Suzuki method

And so when I looked at the music for Petrushka, like two weeks ago, not to flex, started looking at my music early, not to brag, but when I started looking at it, I was like, okay, I know what this sounds like already.

I'm a Suzuki kid at heart.

Suzuki training, you listen to stuff first, like in classical Suzuki training, you listen to stuff first and then you learn it by ear.

So, first listen, then I look at the tough parts, and then I try and read it through while listening to a recording.

Like, just full side read it, and kind of see what goes to shit, you know? And then I touch up those parts, and then I will run specific sections with the recording.

Well, so, you know, violin was in a way the most structured thing, you know, the most organized thing.

I grew up a Suzuki student.

My first teacher, Linda Fiore, still has an incredible studio.

She's very highly regarded as a proponent of the Suzuki method.

And sort of that involved and centered my family around the violin.

You know, my dad's first... instrument was the accordion.

You know, I have to shout out people like Stephen Sammons and, you know, Nadine Sine and David Sakarakis, who, you know, exposed the Lehigh Valley to, you know, stuff that if you're going to drive to New York or Philly, you could, but to bring it to Bethlehem, you know, particularly for people who were able to access that community and to give a little bit more, I suppose, flavor, you know, to a school that at one point was its mascot was the engineers.

I mean, this was a school that was just pretty much STEM before STEM, you know, and so to have that available, not only for the student body, but for the community at large, I think was really important.

I started at the age of three.

I was sitting on telephone books, learning through the Suzuki method and had a lot of involvement from my mother who would sit with me every day in practice and But it's something, of course, that I value so much.

And, you know, it's part of my daily practice.

You know, every day I make my way to the piano and fills the house with music.

Yeah, absolutely.

So tell us your story.

How did you discover it? Well, you discovered the piano through Suzuki, right? But how did that happen? Because my own daughter was a Suzuki demonstration student, I guess you'd call it, for lack of a better word, at age three.

So how did that happen for you? And was there a time during your musical education that you just knew that this was what you were meant to do with your life?