Among the first students to study piano under Rachel Eubanks were her two younger brothers, who learned in the living room of the family home during the Great Depression.
The boys soon discovered that their teacher was aiming high. She expected her students to focus, use proper hand position, appreciate the work of the masters -- never mind that they were only 6 and 9 or that she was just 12.
"She wanted to direct us to a high standard," recalled Jonathan Eubanks, who was 6 when he began studying with his sister. "She was a disciplinarian. In other words, don't waste her time. We couldn't sit there and decide to play boogie-woogie if she was teaching us Beethoven."
For more than 50 years, Eubanks taught music in Los Angeles in much the same manner. Many of those years were spent on Crenshaw Boulevard near 48th Street, where two converted houses served as the campus for the Eubanks Conservatory of Music and Arts.
At its height, the nonprofit institution was accredited by the state and each year offered hundreds of students classical training, pushing generation after generation to strive for musical greatness.
"It was like a community school," said Sophia Katsnelson, a Eubanks teacher. "I met a lot of people who say ... 'about 20 years ago I started at this place, and now I'm bringing my kids' or even the grandkids."
Eubanks, a composer, ethnomusicologist and instructor, died at her home in Los Angeles on April 8. She was 83. The cause of death was colon cancer, family members said.
The school that Eubanks built was the byproduct of a passion for music and teaching that began in her youth, said her brother Jonathan Eubanks of Oakland.
Rachel Amelia Eubanks was born Sept. 12, 1922, in San Jose to Joseph Sylvester and Elizabeth Amelia Eubanks.
Though the Depression made life hard, the couple managed to expose their children to the arts: There were trips to the museum; concerts by Paul Robeson, Roland Hayes, Marian Anderson; and visits with family friends of varied cultural backgrounds.
At an elementary school in Oakland, where the family settled, Eubanks played the alto horn and clarinet. When she expressed an interest in piano, her father found a way to buy one.
Jonathan Eubanks said his brother "Joseph and I would be outside on Saturday morning with our roller skates, going up and down the hill. And when we turned the corner, we heard Rachel practicing the piano."
