Piano Lessons at the University!

Well, we have finally figured out things for our little piano boy. After all our wondering and searching, we decided to contact the University's department of music and get their opinion. We sent out a random email with some video links and we got one email back in particular asking us to meet with her so she could evaluate him and give her opinion.

We did some research into who this person was and found that not only was she director of several music programs as well as at 2 colleges, but she was also a concert pianist, child prodigy herself, and over the chamber of music concert series and had a long long list of many accomplishments and awards making her listed as "master class".

Yes, I suppose we were a little surprised that someone with so many credentials wanted to take the time out of their incredibly busy schedule to meet with some random people off the street to look at their son play piano, but we hoped it was for good reasons and that she really was impressed by him. So, we made the date and met up at the University to talk to her.

Now of course we weren't organized and forgot his sheet music and he ended up playing some random choo choo train song (only thing he had memorized at the time) for her while we sat in fear of what reaction we would get from such a weird little song. But after doing a little bit of music games with him and talking with him, she told us what she thought.

She said she will usually pick 1 or 2 new students at most a year to privately teach and she likes to start when they are young and that by the time they are old enough that they are exceptionally experienced and have the ability to apply to Julliard, and her students get in.

So as she proceeds to tell us all this technical and fancy stuff we are watching our son play with the piano keys and roll around on the bench and floor (remember, just because you are gifted, does not mean you are any more mature!) and we're trying to take it all in. She said it didn't matter what a student plays, like what song selection, but she knew right away that our son was quite gifted by the tone of what he played.

Well, all of this is pretty intense to our little world. We agreed to her as his private teacher, and he'll start next week taking lessons at the University Department of Music. We still can't quite digest it all, and it seems pretty overwhelming seeing a little 6 year old "go to college" in a sense, but we are incredibly happy and lucky that he has gotten this chance. He is very excited himself to have a real teacher. We'll have to see what comes of all this.

If you're interested in any video performances, we maintain a piano blog here.