Ahhhh.....Music

Music is very very important in this house, as those of you who know us personally are aware. I credit it with saving me from my white trash fate (completely) and I started playing classical saxophone at age 12. I got a music scholarship and went to USF with a major in music performance. I went on to perform on a couple of influential indie albums and am now happy to back Sean up on guitar or banjo when I have the time to learn a tune (which, sadly, is almost never, but I have high hopes for the fall, when I will always have an entire day to myself every week!!!). Sean started playing classical guitar at age 12 and now plays just about everything you can imagine and has become a semi-expert on Irish, Cajun, Old Time, and Bluegrass music. And he makes violin-family stringed instruments. So, the girls will always play something beautiful.

Addie started a movement and music class last January called Wiggleworms. Gillian started piano a year ago last January with her school music teacher, which has gone swimmingly. She started learning the suzuki violin method at the Music Institute of Chicago in September. So we are cultivating the ability to learn to read music (piano) and to develop her ear and technique bowing (violin). The Suzuki program is a very classical, very regimented program at MIC. Gillian has 2 lessons a week-one group, one private. It costs a small fortune, but it is really important to us, so we make it a priority. She started in a "sampler" class with a very strict, very pretty young teacher that was not impressed by Gillian's initial obnoxious efforts to get her attention. She is the absolute perfect compliment to Gillian's personality, and her matter-of-factness and her ability to remain separate from but supportive of our child made us choose her to be Gillian's private instructor.

Gillian started the sampler class with a cardboard wheat thins box that we were to decorate. So, we did, in all it's hot-pink-with-heart-stickers glory (the teacher noted that the "f-holes" were remarkably professional-looking for a 5 year old (thanks, violin-maker papa!):

She worked with this box-proper posture, proper handling, proper care-for 7 weeks, and picked up a real instrument the last week of the class. She had to EARN the right to pick up a real instrument. By that time she was dying to. She picked up with the two-class schedule in November. So far it has been excellent. Here are a couple of recent videos, which Sean recorded for his own benefit to know how to help Gillian learn. One thing is sure-this is as much work (if not more) for Sean as it is for Gillian. He learns the piano accompaniment to help her practice. She practices music (piano or violin or both) every day, for about 10-15 minutes. And she's doing great!

Addie will probably start at MIC in the same program when she's 4. By then she will have been in music classes for 2.5 years, and should be ready (I didn't do a continuous program with her as I have done with Addie). We are considering having Gillian give cello a try given her height, but for now we are sticking with the current routine. I hope the future prodigious Gillian looks back on these first baby steps with some amount of sweetness-because we are here, at the beginning of her gift. How wonderful to be able to watch her refine and expand it!