There was never any doubt I was going to be a musician. I started piano at age 6, as soon as we got home from India, at my moms insistence. She herself had been a concert pianist, played live music on the radio, taught piano, and got her degree in piano and education, before my parents were married and went to India. I have my first recital circa age 7, with horrible stage fright. Thankfully, stage fright went away soon, and Ive never really experienced it again; it was a function of profound shyness (which I still experience but have learned to work through as needed). I studied piano with Frances Danforth in Ann Arbor for many years; years later, after I had graduated from music school, we turned tables and I taught her composition; I have a few of her solo piano music scores around here somewhere, including Karelian Light, which I remember as being a luminous tone poem for piano. I did try to go into science in college, specifically geology, which I still love to read about, and look at rocks in outcrops; but I transferred to music school for composition, against everyones wishes, except for William Albright, the composition professor who became my mentor and academic advisor and friend. Most of my career missteps in life have come from listening to sensible advice from family and friends who told me Id never make a living in music or the arts, and that I should get sensible work, pay my bills on time, be an upstanding citizen, and so on; on one level they were right, but most of the years I worked as a graphic designer and desktop publisher in corporate culture I felt unfulfilled and unhappy; and lets be honest, that was only false security in the long run, and after many years I got kicked to the curb with little to show for it. So Im always going to be someone who encourages young musicians to keep making music. Even if they dont make it their career, they will be better people, and happier for having music in their lives. (As several psychological and medical studies have shown, playing music at a young age has many benefits later in life.)
Posted on: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 18:28:06 +0000
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