The music teacher, 93, “still approaches the world with the curiosity of a child.”

In more ways than one, this is a love story, and it begins in 1970.

Paul Cummins, principal of Santa Monica Elementary School called St. Augustine-by-the-Sea, was in the market for a music teacher and a colleague suggested he call a pianist from Rustic Canyon named Mary Ann.

Mary Ann was not interested in the job but agreed to hold a meeting at her home and introduce Cummins to the two teachers. But Cummins didn’t want the other two. He wanted Mary Ann.

“I just saw the best teacher I’ve ever seen in my life,” he told a friend after visiting Mary Ann and hearing about her teaching techniques.

Cummins talked Mary Ann into taking the job, and before long, she joined the faculty of a new middle school Cummins co-founded under the name Crossroads.

That was in 1971.

But 1972 was a year of new beginnings, too. That was the year Paul and Mary Ann got married.

Fifty-five years later, Mr. and Mrs. Cummins lived together in the house where they met. And Mary Ann still teaches at Crossroads, among other places.

“She is 93 years old and has the energy of youth,” Paul Cummins, 88, said of his wife. “He’s a freak of nature.”

I can attest to that after spending a few hours with him on Tuesday, busy teaching at two schools and then rushing home to greet his private students.

At St. Anne in Santa Monica, I watched Cummins harness the squirmy power of second graders wielding xylophone mallets. For decades he has used the Orff Schulwerk Approach, where students create music with a percussion-driven element of singing, dancing and dancing.

Music teacher Mary Ann Cummins works with second graders at St. Anne’s Elementary School.

(David Butow / For The Times)

“Two, three, four,” Cummins counted down, and his eager little band began a song: “This little light of mine, I’ll let it shine.

When the session was over, Cummins, who bakes more cookies than Famous Amos, sent each student out the door with a drink.

Next stop, Crossroads School, where the music level has gone up a notch. A high school keyboard class came first, followed by a music theory class, and Cummins handled both like a conductor leading an orchestra, showering his students with “bravos.”

I then followed Cummins home to watch him teach two of his 18 or so private students. Another, a 7-year-old girl named Birdie, was accompanied by her mother, who lived in the same place as the piano a generation ago when she was in school.

“Look, there’s something genetically wrong,” said Emily Cummins Polk, the youngest of Mary Ann Cummins’ four daughters. “He’s got great genes, but you can’t deny that he wakes up at 6 and goes to yoga. He works out seven days a week … and I don’t think he has any intention of slowing down.”

I told Polk that her mother seemed equally intelligent working with second graders and high school students, and that her age didn’t seem to be something anyone noticed, including teachers. That’s because – especially with advanced musicians – the teacher and the students speak the same language. But there is more to it than that.

Mary Ann Cummins works with Cara Cheng, 10, at the Cummins home.

(David Butow / For The Times)

“I think it’s because he has so many passions … and he still approaches the world with the curiosity of a child,” Polk said. “When he sees something in pop culture that kids relate to, he has to understand it. He’s into the whole world, whether it’s politics, movies, yoga, gourmet cooking, the Dodgers. … He has an insane zest for life.”

Polk said that when he was a child, his parents were connected to a pipeline of international artists who needed a place to stay while studying in the U.S. They opened their home, for months at a time and sometimes for long periods of time, Polk said, to create a large extended family that maintained close ties.

Anna Cummins, one of four daughters, said music was a tool her mother used to teach “life lessons, more than piano or music theory.”

“He weaves in literature and philosophy and emphasizes the point that music should make you a whole person,” says Anna. “It’s not about being a concert pianist. It’s about … connecting to something spiritual that’s bigger than yourself.”

When she was a young violinist, Anna said, her mother taught her that in order to keep improving, she had to put aside and accept mistakes as part of the gains. Anna’s daughter, now 13 years old, is studying with her grandmother.

It should be noted that Paul Cummins is not disrespectful. The longtime teacher, principal and arts advocate remains involved in the schools he helped launch after Crossroads, including Camino Nuevo Charter and Tree Academy. He is also the founder of PS Arts, a non-profit organization originally funded by artist Herb Alpert to help fill the art education gap for thousands of public school students.

Mary Ann and Paul Cummins with their dog, Charley, at their home in Santa Monica.

(David Butow / For The Times)

A published poet, Cummins writes every day, and as he explains it, that means sometimes he’s “rolling with longing” or “angry about the future.” But the situation of the time is different for the singer, he said that he once wrote a poem that captured the essence of his wife’s ageless kindness.

“I find myself staring at the studio, forty-three years now: his focus, always, at the moment, is on his students. “

Gina Coletti, director of the Elizabeth Mandel Music Institute at Crossroads, told me that many of those students have graduated from top music schools and gone on to professional careers, just as Mary Ann Cummins shifted her focus to the next generation, and the next, and the next. Teaching is “like the elixir of youth” for Cummins, said Coletti, who wasn’t surprised to learn that it took arm-twisting for Cummins to open his door to me.

“I think it’s rare to find someone who does a job without his involvement,” Coletti said. “And I think that’s what Mary Ann does. It’s about the music. It’s always about the students.”

Two years ago, Cummins was named to the Steinway & Sons Hall of Fame. Later this year, a new performing arts center will open at Crossroads, and the auditorium will be named Mary Ann.

When music theory class came to an end on Tuesday at Crossroads, a senior named Lola Goetz asked me if she could say something about Cummins.

Mary Ann Cummins talks to high school senior Lola Goetz, who considers Cummins a major influence growing up.

(David Butow / For The Times)

“I wouldn’t be … the person that I am, the musician that I am, without Mary Ann,” said Goetz, a jazz singer and composer who began studying with Cummins in the first grade.

“Would you say that if I wasn’t in the room?” Cummins asked.

“Yes,” said Goetz, who has several college options in front of him. “You’re very polite, but I want you to … know that you’re like the best, honestly.”

Polk told me that he is often asked if his mother is slowing down.

“And the way I see it,” said Polk, “is that he doesn’t have time to slow down.”

Music, Mary Ann Cummins told me, is a language that “reaches deeper into you than other languages. It reaches places within you.” In theory class, he and his students would take turns at the keyboard, trying to break down Chopin’s musical language.

It seemed to me that when he asked what Chopin thought 200 years ago of a certain composition, he was indirectly asking his students what they were thinking now. About them, about the infinite universe of creativity, about the power of music to cross borders, foreign wars, centuries and still inspire.

Cummins was there for the moment, the moment fixed, his focus on his students.

“It’s eating away at me,” he says. “Music is my life, and I can’t do it.”

steve.lopez@latimes.com