able to see the notes on paper, she said.

Dround, of Tarzana, wants to learn Braille music so she can better run the choir at her local church. She started taking lessons from Taesch about three months ago.

There are only 75 Braille music transcribers in the United States, a profession so rare that when Taesch became certified in 1992, he was the only person to do so that year.

One of Taesch’s students comes from San Diego for her lessons. He has also received an inquiry from a French student who was interested in joining the program while studying in a Northern California school.

One of his first students was Johnston. “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Johnston said about his being shot on a residential street in Burbank. A man who had a history of mental problems had picked him randomly. Although Johnston was declared dead three times after the shooting, he recovered but for the loss of vision and some shotgun pellets still in his head.

Through his guitar he discovered a love for music. He also discovered religion and his interest in music changed from his adolescent interest in Eddie Van Halen to blues and Texas swing. Now, Johnston is married with a 3 1/2-year-old daughter, has written 18 songs and sings at his church and at coffeehouses.