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I was walking down the street when out from someone's yard, an oboe came up and bit me.

I get my diplomas and everything and I also meet my (future) wife in 1999!

Nikolas,

Now THAT'S a story.

(honorary mention: ChopinLives81)

Suffice it to say that I'm a cranky old [censored]

When did you discover classical music? When did you start playing piano? How does your life relate to music?

And now, Joel, it must be your turn!

At this time, too, I discovered a record section at our local town library, where you could borrow 4 LPs per week (!!), as long as you brought your stylus in periodically to be examined and replaced it when required. The first time I walked in and saw a whole big room full of records, of works I'd read about but never heard, it was like arriving in heaven. I still remember the first records I borrowed - the Berg violin concerto was one of them.

Lucky you! I can imagine what that must have been like, even if I never experienced it myself (the closest thing was when I first went into the music library at college and saw all the shelves of scores available for me to check out - I had to pinch myself to make sure it wasn't some wonderful dream).

It's great that they cared enough to monitor what you used to the play them.

When I found myself at uni it seemed as if I now had access to the score of every piece of music ever written. I spent so much time up in the stack section of the library reading through things.

When I was around 12 or 13 my cousin got a baby grand piano and started taking piano lessons. I was immediately jealous. Whenever our family went over to her house, 3 or 4 times a year, I would sit at the piano and try to teach myself from her lesson books.

About the same time I got an LP for Christmas about the lives of the great composers. It included some of their music along with spoken biographical information. It opened with Bach's Prelude in C major from Book I of the WTC. I absolutely fell in love with this piece and decided I would do anything to learn how to play it.

My grandmother, who lived a couple of blocks away from us, had an old upright and I convinced her, with much pleading, to let me come over and practice on it. I was allowed to go over twice a week for an hour and within a couple of months I had taught myself to read music and was able to "kind of" play the Bach. I then convinced my mother to let me take piano lessons from a lady who lived nearby.

After a half dozen lessons, I became friends with a girl a grade ahead of me in school, who took lessons at the local music school. Her Dad who heard me play one day and was impressed enough to take me to the same music school where I started taking lesson with a really great teacher, who I really consider as my "first teacher." I was fourteen at the time.

This teacher helped me correct some of the bad habits of the "self-taught" pianist. When she discovered that my grandmother was only letting my practice two hours a week, she found someone to donate a piano so I could practice at home. Under her guidance, in a little less than four years, I went from that Bach Prelude to preparing auditions for several colleges and Peabody Conservatory.

But not all was so good at "home" and when I was in my senior year in high school, within just few short months, I had a major breakdown, met a much older man, fell in love (I thought), dropped out of school, got married and stopped playing the piano.

The marriage lasted much longer than it should have and by the time I was 31 I was on my own, broke and sleeping on a friend's couch. I got my GED and found, through a friend, an entry level job in an advertising agency. Eventually I worked my way up to a senior level position. The agency had some internal problems and went bankrupt in 1990.

I moved to another town and got a job at a hotel, where I eventually became the general manager and marketing director. During those many years after high school, I listened to classical music, went to concerts, but didn't even consider going back to playing the piano. I also remarried.

About 10 years ago, the owners of the hotel I worked at bought the property next to it, which housed a first floor restaurant. In the restaurant was a Yamaha Disklavier. I started sneaking over during my lunch hour to play it. I would noodle over some of the pieces I had played in high school: a Haydn sonata, a Bach Prelude and Fugue, a Chopin Etude.

My bosses were aware of some of my history and knew how much playing the piano had meant to me when I was younger. That Christmas, at our company Christmas Party, the owners rewarded me for the years I had worked for them with the gift of a Yamaha upright. It took almost a year before I had it moved into our apartment, since my husband and I had to make some renovations to accommodate it.

Now that I had my own piano, I made a decision to take lessons again. I wanted to see how much I could accomplish and to see "how far" I might have taken my music if "life" hadn't intervened. I started searching for a teacher, but there were really none anywhere near where I lived. I went on line, searching to see what piano teachers were out there. I Googled various local piano competitions to see who was teaching the winners. One teacher's name kept coming up.

I sent her an email at the university where she taught, hoping she knew or could recommend a teacher in the area. I told her about where and what I studied as a teenager. I told her about my long absence from playing and how I was looking to "start over." She responding by asking if I was interested in studying with her! She asked me to prepare two pieces and we set up a meeting for two weeks later. I prepared two Scarlatti sonatas that I had played when I was fifteen.

I didn't realize this "meeting" was actually an audition and after listening to me play, she invited me to study with her. She explained that she never took adult students because most of them lost interest after a while, but she was making an exception in my case. We decided on one-hour lessons every other week for several reasons; the lesson costs were not inexpensive, I had a full time job so I wouldn't be able to practice as much as I would like to, and finally, the university where she taught was 70 miles away.

Taking lessons again was a great challenge, but also a great joy. We backtracked a bit and focused on technique. I was assigned scales and arpeggios. I remember the first pieces she assigned were Chopin's Op. 64, No.2 and Brahms Op. 118, No. 2. We did Cramer studies, moved onto Beethoven Sonatas. I was working on Op. 26 for my college auditions when I was a teenager and we picked this back up. Because of her schedule and mine, I sometimes went 3 weeks or a month without a lessons. Once I went almost two months without a lesson.

Eventually I realized that I wanted to make music and the piano an even greater part of my life. A little over four years ago, I quit my job and enrolled full time as a music major at my piano teacher's university. For the first two years, I commuted 5 days a week,70 miles each way. During my freshman year I played in a Chopin/Schumann recital. I was the first time I had performed before an audience in almost 40 years.

During my last two years at the university, I was able to trim my commute to two or three days a week. I took some general ed courses from a nearby (only 10 miles away!) community college and I CLEPed out on some other courses. I started teaching a little over a year ago at the university's preparatory school and I graduated this past May.

I still teach piano in the prep school. My studio has increased to 19 students, who range in age from 6 to 72! I commute two days a week to teach and I am also starting to do some teaching closer to home. In addition, I do some business consulting and web design on the side. I am also the managing director of a small summer music festival in Northeastern Minnesota that my piano teacher founded eleven years ago.

I turned 62 last month. I still practice daily (well, almost) and I still work on learning new rep. I do a little performing but not very much. I have always battled with almost paralyzing stage fright and I have an enormous difficulty with memorizing now that I am older. I will be performing at a small musical soiree this coming Sunday. Wish me luck!

Interesting stories so far...

In my case things were simple:

My parents were highly educated (and now at the age of almost 80, this means that when they were young getting education was an accomplishment for Greece to begin with). And my father would occasionally play the piano and/or the guitar, at equal talent (not amazingly talent, but his company loved what he did).

So when I was 5 I got into a friends house with a piano. And I wouldn't let go! So my father mainly (but both of them *ahem*) decided that we should get a piano. If nothing happens with me, he would still be able to play something on it.

Year 1: Private lessons, with Sophia. Did nothing to me, I don't remember anything. She was rude and always smoking while teaching. Bliah!

Year 2: Private lessons: A blonde teacher called Marry. Did nothing to me. I don't remember much, except that she bragged how her students starter off Beyer immediately (brrr... But this is 1983 or so).

Year 3: Off to a small conservatory close to our home. New teacher Nicole. She would hit me with a wood ruler and yell at me constantly. I'd cry before and after every lesson. I was kept there for a full year! My parents thought that I was:
a. Over reacting
b. Hoping to get out of hard work (which I did, A LOT)
c. over reacting

In any case

Year 4: The same small conservatory, with a lovely old teacher, who would not yell, or shout, or certainly hit me. We got along just fine so I jumped at around grade 3 or 4 or something. Playing the difficult works of Anna Magdalena, and some Czerny (the collection with the 30 works in), and some small sonatinas.

She has an issue with completing all the works in a book. So we got Lemoine, which was nice and fine, but she really wanted to do all 50 of them in there! And it was SO boring. Same with Czerny! And I couldn't take it.

I stuck at grade 3-4 for about 6-7 years. No change, no change in books, no change in the quality of my playing... nothing. Never had exams. I didn't want to. And I'd compose endlessly to fill up the gap of anything interesting in my repertoire!

Year 10-11. I'm 15 at the time, and my school (not the music one) organizes a mass concert with the students. I want in and pick a few works to play. My conservatory says otherwise and forbids me to go to the concert. I tell them to [censored] off and quit the conservatory to do what I want. Anyways I would be moving to a new town soon.

Concert goes well, I perform the G major "sonatina" of Beethovens, some Grieg and my own "prelude in D" for piano and flute. I also get introduce with other like minded people (AT LAST!!!) who all love classical music. So I come to love it as well. I find out about fabulous pieces like the Pathetique, and Clair de Lune, etc... I feel in love!

We move to a new town, so in a search for a new teacher, I find Irina! A half Greek Russian piano teacher who is AWESOME! We hit it off straight away and she finally is teaching me piano and music! I jump through hoops to get to the lessons every week, and have 2 hours of lessons on a weekly bases. Within a year I complete the Grieg sonata and go further. By the age of 18 I've decided that I want to be a composer and I don't care about anything else. I want to go abroad (and away from Greece certainly) to study and nothing's going to stop me.

I go through the national exams system for universities in Greece and I manage (with relative ease) to enter the physics department of the University of Ioannina. Don't care about that at all. I manage to complete the following subjects: "English 101, English 201 and Coding 101". Three subjects out of 33 or so!

I drop out and start playing piano at piano bars and stuff like that...

and then at the age of 19-20 I meet Christos Anastassiou (one of the composers in EMF). He tells me that I should study theoretical music (which I'm not doing at the moment, as I'm equally UNlucky in my choice of harmony teachers), and he agrees to teach me. We have daily lessons and very soon I'm on Persichettis harmony of the 20th century.

I'm forced to leave my last piano teacher, a couple of years before I can complete my studies (by getting a performance diploma in piano), and I get back in Athens to finish off. I get my diplomas and everything and I also meet my (future) wife in 1999!

just for fun in 2002 I try out the National Scholarship Foundation, to get a scholarship to fund my studies of composition abroad. Most people tell me how you need to REALLY know someone from inside, but I don't care. I just want to see what the exams are like. And I win! I WIN! I get a scholarship (of around $60,000 in total).

So, I tell them that "I've not found a university to fit me yet". And they're kind enough to allow me to grab the scholarship next year.

Next year I tell them "Well... you know... ahem... I'm in the army now and my wife is pregnant..." And they're even kinder enough to allow me to grab the scholarship in the next year.

So 2004, my older son is born and I get him and my wife to London to do an MMus in composition, in Royal Holloway. The scholarship still active I carry on studying, and going for a PhD (which I got in 2010).

___________________________

There's four people in my life that changed me (not including my parents, which keep changing me even now at the age of 36). A musicologist named George kokkins. A very open minded guy, who'd done a PhD in Marseille and was full of passion for anything he did. My piano teacher Irina, and Christos Anastassiou. And then... my wife of course!

___________________________

But what's interesting in my case is that although my parents were very educated, clever people, etc, for some reasons they never thought about my lack of development in piano learning. Somehow they missed the idea that this was because of crappy teachers! Or they didn't think that I'd make a career out of that! haha! But they've always been supportive of me and my music attempts, which suffice to say is still happening!

And what I think is equally interesting, is the fact that I doubt I'd become the composer I am today if it wasn't for all those years of poor learning and poor teaching and poor musical environments! I think...

God I love talking about myself, don't I?

Although since we both love and cherish the music of Richard Strauss, I would be curious to know when he first came online with you. For me it was when a singer asked me to accompany her in a few 'well known' Strauss songs. (No points for guessing which ones!)

It's just part of me. Part of my life. I just love the way piano sounds. To me, it's the most beautiful sound in the world.. .