She gazed out her window and saw nothing — everything was pitch black. Smoke from the Eaton fire hung like a curtain around her quaint Altadena home the morning of Jan. 8.

Jeanina Quezada, 63, a pianist, piano teacher and director of Foothills Music Together, was later sent a video that showed her home of 27 years engulfed in flames. She had escaped, grabbing a few music books, some clothes, her laptop, phone, chargers, contact lenses and a toothbrush.

When she went back to see what was left, she noticed the metal guts or piano harp from her 100-year-old Steinway grand piano poking out of the ashes. She said her goodbyes, took a photo and left, offering the item to a metal recycler. “If I think about it, it makes me sad,” she said.

Fast forward three months. Harvey Mudd College music professor Bill Alves learned about a 70-year-old Bösendorfer, a high-end Austrian-made grand piano, taken from its only home at the Garrett House, once the home of Harvey Mudd College founder and first president, Joseph Platt. He, his daughters, later inhabitants and piano students had played the grand piano.

Mudd College, part of the Claremont Colleges and one of the most prestigious STEM schools in the nation, had no place for the large piano and the president’s home was changed into student housing. Performance spaces and practice rooms already had pianos. The new president, Harriet Nembhard, didn’t play and her husband, David Nembhard owned his own piano, Alves explained.

So the college gifted the Bösendorfer to Quezada in late April, so she could continue her work as a private piano and music teacher to children in the San Gabriel Valley and beyond.

“I found out she had lost her home and Jeanina’s Steinway was in ashes. I thought of this piano here at Harvey Mudd that didn’t have a home,” Alves said. “I am very satisfied with the place we found for it. For my colleagues to see the importance of helping someone out in this community with this gift was really rewarding.”

Beth Platt Garrow lived in the home and has fond memories of the instrument. “I grew up playing that beautiful piano and it makes me so happy to learn of its new home,” she wrote in an email to Alves. “My sister, dad, and I played it, as did many, many HMC students and faculty who would come to our home for “Freshman Dinners” as well as a few concert pianists. It was a beloved treasure in the president’s home.”

For the children

Sitting at the black grand delivered to her small rental home in northwest Pasadena for free by the Suzuki Music Association of California, Los Angeles, Quezada’s first thoughts were about her young students.

Many had lost their homes in the fires, or have been displaced awaiting their damaged home to be fixed or cleaned of toxins. Quezeda continued giving lessons just five days after the fire, using her childhood upright piano stored at her late mother’s home in Rosemead.

Quezada’s mother died just 10 days before the Eaton fire broke out. Lately, she’s been dealing with insurance and mortgage payments on her burned out home. But getting back to playing piano and teaching children takes her mind off the difficult details of life after the death of her mom and now, the loss of her home.

“I escape when I am teaching. I can leave behind anything going on in my life, like my house burning down,” she said.

A perfectionist, she struggled teaching piano on a somewhat out-of-tune upright. Steinway Gallery of Pasadena lent her a piano for no charge. But after that deal ended, she received the piano from Mudd College and resumed lessons.

“They lost their homes. They lost their pianos,” she said. “It’s about the discipline for the kids. Even though they are 5 years old, they are still musicians and it is for the continuity of their lives. That is important for a child,” she said.

Putting pieces together

For many fire victims, with Quezada no exception, it’s the little things that bring hope.

When reaching for a music book she saved, a piece of sheet music fell to the floor that was inadvertently tucked inside the pages. It was a piece by famous British jazz pianist George Shearing that she had transcribed from a recording by hand. Called “A Children’s Waltz,” the music was one of her favorites.

“I didn’t even know it was in there,” she said on Monday, April 28. “I was so grateful.”

She then started playing the piece from the notes she had hand written. She took off her shoes and tapped the piano’s right pedal, while striking the ivory keys with her delicate hands. That’s right. This Austrian-made piano from 1958 or 1959 has real ivory keys, something no longer lawful.

She often reminds her students to be careful with the keys. If one gets broken, it will be difficult to find a replacement since ivory is no longer a tradeable commodity.

The piano is worth about $12,000 now, she said. Alves said a new Bösendorfer can fetch between $50,000 and $80,000.

“Oh, that’s not it,” she said, missing a note, then finishing the piece. Later, her mind went from topic to topic, including the shoes she was wearing given to her by Alves’ wife, Lynn Burroughs, who plays the cello. The two once played chamber music together in the 1990s and have become re-acquainted at a weaving class in Covina.

She recently bought a professional piano bench by the maker Janson. She showed how its built for two people and adjusted the height with a dial, which is good for smaller children.

Later that day, she found a package on her steps. “Oh this is the piano light I ordered,” she said.

Everything has to be replaced. She wants to fill up a built-in bookcase with music books to dampen the acoustics in the room. Lost in the fire was her vast collection of Spanish classical music for piano, vocals and guitar. She used the music when she toured with her sister in Spain, who is a singer.

Famous students

Quezada sheepishly mentions some names of famous people she’s taught piano, or were part of the family music classes she taught in which parents and young children shake tambourines or bang drums together in group learning activities.

The mother of Billie Eilish and her brother, Finneas, was a teacher in the program. Billie and Finneas participated until age 4, she said. Eilish went on to become a singer-songwriter and has won two Academy Awards and nine Grammy Awards; her brother is a music producer and singer. “Finneas credits me for giving them a sense of rhythm,” she said.

She also taught Michael Omartian, a jazz pianist who played keyboards for the jazz/rock group in the 1970s and 1980s, Steely Dan. He later produced records for Christopher Cross and Amy Grant. As an adult, Quezada went to his Beverly Hills home to help him hone his left-hand piano techniques.

All of the percussion instruments — drums, triangles, finger cymbals and even boom boxes — burned up in the fire. She’s resumed her Foothills Music Together classes at rented spaces in Silverlake, La Canada Flintridge, South Pasadena, Monrovia, Sierra Madre and Pasadena, she said.

Alves knows of other musicians who lost their homes and instruments, including William Roper, whose collection of tubas and other historical musical instruments — except for two that were saved — burned along with his Altadena home.

He and Quezeda have a dream of getting all these musicians together for one big post-fire jam session. For Quezada, just getting back to any sense of normalcy is a ways off. But playing her piano again, teaching children music and giving piano instruction helps.

“I want to be relaxed enough to be a practicing musician. I lost all that,” she said.