Of my earliest memories, the most vivid are musical. My mother was a capable violinist, my aunt a superb pianist. I remember feeling that I would burst from joy when I listened to them play together. My family had a remarkably well rounded record collection, including lots of old 78s and the newer LPs. I loved the 78s best, especially recordings of Caruso, Kreisler, and Paderewski. A childproof record player in my bedroom gave rise to a small personal collection of 45s. My favorites? A young person’s biography of Chopin, narrated by Milton Cross, host of the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts. And a condensed Barber of Seville, which told the story and explained the arias before they were sung in Italian.

My first experience of live opera was at age four when my parents took me to a wonderful production of Die Fledermaus. To this day I have a weakness for Strauss waltzes. When I was seven, my parents finally yielded to my passion and sent me for piano lessons. Not long thereafter, the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition was established in our part of Texas. My avid attendance at the first two competitions gave me a crash course in piano repertory and offered a glimpse into the rigors and rewards of playing professionally. When I was 13, I landed my first musical job as organist at the local Episcopal Church. By that time my parents accepted the fact that, instead of rearing a future doctor, they’d bred a musician.

In the summer of 1967, I attended the first master class of Lili Kraus at Texas Christian University, the beginning of a relationship that remained central to my musical life for many years. And though I later worked with other fine teachers who taught me more about piano playing, none taught me more about music than Lili. My move to New York to attend The Juilliard School opened the door to more formative experiences. I heard many important conductors and visiting foreign orchestras. I witnessed Beverly Sills at the height of her powers, saw Dame Margot Fonteyn at the end of her brilliant career, and never missed a Rubinstein concert. But most significant was the chance to audit the famous master classes of Maria Callas at Juilliard.

In 1972, I was accepted at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, where I was privileged to spend two years under the tutelage of Ferenc Rados and coached chamber music with György Kurtág. Returning to the U.S., I settled again in New York, continued my studies with Nina Svetlanova, and eventually made my Carnegie Recital Hall debut in 1980. In the mid-1980s my essentially Euro-centric perspectives were broadened considerably when, as a staff member of the New York State Council on the Arts, I became immersed in the then-burgeoning downtown art scene.

In 1995, I moved to Washington, D.C., to work with the musical instrument collections at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. The culmination of that experience was participation in an exhibition and two PBS programs in 2000–2001, Piano 300, celebrating the 300th anniversary of the piano’s invention.