# Your music background?



## Johnnie Burgess (Aug 30, 2015)

Nereffid in another thread writes if a person's parent's could influence a person to listen to classical music. I grew up in home that classical music was not played. I wonder how many others did as well.


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## Dr Johnson (Jun 26, 2015)

Johnnie Burgess said:


> Nereffid in another thread writes if a person's parent's could influence a person to listen to classical music. *I grew up in home that classical music was not played.* I wonder how many others did as well.


Likewise. In fact, very little music of any kind.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

My mom listened to a radio show called The Swingin' Years - all big bands. My dad didn't listen to music.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

My dad's record collection was small and included ELO, loads of Moody Blues, Heads Hands and Feet, Traffic, The Carpenters, ABBA, Status Quo, a rake of those awful Top of the Pops albums, a few James Last albums, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Burt Bacharach, Andy Williams and some random rubbish I cant remember. I started listening to classical music in my late teens, when I was tiring of classic rock (Zeppelin, Sabbath, etc). Was not subjected to any classical music apart those awful James Last Classics up to Date albums. I think what really reeled me in was a gig at Manchester's Free Trade Hall where one of the metal bands I loved used Holst's Jupiter as intro music (cant remember which band). Bought Ormandy's recording of the Planets on the strength of that the picked up a few cheap American imports of Beethoven Symphonies from Yanks records in Manchester. The first one was Szell's Beethoven 9. Bought Karajan's 63 cycle on LP (secondhand) from a guy in Davyhulme a year later. Years later I worked for one of the UKs major record wholesalers and was responsible for buying in back- catalogue albums and special orders, many of which were classics. I also had to catalogue all new Supraphon albums as we were the only supplier of their catalogue in the UK.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

I'm sure we had a thread like this before. My parents played German Schlager music of the 50s and 60s, never classical.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

My father had a small classical record collection, maybe about 30 LPs (his CD collection is quite a bit bigger by now). He hardly ever played it with us in the room, though, so we didn't hear much classical music growing up. But when I started to get interested - this was in the days before the Internet, of course - those records came in very useful.

This bears on my point in that other thread - although I don't recall my father ever urging me to listen to his music, I may have had a genetic/neurological inheritance that steered me in that direction anyway.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

My dad loved classical music and was a violinist; my mom had a thing for Verdi's Requiem and Midnight in Moscow. Music was always being played, and I was expected to be one of the participants. So, it was piano, clarinet and music theory for me. Being young and rebellious, I ditched it all and majored in Economics. Do I have regrets? Not really. I did get back to piano lessons in my 30's.


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## Animal the Drummer (Nov 14, 2015)

My mother was always an enthusiastic classical radio listener and I reacted favourably (and quite strongly) to the music myself as a toddler. She and my dad started me on piano lessons when I was 5, and I'm still listening and playing half a century or so later.


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## Annied (Apr 27, 2017)

My Dad and I had similar tastes, perhaps he's who I inherited my lopsided ear from. When I was growing up, we had a tape recorder and often in the evening he would tune into Radio Luxembourg (that ages me!) and record the songs we liked. We accumulated several hours' worth of tapes over the years. Now I think about it, that's probably where I picked up my habit of making compilation discs. He enjoyed bits and pieces of classical, but they were rarely played. My Mum I think just used to go with the flow. Had they lived longer, I think they'd both have dipped into opera more. They kept hearing it whenever they were at my house and then watched the 3 Tenors concert out of curiosity because I'd got so hooked by opera and discovered they thoroughly enjoyed it. 

It could have ended up with the back to front situation where I introduced my parents to classical music!


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

My mother was the person in my family who listened to music. As a smallish child, I heard our little collection of classical 78 RPM disks as well as lots of Jimmy Dorsey's group accompanying Helen O'Connell and Bob Eberle, plus many of the other hits of the 1940s. So it was a mix of classical and popular music, and that continued as the pattern.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Nereffid said:


> although I don't recall my father ever urging me to listen to his music, I may have had a genetic/neurological inheritance that steered me in that direction anyway.


I don't think there is any clear evidence for this sort of thing.


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## wolkaaa (Feb 12, 2017)

Unfortunately, absolutely no music was played in my home when I grew up. At least my mom learned to play piano in her childhood.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

My parents played popular music so I heard and liked things like "Big John." Still like it. But my dad would listen to classical privately and encouraged me to listen to Beethoven's 3rd, 5th, and 6th. I also recall hearing Peter and the Wolf as a child.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

I was brought up with classical, all day long, my parents took me to concerts at very young age , as did my grandpaarents, I could talk with my grandad for hours about music and recordings.
I am forever grateful they ( my parents) even took me to New York to attend Otello / Aida /Tosca in the Metropolitan opera.
( I was 10/11 years old then.)


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## Taplow (Aug 13, 2017)

Neither of my parents knew much about classical music. My father liked jazz and my mother listened to the usual easy listening popular songs of the 60's and 70's on the radio. They did, however, have pretentions of liking classical, and bought a few albums, mostly of the greatest hits kind. My mother still to this day will say things like, "Oh, I love Rossini" ... but she's never listened to an entire opera in her life. What she likes is a few popular overtures.

My introduction to classical music came at the age of 9. My mother's cousin played second violin in a well-known and respected string quartet. When they were touring our part of the world, we went to a concert and he later visited us bringing his violin with him. I became fascinated and all I wanted to do was to learn the violin.

It is through learning this instrument that I broadened my classical music knowledge: firstly through the solo violin repertoire, secondly through the orchestral repertoire playing with student orchestras, and thirdly after winning a scholarship to a prestigious school with a music programme where I studied music history, theory, etc.


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## WildThing (Feb 21, 2017)

Florestan said:


> My parents played popular music so I heard and liked things like "Big John."


Hahaha, and I thought I was the only one!!! :lol: My dad loved those old country western and rockabilly records by the likes of Johnny Horton and Marty Robbins, while my mom preferred the smooth rock and adult contemporary classics of the 1970s and 80s from artists like Captain & Tennille or Hall & Oates. But there wasn't a lot of _serious_ music listening going on in my house growing up. I don't ever recall my parents sitting down and concentrating on music, and I mostly heard them play it on car trips. Classical music was definitely not touched.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

My parents were not 'classical music' people, but they had a few popular pieces on 78s. My mother's mother played the piano and liked classical but we heard practically nothing at her house. However, the BBC being what it was in the 1950s and 1960s, nobody in Britain could grow up without hearing *some* classical music - cheers, Lord Reith. :cheers:

When I was ten, my parents took advantage of the local Education Authority's offer to sell them a cheap (and horrible) violin, and let me have free violin lessons in school. The violin tutor book (Eta Cohen 2) was full of baroque pieces, and I learned more classical music at the schools strings orchestra. I liked these pieces, apart from *Playful Pizzicato*. 

It was something to draw on when I became interested in music five years ago (on retirement) but honestly - it didn't make a huge impression on me at the time. But then, neither did the pop music of the day. Nothing, really, has *impinged* like the folk music of England, Ireland, and above all, *Scotland*.









*That* came from 78s too - from The White Heather Club on TV - from my father's melodeon playing - and from somewhere atavastic inside...

My love for early music and baroque music has deepened over the years, so *thank you*, York Education Committee. :tiphat:


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Johnnie Burgess said:


> Nereffid in another thread writes if a person's parent's could influence a person to listen to classical music. I grew up in home that classical music was not played. I wonder how many others did as well.


Found this for you, I knew it was not so long ago I saw it, like Art Rock also said.

http://www.talkclassical.com/51358-why-do-i-torture.html


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## Johnnie Burgess (Aug 30, 2015)

Pugg said:


> Found this for you, I knew it was not so long ago I saw it, like Art Rock also said.
> 
> http://www.talkclassical.com/51358-why-do-i-torture.html


I was not trying to find it. I wanted to find out if what he said is true for the people in this forum.


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## T Son of Ander (Aug 25, 2015)

No CM in my house at all as a kid. Some pop and country from my parents and rock from my sister (older) and her friends. My only exposure to CM was through cartoons, which must have fermented deep down somewhere. When a friend recommended Emerson, Lake & Palmer when I was a teenager, I then looked into the real versions of the classical they did arrangements of and was totally hooked. Even that friend, though, didn't listen to CM, so I came to it on my own.


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## Krummhorn (Feb 18, 2007)

I was born into a classical music family. Both parents were members of the Scandinavian Symphony in Detroit and later the Long Beach Philharmonic in Southern California. 

Television was very limited in those days; mostly to the Ed Sullivan show on Sunday nights. Instead the family played music together, me on the piano, my sister on viola, Mom on violin and Dad on the Double Bb concert tuba (required two cases to transport). 

My sister still plays the viola and violin and teaches children to play as well. I switched to classical organ in my early teens, became a church organist at age 13 and still playing in church every weekend 56+ years later, now in a very large Lutheran parish.


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## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

I cannot remember a time when music wasn't the biggest part of my life.

Music has been my work. My goal. My love. My joy. My outlet. My solace...on and on and on.

How did it all start? Both of my parents were teenagers when I was born, they were not married, and I certainly wasn't planned. They didn't have a piano. They didn't even have a house. They stayed together though, and by the time I was walking and talking I thought my name was "Stop Drumming" :lol: ...at least that is the story I was told.

My parents were both music lovers, very much so. But they did not know classical. They were "Children of the 60s", they loved The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, etc. I built drumsets out of pots and pans, and knew all the songs. By 5 or 6 I had a guitar, and soon thereafter a saxophone. Then a real drum set...

An old Jewish couple that had a piano lived next to us, and at this time when I was 7 or 8, they would let me play at it. I remember it still; like an old dream...

Then we moved into an old farm house that had a piano in it. Wildly out of tune, and in terrible disrepair to be sure, but boy did I play it. By this point my parents had married,  ...and I was taking piano lessons, and a new piano was purchased. Ever since then, nearly 50 years, the piano has been my greatest musical outlet, and my most important musical companion. 

Both my parents were thrilled to have a musical child, and both enthusiastically listened, and indulged, I'm sure, my certainly endless diatribes about the piano, the piano literature, the piano's history, it's performers, on and on. My father especially, was cultivating a real taste for the piano, and symphonic literature, (he was not so sure about my love of Wagner I think, lol). 
My father died an untimely death in my conservatory years, aged only 42, and there were tough years for my Mother and I. But that was a long time ago, and my Mother now has also grown to have a wonderful ear for the piano literature.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

My parents believed in having a lot of varied materials -- music and reading matter -- around the house and letting each of us gravitate toward what interested him. My dad had a youthful collection of 10-inch 78s, which were his generation's version of singles. It included such classics as Benny Goodman singing (and playing) Buckle Down, Winsaukee, but also abridged versions of some Strauss waltzes, which I took to. Also a 12-incher of Danny Kaye narrating Tubby the Tuba and one of Michael Haydn's Toy Symphony -- all of which I played frequently. Also an early LP of Carnegie Pops featuring things like The March of the Little Lead Soldiers, The Skater's Waltz, and the Bacchanale from Samson and Delilah. Noting my interest, they got me an early LP of snippets by acknowledged great composers -- including Gluck but not Mahler, whom no one had ever heard of. My own first LP (purchased at the early Radio Shack store in Kenmore Square, Boston, was the Peer Gynt Suite, then a recording I still have (and is still very good) of Swan Lake excerpts played by the Ballet Theater Orchestra (later the NYC Ballet?) conducted superbly by Joseph Levine. Then my sister got in the act and gave me a Toscanini Eroica for my birthday, and I actually asked for for 6th grade Christmas the Jussi Bjoering/Zinka Milanov Aida -- which my teacher had played the Triumphant March from for our class. Things just took off from there.


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## Timothy (Jul 19, 2017)

Sometimes I put Bryd's "The Bells" on or Bach's "Well-Tempered Clavier" on when I'm working but I usually don't settle for a musical background. Talking with the people around me does more for the soul than shutting them out and only caring about the self. That is why I normally don't have music in the background.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Timothy said:


> Sometimes I put Bryd's "The Bells" on or Bach's "Well-Tempered Clavier" on when I'm working but I usually don't settle for a musical background. Talking with the people around me does more for the soul than shutting them out and only caring about the self. That is why I normally don't have music in the background.


The thread is about a one's biographical musical background, not background music.:tiphat:


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Johnnie Burgess said:


> I was not trying to find it. I wanted to find out if what he said is true for the people in this forum.


I am truly sorry for trying, won't happen again .


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

It's a huge advantage being brought up in a home environment where classical music was liked and played.

Kudos to those who discovered it without that huge advantage!!


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

None whatsoever. Whatever I know about classical music, I discovered all by myself - and with the help of the esteemed TC community :tiphat:


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## Johnnie Burgess (Aug 30, 2015)

hpowders said:


> It's a huge advantage being brought up in a home environment where classical music was liked and played.
> 
> Kudos to those who discovered it without that huge advantage!!


When I was a kid classical music was not played in my house. But the Saturday morning cartoons used classical music.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Johnnie Burgess said:


> When I was a kid classical music was not played in my house. But the Saturday morning cartoons used classical music.


Great that the soundtracks influenced you! Well, cartoons, I did discover all by myself, and the Three Stooges too. I was well on the path to ruin....the classical music and my father's hand straightened me out!!! :lol:

Did you see Walt Disney's Fantasia? A lot of classical music!


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

SiegendesLicht said:


> None whatsoever. Whatever I know about classical music, I discovered all by myself - and with the help of the esteemed TC community :tiphat:


Good for you, ESPECIALLY since you revealed that you came from a pretty deep rock background. Very unusual to switch like that!!


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Johnnie Burgess said:


> Nereffid in another thread writes if a person's parent's could influence a person to listen to classical music. I grew up in home that classical music was not played. I wonder how many others did as well.


For me, it was all classical music all the time from earliest childhood. I sat beneath the music stands of my father's string quartet as a toddler. Our home had all kinds of chamber music played live, and on special days Brandenburg concertos and Bach cantatas, in which I would take part as I grew older. Eventually, I played in all sorts of bands, orchestras and chamber groups, including my college orchestra and early music group, and sang in choral groups. Most of the classical "warhorses" are well known to me, and I can even play long excerpts from many of them by ear despite never having seen the scores. I would sometime play a game with friends at school in which I would have them turn on the local classical radio station, and I would identify whatever happened to be playing. This impressed them much more than it should have. I also had a thorough exposure to Broadway musicals and Gilbert & Sullivan operettas as a child, to the point where I had many of them mostly memorized.
I've come to suspect that my musical background growing up is not the norm for internet discussion group members, and that is the reason for many of our differences.


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## jenspen (Apr 25, 2015)

Travelling back many decades in time...

Nuns must take a lot of the blame for my interest in classical music. 

In my primary and secondary schools classical music was respected by most of the girls I was friendly with - they took music lessons as a matter of course (and I too had some desultory piano lessons). Everybody had to sing. The choir mistress at my secondary school was charismatic - her choirs were legendary and wonderful fun to be part of. Several of my group went on to join choirs after school. 

There was a piano in the pub my grandparents ran (they brought me up) and I was an annoyingly enthusiastic pianist. Of the repertoire available in the piano stool and from the local music shop, it was the classics I enjoyed most.

My mother's side of the family are said to have loved classical music so it may be that my infant brain got wired for it?


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

Mine was Texan style hick with Racist overtones


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## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

fluteman said:


> I would sometime play a game with friends at school in which I would have them turn on the local classical radio station, and I would identify whatever happened to be playing. This impressed them much more than it should have.


Ha! I impress people much more than I should with this to this day.


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## Gordontrek (Jun 22, 2012)

My parents were not musical at all. But they decided their kids would learn something that could fulfill them all their lives. They didn't expect that we'd choose music as a career, but we did. ("we" being myself and my siblings.)
I started piano at 5, trumpet at 10. Still play both. I took classical guitar for a spell, but it's mostly fallen by the wayside. I listened to nothing except classical growing up, and mostly abhorred anything else. Thankfully I became more open minded and now I enjoy a good amount of pop music, but classical still makes up the vast majority of my listening.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> Mine was Texan style hick with Racist overtones


I knew it! I knew it!!!


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

Art Rock said:


> I'm sure we had a thread like this before. My parents played German Schlager music of the 50s and 60s, never classical.


I think you're right. But I love to hear myself talk (or watch myself type) so I don't remind repeating.

My mother never cared much for music, but my father did. His love was the "Great American Songbook," although the term had not yet been invented. I grew up with Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and Broadway musicals. I saw my first when I was 5 ("My Fair Lady" and shortly after "The Music Man"). Dad had a few classical albums - I recall Tchaikovsky ballet suites, a Beethoven symphony or two and Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain." He might have had more, but when I was very young (my mother has told me) I decided some albums in his collection needed cleaning and wiped them with cold cream. 

I was late to appreciate rock (mid teens) and didn't start listening to classical until college. Non-classical (rock, jazz, standards, Broadway) still makes up a significant part of my collection.

Both my younger brothers share a passion for music, but not classical. The second plays guitar and has an amazing collection of them. He also has a huge collection of classic rock, jazz and blues music. The third, at age 57, is an avid concert-goer, especially alt-rock. He will also accept my occasional invitation to a classical concert.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

hpowders said:


> It's a huge advantage being brought up in a home environment where classical music was liked and played.
> 
> Kudos to those who discovered it without that huge advantage!!


Well, the other side of the coin is that I had to put in a lot of effort to learn popular music as a young adult. But since I love so many types of music, it was a labor of love. And all the classical training, especially sight reading, sight singing, transposing, etc., helps with any kind of music.


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

hpowders said:


> I knew it! I knew it!!!


Yeah, and that is why I am such a Wagner fan too


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## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

My mom was a kind and energetic piano teacher to tons of neighborhood kids, some of whom were good and progressed far, but most of whom were, well, just kids. As such, I grew up with the sounds of the piano ALL THE TIME. My favorites of her teaching repertoire were Milhaud's Scaramouche, Gershwin's Preludes, Grieg's Wedding Day at Troldhaugen, Chopin - various.

She would take my siblings and I to Utah Symphony concerts and musical theatre events as often as possible. She encouraged me on the piano and later on the trumpet. I don't think I would have fallen in love with classical music if she hadn't paved the way a bit. She is and was a beautiful soul. She passed away about 5 years ago.


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## Marinera (May 13, 2016)

I found out only very recently that my dad likes Classical music. He watches classical music channels on tv. I never knew, he never bought any records. When I was growing up the only music would be on tv (if it was on a classical music channel, then it meant I pushed the button) or my sister's attempts at the piano, later in my teens, I borrowed CDs or tapes from my friends' parents collections.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

Played cornet in middle school, sang in high school choir, sang in church choir 50 years, sang in university choirs and choral societies since the 1970s, grew up with two pianists and a singer. Classical music was not played in my home; I sang sections of Handel's Messiah in high school and college. Discovered classical music in college, dedicated most of my loose money to buying, selling, trading and collecting LPs, cassettes, reel-to-reel tapes, CDs and downloads for 45 years. Probably owned 12,000 recordings.


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## Minori Aiko (Sep 2, 2017)

Neither of my parents listen or listened to classical music as I grew up and as I do now. My father is a rock n roll fan and my mother listens to pop with random rock classics that she heard when she grew up. 

As I grew up, I always found most the music I heard boring and uninteresting so I ventured into hard rock, to metal, to prog rock etc. as a younger teen and it was never enough. After playing guitar for 6 years (started around 10ish), I always thought piano was a much more interesting and versatile instrument and it would be much more amazing to play. I grew up with video games and especially those with epic stories and of course great music to go along (basically dramatic film-classical-music) like that of Nobuo Uematsu and such. 

From there I started taking piano lessons and wanted to be classically trained and dove straight into the classical world and found all the good stuff! Since then it has been great so far. I'm only 17 and have been playing piano for 7/8ish months and I love every second of it. Of course I wish I would've found everything at a younger age but better now than never.


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## Isiah Thanu (Nov 1, 2016)

I grew up in the 50s, no classical. Dad fancied himself as Bing Crosby, and whenever classical music was referred to on the radio he would joke about symphony movements as "shift" and "get out o t'road "
(Lancashire lad).
Can't remember how my interest started in CM, but Bolero soon became a favourite and late listening on a Dansette 
becMe a regular thing when all the family went to bed.
Seriously began listening when I married, though neither my wife nor my daughters have any interest in CM at all.
For me though it is a passion, as was hi fi, though now I listen late at night alone with headphones.
Being the wrong side of 70 I have gone mad and recently bought a four figure set of headphones- wonderful wonderful sound..
Every night the three of us get together and discover more music.- That's me, the PM1s and YouTube!


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## Bettina (Sep 29, 2016)

20centrfuge said:


> My mom was a kind and energetic piano teacher to tons of neighborhood kids, some of whom were good and progressed far, but most of whom were, well, just kids. As such, I grew up with the sounds of the piano ALL THE TIME. My favorites of her teaching repertoire were *Milhaud's Scaramouche*, Gershwin's Preludes, Grieg's Wedding Day at Troldhaugen, Chopin - various.
> 
> She would take my siblings and I to Utah Symphony concerts and musical theatre events as often as possible. She encouraged me on the piano and later on the trumpet. I don't think I would have fallen in love with classical music if she hadn't paved the way a bit. She is and was a beautiful soul. She passed away about 5 years ago.


Sorry for getting WAY off topic, but isn't Milhaud's Scaramouche for two pianos? How did she teach it? Did she have two pianos in the house, or did she find/create an arrangement of it for solo piano? I'm just curious because I like that piece, but I can't ever teach it to my students because I only have one piano.


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