Is my recent awakening of greater creativity at the piano from overcoming prior blocks to connecting to my potential? If so, was I blocked because of karmic trauma needing healing or the effects of life-long targeting to hold me back?

Both of these factors were in play in keeping you constrained and restricted in connecting fully with your inner abilities. This applied to multiple areas in your repertoire of talents and strengths. This is a consequence of the manipulation that has not been explored in great detail by you as yet, but is a major part of mind control manipulation. It will not simply be a question of installing a new ideology, for example, but hindering more deeply and more insidiously, innate capabilities, to dull people and make them less dynamic and effective in what they can summon in terms of inner wherewithal. This is a prescription for having low-level functioning compared to what true human capabilities offer. Unfortunately, there is no good way to know what you are missing and what might be requested as a part of ongoing healing to bring out the best for those in need. Much of this work is done routinely with the existing protocols as they do request soul attribute installation and strengthening as needed to help optimize the person. So there is nothing you need to add in response to this description, but it is an important contribution of the healing work you are bringing forward to save and heal humanity.