Chicago, IL

Josef Hofmann in a live performance of Chopin’s Concerto No. 2 (2nd Movement!)

Hiking on Mount Tamalpais.

Isador Buchhalter, Rudolph Ganz, Rosalyn Tureck, and Irwin Freundlich.

“You're the genius; I'm the boss!”

“Where do you think I fit in this field?”

I was eleven. From when I was perhaps eight, my family insisted that I attend the Chicago Symphony every week with my much-older sister. I remember sleeping on her shoulder in one concert. I had school the next day, and I really wanted to be home, sleeping. Suddenly, at that stunning spot in the development section of the first movement of Mozart's 40th Symphony, all that sound (coming into my ears year after year) made fantastic sense. It was a language. It was speaking! Right then and there, I sat up and fell in love with music.

Playing the The Goldberg Variations for Rosalyn Tureck.

Writing.

Always early. Very early. Before the day claims me. A sacred time.

Bach, Brahms, and Rachmaninoff.

I would have loved to be a musician on the cusp of the classical/romantic era. Say 1827–28 Vienna. The co-mingling of the two ways of looking at music had to be very alive, confusing even, certainly exciting.

Alain Marion, Mack McCray, and Michael Grebanier.

After decades of teaching hundreds of students (many of them frankly extraordinary), I find it impossible to name only a few. Yes, a good many are celebrity students, having fared well in competition, having earned teaching positions, having secured a performing life, leading strong professional lives. Yes, some stand out. They were always the ones for whom music was a necessity...

That said, however, my most enduring, my most memorable moments have to do with being there when a young musical mind pitches forward and advances to a new level, a new understanding. These pure moments of teaching can come at any time and with a student at any level. These pure moments of teaching remain in my mind year after year. (Sometimes I think of the Piano Studio as a bewitching place for Alchemy.)

Performing Bach on the Modern Piano, Stanford University
Creativity and the University: A View from the Studio, Ohio State University

Bach: The Six Partitas, Capella

To record The Well-Tempered Clavier. I'd also like to edit all 19 keyboard suites of J.S. Bach, including articulations. This could be highly personalized, like Schnabel's Beethoven.