A Quote by Neil Sedaka

I actually started as a concert pianist. I had a scholarship to the Julliard School of Music. — © Neil Sedaka
I actually started as a concert pianist. I had a scholarship to the Julliard School of Music.
I was trying to become a legitimate trumpet player, and I had a scholarship to Eastman School of Music. I was really on my way. But I didn't take the scholarship. I got sidetracked, because when summers came around, I started playing with a rock-and-roll band.
My older brother was a musical prodigy, and he got a scholarship to the Bronx House Music School. We moved to the Bronx when I was 4 to be close to his music school. Then I got a music scholarship myself, at the age of 6, but that was for a school down in Greenwich Village. I had to take the elevated train and then the subway to get there.
I began ear training when I was about six months old. My mother was a concert pianist, and she started all of her children with music before they were a year old. Then she began to see that I had a musical gift...
I was much more interested in the orchestra than the piano, but I did become fairly proficient as a pianist and my teachers felt I had talent and wanted me to become a good concert pianist and earn my living that way.
My mom's a concert pianist, so she started teaching me when I was around seven. When I was eight, I started writing my own songs, and kinda started putting piano and singing together. But I'm trained classically, which is a big influence on me, I think.
My father is a violinist and my mother is a pianist, so I've been hearing music all my life. I started playing at three and had my first music teacher at five.
I got into Julliard on almost a full scholarship.
When I was studying... there weren't any black concert pianists. My choices were intuitive, and I had the technique to do it. People have heard my music and heard the classic in it, so I have become known as a black classical pianist.
I was going to be a concert pianist, and when I was in high school, my parents were scared to death that I would focus too much on that too soon. And that I'd end up in some sort of dead end, and not fulfilling whatever potential they thought I had.
I started dancing when I was five, and I trained intensively as a competitive dancer up until the end of high school. I did all genres, and later on a did a lot of extra ballet on top of that. I actually got accepted to Julliard for dance during my senior year, but I ultimately turned it down to come to L.A. to act.
I went to this boy's choir school when I was growing up, and I think that the first time that I consciously started making music was when this one kid joined our class. He was an amazing pianist and would come up with all these ideas. I've always had a really competitive side, so I saw him doing that, and was like, "I have to try writing songs as well."
By the time I was eight I was taking classical piano lessons and I wanted to be a concert pianist. But that didn't work out. I graduated from high school and my formal education ended.
Once I understood Bach's music, I wanted to be a concert pianist. Bach made me dedicate my life to music, and it was that teacher who introduced me to his world.
I wanted to be a concert pianist at Carnegie Hall; that is what I wanted to do from really early on. I actually was the accompanist for a couple of the musicals I was in growing up.
I moved to New York to go to Julliard Drama School. Didn't sing a single note of music.
I started radio, actually, when I was 13. I started DJing when I was 13, but later in that year, I started a high school station at Phillips Academy. I didn't actually go there, but it was in the town I went to high school in. So literally, within six months of DJing, they started mailing me records; it was crazy.
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