The Early Years

Music has been part of my life since childhood.

I have a memory of being in the kitchen as my mother was doing the ironing one day. She was listening to the radio and people were talking about Tannhäuser. It must have been a Met broadcast. I was maybe five or six at the time. But I don't recall the Met broadcasts as a normal feature of Saturday afternoons at our house at that time. But when I was maybe twelve, I was a a friend's house, and we turned on the radio and it was the end of Il Trovatore. My friend wasn't interested, but I insisted on listening, at least sporadically, to the end. From then on I was hooked on opera.

There were a few symphonic broadcasts. But also around the time I was twelve, my folks bought a record player with an automatic changer. I began to listen to the records in the 78rpm collection they had. And we began to buy new records.

So during my high school years, I listened faithfully to the Met broadcasts and to other classical music on the radio. At the same time, I enjoyed much of the popular music of the day. In college, my familiarity with the classical broadened, my love of opera continued, I continued to enjoy popular music, and Joan Baez's records awakened real enjoyment of folk music.