<p>I'd be happy to play in Thumper's parent ensemble. Except that my middle-aged eyes have trouble reading the music these days, and I'm finding that someone has moved some of the piano keys, and they're not where they used to be. :) But perhaps if there are enough middle-aged ears in the audience (am I assuming too much to suggest an audience?) it won't matter.</p>
<p>Mommab, I hope your car has wings, so you can pick me up.</p>
<p>I want to add more good wishes to those who are finishing up auditions for the year. </p>
<p>And the trends I'm noticing in this thread: most - but not all - have musical genes, or at least music-appreciation genes. And most - not all - have had good school experiences. And most - not all - have had good private teachers. But what all the posts seem to suggest is evidence of extremely supportive parents who value music. (Even if our secrets wishes were for something more "practical".)</p>
<p>When I taught piano, I had many parents shyly suggest that their kids were perhaps not especially talented, but they still wanted them to have lessons. I always told them that for every performer, there needed to be a hundred more who loved music, to sit in the audience. And I considered it to be the most important part of my job to help my students learn to love music.</p>
<p>"Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genuis." -- Mozart (attributed)</p>
<p>It seems that many of our musical kids also had an innate understanding of music and picked it up as a child would learn a language...easily, naturally and without formal training or struggle. </p>
<p>I know environment plays a big part in music education (heck, I even played classical music to my babies in utero!), but I really think that elusive gift of talent is just 'in them.'</p>
<p>Our music child was singing lyrics at age 2; always singing a tune throughout his childhood, and as others have posted - the product of two rather unmusical, but musically appreciative parents. </p>
<p>What I noticed about him as an infant was that he was extremely sensitive to sounds - rustling plastic bags always made him startle and cry and there was generally much more tip toeing around the house than with our more visually artistic second child who didn't notice nearly as much in the way of sounds in the environment. I find it fascinating how hard-wired so many of these qualities are.</p>
<p>srw and orchmom - Thanks for the comments. I think that it is important that parents sometimes just stay out of kids way. To some extent, son had to drag us along, but we always let him initiate the next level so that we were certain that our investment of time, money, and energy was something HE really wanted.</p>
<p>MGMmom - My son, too, was also pretty sensitive to noise as a youngster. While we always assumed he would end up playing a brass instrument, he has always hated them stating that they are too loud. And he chose cello over violin because he found the violin too high and squeaky. He was very attracted to the flute and insisted as a 7 year old that he could figure out a way to play it, but I finally told him that, with his had, it was not possible. I think that is the only time we ever had to tell him he couldn't do something.</p>
<p>Speaking of that, there is a Canadian violinist at the Curtis Institute who was born without a right hand. He plays with a specially designed prosthesis.</p>