I really can’t remember a time when I didn’t play the piano. Both my parents were professional musicians and my mother was my first teacher. When I was 9 I started to take lessons from a friend of the family who was my teacher all the way through high school. Randy at a piano lesson.

I liked my teacher because she just kept giving me more and more music to learn. She was not one of those teachers that made me focus on one thing till I got sick of it. I always enjoyed reading through music and can remember going to the Cleveland Public library almost weekly and carrying home huge stacks of music to browse through.

My first paid job was to accompany a clarinetist on the Brahms f minor sonata for a contest that he was entering. I was paid $2.50 and I immediately lost the check.

When I was ten I started playing chamber music with my grandfather who was a wonderful violinist. I looked forward to his yearly visits when he introduced me to music by Mozart, Schubert, and Beethoven.

At age 13 I went away to summer camp for the first time–Eastern Music Festival in North Carolina. I really enjoyed making friends with kids who shared my passion for music. I returned several times and I still maintain friendships from my time there.

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