Piano prodigy

"Multitalented" doesn't quite describe Damaris Gemmer.

She writes for and publishes her own bimonthly magazine.

She takes voice lessons and sings in the Flathead Valley Homeschool Choir.

She loves to act and has appeared in productions by local home-schoolers, Missoula Children's Theatre and the Bigfork Playhouse.

To top it all, she is a talented pianist who began performing when she was 5 years old. She has written more than 70 songs in the last six years. Last year, she recorded her first CD, "Breath of Music," which features 15 original songs.

"Exceptional" might be a more apt description of the 13-year-old prodigy.

Playing the piano is very expressive, Damaris said. It's an outlet. When she's having a bad day, she sits down and plays.

But excellence is rewarding as well.

"It's just kind of fun to be good at something," she said.

Some of her ability is innate, but Damaris has worked hard to become a good pianist. She takes weekly lessons and plays for about an hour a day - longer if she's getting ready for a performance.

She was 4 when she began taking lessons from one of her father's former music students.

"She called and said, 'Damaris has to take piano lessons, and she has to take them from me,'" Damaris said. "And she offered them for free."

Damaris enjoyed the lessons from the start, and her talent was evident early. When she was 5, she began performing at Heritage Place. She has played there frequently ever since.

The residents love it, her mother, Connie Gemmer, said. They dance and clamor for the young pianist's autograph.

"One lady tells me, 'I'll spank you if you don't become famous,'" Damaris said.

As she improved, she moved on to more difficult pieces and more challenging teachers. Each of her four teachers has had different strengths and has brought something unique to Damaris' musical education. One instructor was a songwriter who encouraged Damaris to compose as well.

"If it hadn't been for her, [Damaris] probably wouldn't have kept writing," Gemmer said.

Damaris has written some songs for class assignments. Others, however, have simply come to her.

Some have even come in dreams. Damaris once dreamed she was swimming in Echo Lake, where there were beautiful, brilliant colors under the water's glassy blue surface. She turned the vivid dream into her first song, "The Water Song," when she was 7 years old.

Once a melody played in a dream "like background music." Other dreams are less obliging.

"I heard a lady sing in a dream I had, but she only sang one line of the song," Damaris said in an exasperated tone. "It was about Superman, I think."

One song was the result of an earworm - a tune Damaris couldn't get out of her mind. The song became "Pizzazz," which Damaris wrote when she was 9 years old.

"I heard it for years in my head," she said. "It went round and round and round in my head. It was so annoying.

"So finally, I wrote the song. And then it went away."

Most of the time, however, Damaris has to work out the melody.

"Sometimes I just have this itch: Today I'm going to write a song," she explained.

When that mood comes, Damaris sits at the piano and starts experimenting.

"I don't write by any category," she said. "You couldn't call it classical. It's just its own.

"It doesn't follow any form. Some don't even have time signatures."

Creativity is the norm in the Gemmer household, Connie Gemmer said.

"Our first piece of furniture was what? A piano," she said. "Before we even had a bed."

Connie is an artist whose many art forms include needle-felting, wreath-making and painting furniture. Her husband, Marty, is a musician who sometimes accompanies his daughter on guitar. Damaris' older brother, Blair, enjoys photography and is studying media arts and computer science at the University of Montana.

Damaris was very young when her parents recognized her musical ability. Their first clue was her perfect pitch.

"Children usually cannot stay on pitch," Connie Gemmer said. "They cannot sing a melody."

Staying on pitch was no problem for Damaris - an ability that stunned her father.

"He was amazed when she was young," Gemmer said.

Marty recognized his daughter's talent, Gemmer explained, whereas she felt it.

"I could hear it with my heart," she said. "I was amazed with her ability to convey feeling and emotion."

Other people have experienced what Gemmer calls the "spiritual quality" of her daughter's music. After hearing Damaris play, people have told Gemmer they've felt a peace or been moved to tears.

"I knew it wasn't just me," she said. "She was helping people. That encouraged me."

"If other people wouldn't say it, too, I'd think I was just being a mom," she added.

Audiences may be absorbed in Damaris' music when she performs, but the pianist herself usually is anything but focused.

"I get really distracted when I play," she said, laughing.

When she knows a piece well enough to play without thinking, her mind wanders. Sometimes she thinks about her plans for the next day. Occasionally, she laughs aloud because she's been thinking about something funny.

"It's better when I focus," she said.

Even when she isn't focused, her music is powerful.

"I hear her play sometimes, and I know somehow everything's going to be OK," Gemmer said.

Damaris Gemmer's CD, "Breath of Music," is available at Sassafras in downtown Kalispell.