I became a professional musician and played all kinds of music. I played bluegrass, I played classical music, and for many years, I played jazz.
I took piano lessons as a kid, and my daughter's played piano since before she started kindergarten, so classical piano is something I really love.
My dad was my first influence. He played classical guitar and my uncle Ron played the blues.
Fact is that I played piano and performed, as a young kid, a Mozart piano concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra . Don't forget I was only eleven-years-old and to be on the stage at that age had tremendous impact on me. Basically love for classical music and performing as a kid on the big stage probably led toward this decision, which meant that music is going to be my big love but also my profession.
Even back when I played 'straight-ahead,' I mixed it up. I played some free-form, classical adaptations, solo flute stuff. It was New Age in its own way.
I wasn't the athletic kid in my family. Both of my brothers were on athletic scholarships and my dad played semi-pro hockey. My younger brother played pro hockey. I was the music kid. But I always loved sports. I grew up around it.
My folks have played everything from rock, disco, pop, funk, and blues. My dad has always brought and played different genres like jazz, classical, and Latin. With all this in my pocket, I feel I have a taste of everything for my influences.
I wanted to make an album where every song is kind of interacting - where you can't tell what's the string arrangement and what's the song. I guess that came out of going to college, majoring in music, studying classical music, and even as a kid, being really drawn to classical music.
I played piano growing up. I played classical piano since I was 5, and I sang in choirs, and I sang in plays and musicals.
When I was a kid, I was always an athlete. I played a lot of sports. I played football, basketball, baseball and soccer.
All my life I've been that way - ever since I was a kid. It doesn't matter whether we played video games or even before that when we had board games when you played with your sister and mom and dad - I didn't like losing then and didn't want to do anything but win when we played.
I had a bilateral lisp, and I was overweight. I was the kid who played with the flowers on the ground in the outfield during baseball. I was that kid.
I've played classical violin since I was 5 years old.
I hate to say it, but Christmas as a kid was always a moneymaking venture for me. I played trumpet, and a friend of mine who played trombone and a guy who played tuba, every Christmas we'd go out for three or four days beforehand and play Christmas carols on our horns.
In the old generation, if one kid bought a PlayStation 2 and the other kid bought an Xbox, at his house you played PlayStation, at your house you played Xbox. Now that it's online, all those early buyers who... you want to play with, they've got their reputation online of who they are and how good they are at these games.
I've done classical theaters. I played Hamlet myself and Romeo.