Parents sometimes ask the Lewisville Lake Symphony when their children should start learning an instrument.

A while back, the Symphony was  contacted by a Dallas Morning News staffer who wanted to start her son on a piano before he was three.  However, her husband, who played for a well known NFL team, didn't want his son wimping around with musical instruments.  What to do? 

We recommended introducing the boy to a piano to see if he would he play it or tackle it.  Assuming he wanted to play, musicians from the Symphony orchestra said that around five was a good age to start piano.  Earlier for more compact instruments.

We asked the guest artists from recent Symphony Series and International Chamber Series when they got started.

2 years

Janice Frehlauer, violin (piano at 4 years)  

3 years

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, clavier

Elton John, piano

Stirling Trent, violin

4 years

Shannon Lee, violin

5 years

Elena Dorozhkina, piano

Christina Kim, piano

Anton Mordazov, piano

John-Henry Crawford, cello

Rick Wu, piano

Anna McDonald, piano

Alison Chang, piano

6 Years

Sihyung Kim, violin

Wyndham Tsai, cello

Violetta Zharkova, piano

 8 years

Grace Ho, piano, (cello at 9 years)

The Lewisville Lake Symphony likes to get kids involved early.  Here, children and their parents wait for the start of 'Peter and the Wolf' presented in cooperation with the LakeCities Ballet and narrated by a real helicoptering TV traffic reporter.

Its never too late to start  

Alfredo Arjona, who performed in one of our early International Chamber Series concerts, did not begin playing the piano until he was twenty.  Studying chemical engineering at the University of Veracruz in México he found he was more hooked on notes than molecules.  He has gone on to a distinguished career as a pianist after graduating from UNT's College of Music.

Never too early
"Its is NEVER too early to expose a child to music. Obviously, "private lessons" should wait until the child is old enough to sit still and concentrate for about 30 minutes. But there are MANY successful pre-school music programs that introduce children to the idea of singing, clapping, dancing, etc."

Symphony Board Member

Prof. Pamela Mia Paul.

Career path

Alan Greenspan is an accomplished clarinet and saxophone player who played with Stan Getz when they were in school together. He studied clarinet at the Juilliard School from 1943 to 1944, when he dropped out to join a professional jazz band.

He returned to college in 1945, attending New York University (NYU), where he received a B.S. in economics summa cum laude in 1948 and an M.A. in economics in 1950.

Wikipedia

  Why play?