Strings of Life: How Music Shaped My Life’s Symphony
A Symphony of Choices
Music has been a passion of mine since I was a child. I still vividly remember how, at the age of 5, I would ask my parents to buy me cassette tapes of my favorite bands (to name just a few Romanian bands from the late 90s: 3 Sud Est, Animal X, Andre). I don’t think any of the kids I knew back then had as many tapes as I did, and I doubt any of them were doing what I was doing: putting on concerts in the living room or turning my bedroom into a concert hall, with the bed as my stage. My parents noticed my attraction to music and decided to enroll me in piano lessons.
These piano lessons were quite expensive, and to be honest, I wasn’t all that fascinated with the instrument. After a few sessions, my parents decided to discontinue the lessons. However, the piano teacher reassured them that it was perfectly normal for a child my age not to be fully drawn to the instrument but from the few piano lessons he could determine that I had a musical ear, and he told my parents that it would be a shame not to resume the lessons in a few years.
Two years later, my parents considered it would be best to enroll me in a school in the city rather than the one in our small town. They began to explore the available options and found that the best choice was the School of Arts in…