I have been asked to start a blog to give parents a place to ask questions about how to introduce music into their children's lives. I hope it will also be a place where parents will share their own experiences.
I have written many articles for parenting publications over the years, e.g. what to do when your child does not want to practice, what is the right age to begin taking kids to concerts, what do you need to know when buying a piano, etc.. I have created highly successful symphony concerts for young people and their families and now am producing my dream CDs, enabling children everywhere to experience the wonderfulness of all those sold-out concerts at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. I hope that this blog will enjoy the success of all my previous musical endeavors.
A short biography would tell you that I have a BA from Vassar College in music, where I specialized in composition. I worked at Carnegie Hall when only 9 people ran the entire institution. I returned to school for an MA in music and music education, and went on to teach middle school music. After discovering that music was considered the poor cousin to English and math - in retrospect, I should have been grateful that it was even offered in almost every school in the US - I decided on a career change.
This bio is getting long... years at Cornell, Columbia, and the University of Tokyo and three degrees later (ancient Chinese and modern Japanese history), I found myself with a conductor husband and a son who was extremely musical. We went to every concert for children in NYC and Washington, DC and I found them either silly or dull. Being married to a conductor, Stephen Simon, who was giving Friday and Saturday concerts at the Kennedy Center, I thought we had a mission.
At the time, I was on the boards of Carnegie Hall and New York City Opera, I had taught music, I had been to all of these children's concerts, and I was worried about whether there would be an audience for classical music in the next generation. Reflecting upon the questions of how audiences were formed, I had an idea.
Have to substitute teach an exercise class in Woods Hole, MA. To be continued...
I have written many articles for parenting publications over the years, e.g. what to do when your child does not want to practice, what is the right age to begin taking kids to concerts, what do you need to know when buying a piano, etc.. I have created highly successful symphony concerts for young people and their families and now am producing my dream CDs, enabling children everywhere to experience the wonderfulness of all those sold-out concerts at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. I hope that this blog will enjoy the success of all my previous musical endeavors.
A short biography would tell you that I have a BA from Vassar College in music, where I specialized in composition. I worked at Carnegie Hall when only 9 people ran the entire institution. I returned to school for an MA in music and music education, and went on to teach middle school music. After discovering that music was considered the poor cousin to English and math - in retrospect, I should have been grateful that it was even offered in almost every school in the US - I decided on a career change.
This bio is getting long... years at Cornell, Columbia, and the University of Tokyo and three degrees later (ancient Chinese and modern Japanese history), I found myself with a conductor husband and a son who was extremely musical. We went to every concert for children in NYC and Washington, DC and I found them either silly or dull. Being married to a conductor, Stephen Simon, who was giving Friday and Saturday concerts at the Kennedy Center, I thought we had a mission.
At the time, I was on the boards of Carnegie Hall and New York City Opera, I had taught music, I had been to all of these children's concerts, and I was worried about whether there would be an audience for classical music in the next generation. Reflecting upon the questions of how audiences were formed, I had an idea.
Have to substitute teach an exercise class in Woods Hole, MA. To be continued...
