Listening to lots of different kinds of music is JUST as important as practicing in musical development.  One of the most helpful ways to think about learning music is to compare it to learning a language.  When children learn to speak, they do so by listening and imitating!  I can’t stress enough how important it is for future musicians to listen to all types of music.   Here is a short list of suggestions for what kind of music to listen to: Continue reading →

“Ready for torture?”

I can still hear the playful words of my Russian piano teacher when I answered the door at 3:30 every Tuesday.  He was a goofy and endearing man, and would often charm me by spending half of the lesson showing me the latest games on his Palm Pilot (this was the early 1990s).

He was asking, jokingly,  if I was ready for the “torture” of 30 minutes of sight-reading classical sheet music.  But unsurprisingly, it often did feel like torture to my 12-year-old brain.  Continue reading →