In 1913 a nineteen-year-old walked into the most prestigious competition in French music, went up against men six years older than she was, and won it outright. Lili Boulanger was the first woman ever to take the first prize for composition, and our Composer of the Month for August. She wrote a small body of remarkable music in a short life, and people are still discovering it a century later.
Early Life and Inspirations
She was born into a musical household in Paris. Her father Ernest was a composer who had won the Prix de Rome himself, decades earlier. Her mother Raïssa was a Russian singer. Her older sister Nadia, six years ahead of her, would go on to become one of the most influential composition teachers of the twentieth century, the woman who taught Aaron Copland, Philip Glass, Astor Piazzolla and Quincy Jones.
There is a story from the family that their father, already elderly, asked six-year-old Nadia to promise she would look after her baby sister. Nadia kept that promise for the rest of Lili’s life, and for sixty-one years after it.
Lili was two when she caught bronchial pneumonia. She survived, but her health remained fragile for the rest of her life. She could not attend school reliably. What she could do was sit in on Nadia’s lessons at the Paris Conservatoire, absorbing harmony and counterpoint before she was old enough to enroll.
The Prize No Woman Had Won
The Prix de Rome was the most prestigious award in French music. Berlioz won it. Debussy won it. Women had only been permitted to enter the composition competition since 1903, and none had taken the first prize.
In 1913, at nineteen, Lili entered with a cantata called Faust et Hélène. She was the youngest competitor by six years. She won the Premier Grand Prix with thirty-one of the thirty-six votes.
The press coverage was enormous, and much of it focused on her age and her gender rather than her music. What the music itself showed was a composer who already knew exactly what she wanted: long unfolding lines, harmony that moves in unexpected directions, and an unusual gift for setting text so that the words keep their shape.
Five Extraordinary Years
Her health shaped how she worked without ever stopping her. She wrote from a chair, or from bed on the harder days, and in the five years after the Prix de Rome she produced many of the works for which she is now best known.
Two pieces from that stretch show her range better than any description could. Psalm 130, “Du fond de l’abîme,” is enormous and slow and shadowed, written for choir and orchestra and dedicated to her father’s memory. D’un matin de printemps is five minutes of spring light, quick and bright and full of air. She was working on both at the same time, which tells you something about the size of the imagination involved.
Her last piece was a Pie Jesu, dictated to Nadia when writing had become too difficult. Lili died in March 1918, at twenty-four.
Nadia lived another sixty-one years, and spent a good deal of that time making sure her sister’s music was published, performed and taught. It is largely thanks to her that we can still hear it.
What Students Can Learn from Lili Boulanger
There are two things in her story worth passing on to a young musician.
The first is that she was in the room. Long before she was old enough to be a student herself, she was sitting in on her sister’s lessons, listening to material she was not supposed to understand yet. Being around music you cannot play yet is not wasted time. It is how the ear gets built.
The second is that she wrote what she wanted to write. She was nineteen and the entire French musical establishment was watching, and she did not produce something safe. Students often think there is a correct thing to make. There usually isn’t.
Start Listening
Begin with D’un matin de printemps. It runs about five minutes, it exists in versions for orchestra, for piano trio, and for violin or flute with piano, and it is within reach of many advanced students. It sounds like a morning.
Then try Psalm 130 if you want to hear the full scale of what she could do, and the Pie Jesu if you want to hear the last thing she wrote.
Listen for the restless movement in D’un matin de printemps, the way the colors keep shifting under a line that never quite settles. In Psaume 130, listen for how gradually it expands, and how much scale she builds from a quiet opening.
Many of her scores are available through IMSLP, though copyright status varies by country and edition. There is not very much of it. That is rather the point.
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This August, we are delighted to feature guitar student Constantine Chua as our Student of the Month! Constantine is 16 and has been taking guitar lessons at our Sunnyvale location for five years, studying with Teacher Abshir. Outside of music he runs varsity track and cross country, and he brings that same consistency to the instrument. Read more about Constantine’s experience at CCM below!
Student of the Month Questionnaire – Constantine Chua
What is your name?
Constantine Chua
How old are you?
16 years old
Who is your teacher?
Teacher Abshir
How long have you been taking guitar lessons?
5 years
What advice would you give to a guitar student just starting out at CCM?
Only learn pieces that you enjoy and can get excited about playing!
What piece are you looking forward to learning someday?
Zapateado
What is your favorite thing about playing guitar?
The wide variety of repertoire
What is your favorite food?
Clam Chowder
Do you have a pet?
I have a Jack Russell Terrier named Cleo
Do you play any sports or do any other activities outside of music lessons?
I run varsity track and cross country.
What do you want to be when you grow up?
I haven’t decided yet, but I aim to inspire people and be able to contribute to society.
What is your most memorable experience at CCM?
I enjoy showing up to my weekly lessons with Teacher Abshir, and always coming out having learned something new!
Parent Spotlight – Evelyn Chua
Regarding guitar instruction, what are you most proud of your child accomplishing?
I am most proud of Constantine’s growth from a young beginner into a dedicated and accomplished guitarist. He has developed the confidence to perform and continues to challenge himself while retaining a genuine love for the guitar.
What advice would you give a new parent starting in the program?
Find a teacher who understands how your child learns and what motivates them. Teacher Abshir has been an excellent mentor who adapts his teaching style to bring out the best in Constantine. Consistent practice is important, but so is allowing your child to enjoy the music and develop at their own pace.
Why did you decide to give your child a musical upbringing?
Music provides a lifelong source of joy, creativity, and self-expression. We hoped music would become a meaningful part of Constantine’s life, something he could continue to enjoy and share with others for many years.
Congratulations, Constantine!
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The violin took its modern shape in northern Italy in the first half of the 16th century, somewhere between about 1520 and 1550. No single person invented it. Andrea Amati of Cremona is the maker most often credited, though he settled the instrument’s proportions rather than dreamed it up, and makers in nearby Brescia were building violini at the same time. The oldest violin that still survives with a date on it was made by Amati in 1564.
That is the short answer. The longer one is more interesting, and it corrects a few things you will find repeated confidently across the internet.
Who invented the violin?
Nobody, in the sense the question usually means. There is no inventor’s name in the record and no moment when a first violin appeared.
Andrea Amati (c. 1505–1577) gets the credit because his workshop in Cremona produced the earliest instruments that look and behave like violins as we know them. What survives of his life is civil paperwork rather than anything about the instruments themselves. A Cremona census in 1526 lists him as a liutaro, a lute maker. In 1539 he rented the property that became known as Amati’s Stall. His son Antonio is recorded working alongside him by 1556. A payment record from 1572 mentions a violin of his going to the French court. He died in 1577 at seventy-two.
You will often read that Amati built his first three-string violins in 1542 and 1546. Treat that carefully. Neither instrument is authenticated, and when Count Cozio di Salabue examined one in 1861 he criticized its workmanship and said the label merely “looks like it was written in the sixteenth century.” He was hedging, and so should we.
The competing claim belongs to Gasparo da Salò of Brescia, who a handful of 19th-century writers credited with inventing the violin outright. The dates rule it out. Gasparo was born in 1540 and first appears in Brescia in 1563, by which time Amati had been running his own shop for more than twenty years.
The more serious challenge comes from Brescia generally, where guild records name makers producing violini as early as 1524. That is earlier than anything documented for Amati. The problem is that no Brescian maker of that era dated a label, and the surviving Brescian instruments have been cut and remodeled so heavily that their original form is hard to read.
Britannica puts it about as well as it can be put: the earliest makers, among them Gasparo da Salò and Andrea Amati, had settled the violin’s average proportions before the end of the 16th century. Plural. No inventor.
When and where was the violin invented?
Northern Italy, across roughly three decades in the early 1500s. The anchor points, in order of how solid they are:
- 1523. A Savoy treasury record dated 17 December pays for “trompettes et vyollons de Verceil,” from Vercelli. One of the earliest written uses of the word.
- 1524 and 1527. Brescian guild and tax records naming makers of violini.
- 1529 to 1536. The paintings of Gaudenzio Ferrari, which give us the first unambiguous pictures. His Madonna of the Orange Tree in Vercelli dates to 1529 or 1530. The cupola he painted at Santa Maria dei Miracoli in Saronno between 1534 and 1536 shows violin, viola and cello shapes among fifty-six instruments.
Scholars still argue about whether Ferrari’s instruments have three strings or four. The standard reading is three, with a counter-argument that a fourth peg sits hidden behind the pegbox in the Saronno fresco.
As for Cremona against Brescia, both cities have a case and neither wins it outright. Brescia has the earlier documents. Cremona has the surviving instruments, because Brescian makers never dated their labels. It is worth noticing that Ferrari’s paintings are in Vercelli and Saronno, which are neither city. The violin looks less like one town’s invention than like something the whole of Lombardy arrived at together.
The oldest violin that still exists
It lives in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford: an Andrea Amati dated 1564, known as the “Charles IX.” The label carries the year in Roman numerals and is now almost illegible. W.E. Hill & Sons gave it to the museum in 1939.
It belongs to a set made for the French court, and the instruments carry the motto Pietate et Justitia painted on their ribs. Sources differ on how many survive, generally putting it at eight or nine. You can find them at the Ashmolean, at Tullie House in Carlisle (England, not Scotland, whatever half the internet says), at the Museo del Violino in Cremona, at the Musée de la musique in Paris, and at the National Music Museum in Vermillion, South Dakota, which holds the “King” cello, the oldest surviving cello in the world.
One complication worth knowing. The Metropolitan Museum of Art owns an Amati violin it dates to about 1560 and calls the earliest surviving example. Tarisio’s archive dates the same instrument to 1570. Because it carries no date on its label, the argument cannot be settled, which is why the Ashmolean instrument keeps the title of oldest dated violin rather than oldest violin outright.
While we are correcting things: you will read that Charles IX took delivery of thirty-eight Amati instruments in 1534. He was born in 1550. The figure comes from a French writer in 1780, more than two centuries after the fact, and only one contemporary payment document survives, for a single violin in 1572.
What came before the violin
The violin descends from the medieval fiddle, or vielle, by way of the lira da braccio, an Italian instrument of the 15th and 16th centuries. The lira is the closest ancestor. It was held on the arm the same way and its body was traveling in the same direction.
The rebec is better understood as a cousin than a parent. It gave the violin its tuning in fifths but not its construction, since a rebec is carved from a single block with the body and neck continuous.
The rabāb sits further back still. Bowing itself reached Europe from Central Asia and the Islamic world sometime before the 10th century, through instruments of that family. But the rabāb is not the violin’s ancestor in any structural sense, and it is Persian rather than Arab in origin. Arab writers themselves said they had it from the Persians.
The violin’s own contributions arrived in Lombardy in the early 1500s and have no single precedent: four strings tuned in fifths, f-holes, overhanging edges with purfling, a scroll and a lateral pegbox, and arched plates carved separately from the ribs.
How has the violin changed over time?
Enormously, and here is the part most people find surprising: almost every surviving Cremonese violin has been rebuilt. Stradivari’s and Guarneri’s included. The instrument a soloist plays today is not the instrument that left the workshop.
- The neck was lengthened by around 30 millimeters and angled back, then mortised into the body rather than nailed on. Nearly every violin made before about 1830 has had a neck graft, keeping the original scroll and splicing on a new neck below it.
- The bridge grew taller and more arched, which follows from the tilted neck and gives the player clearance on each string.
- The fingerboard lengthened and became solid ebony, extending the upper register.
- The bass bar roughly doubled, from about 120 millimeters to somewhere between 175 and 280, to carry the higher string tension.
- The strings changed twice over. Everything was gut at first. From the late 1600s the G was overspun with silver or copper wire, and by the 1730s wound gut had taken over the lower strings. Steel E strings arrived in the early 1900s and became near-universal during the gut shortages of the First World War. Synthetic cores followed in 1970, when Thomastik-Infeld launched Dominant.
- The chin rest did not exist at all until the violinist Louis Spohr invented it around 1820. It was not for the player’s comfort. It was a block meant to keep chin pressure from cracking the tailpiece. Comfort was the reason later violinists took it up, and it was not standard equipment until close to 1900.
What drove all this was music itself. Concerts moved out of courts and into large public halls, concert pitch crept upward, composers wrote further up the fingerboard, and around 1785 the Tourte bow arrived with its concave stick and higher tension. Violins had to be louder. The wholesale conversion happened around 1800, much of it carried out in French workshops.
Stradivari, Guarneri, and the secret that isn’t
Antonio Stradivari worked in Cremona from about 1644 to 1737 and made roughly 1,100 instruments, of which around 650 survive. His “golden period” runs from about 1700 to 1720.
Bartolomeo Giuseppe Guarneri, known as del Gesù for the sacred monogram he began putting on his labels in 1731, lived from 1698 to 1744 and was the last maker in his family. Only about 150 of his instruments survive. His final years produced his most admired work, bolder and less regular than a Stradivari and darker in tone, which is why Paganini played a Guarneri of 1743 and called it his cannon.
Now the myth. The idea that Stradivari guarded a secret varnish is not supported by the evidence. Jean-Philippe Echard and colleagues at the Musée de la musique in Paris spent seven years analysing five Stradivari instruments and published the results in 2010. The varnish turned out to be an ordinary oil-resin system with common colorants, made from materials used broadly across 18th-century decorative arts. There was nothing proprietary in it.
A separate hypothesis from Joseph Nagyvary at Texas A&M holds that the wood was chemically treated, probably against woodworm and fungus, with acoustic effects as a side benefit. The minerals are genuinely there. Whether they were deliberate is still argued over, so it is a hypothesis rather than a finding.
The most striking evidence comes from blind listening tests run by the acoustician Claudia Fritz and the violin maker Joseph Curtin, published across three papers in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2014 they gave ten professional soloists six Old Italian violins, five of them Stradivari, and six new ones, in a rehearsal room and a 300-seat hall. Six of the ten chose a new violin as their favorite. New instruments outscored old by roughly six to one, and the players could not tell which was which above chance. A 2017 study extended the test to audiences in Paris and New York, who also preferred the new violins and judged them to project better.
This does not mean old Italian instruments are bad. It means the mystique around them is harder to defend than the price tags suggest, and that a very good modern violin is a genuinely competitive instrument. For a student, that is encouraging news.
Common questions
When was the violin invented?
There is no single date. The four-string violin emerged in northern Italy between roughly 1520 and 1550, and its proportions were settled by makers working between about 1540 and 1580. The earliest written reference is a Savoy treasury record from 1523.
Who invented the violin?
No individual is documented as the inventor. Andrea Amati of Cremona is usually credited with giving the violin family its lasting form, working alongside makers in Brescia who were building similar instruments at the same time.
Where was the violin invented?
Northern Italy, in Lombardy. Cremona and Brescia both have a claim, and the earliest surviving pictures of violins come from Vercelli and Saronno.
When was the first violin made?
Unknown. The oldest violin that survives with a date on it was made by Andrea Amati in 1564 and is held by the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
Who made the first violin?
No maker can be identified. Records of makers producing violini in Brescia go back to 1524, three years before the earliest surviving reference to Andrea Amati as a maker of bowed instruments.
How has the violin changed over time?
The neck was lengthened and angled back, the bridge raised, the fingerboard extended, the bass bar strengthened, and gut strings gave way to wound gut, then steel and synthetic cores. The chin rest was added around 1820. Almost every surviving violin from before 1830 has been rebuilt along these lines.
Learning the violin
Five hundred years of refinement have produced an instrument that is still, at the beginning, a piece of wood and four strings under a bow. That has not changed and it is part of the appeal.
The California Conservatory of Music has taught violin for fifteen years, to students starting as young as four and to adults picking the instrument up for the first time. You can find us in Sunnyvale, Fremont and Redwood City. If you have been curious, our violin lessons page explains how we teach and how to book a free introductory lesson.
Where this comes from
A good deal of what circulates online about the violin’s origins is repeated rather than checked, so it seems fair to show our working. The dates and attributions here come from museum collections and published research rather than from other websites.
- Tarisio’s Cozio Carteggio, for the Amati family records and John Dilworth’s account of the Brescian school
- The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and The Strad, on the 1564 “Charles IX” violin
- Britannica, on the violin and the rabāb
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, on its own early Amati and the “King” cello
- Echard and colleagues, “Stradivari’s Varnish,” Angewandte Chemie, 2010
- Fritz, Curtin and colleagues, three studies of new and old violins in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2012, 2014 and 2017
- Roger Hargrave, “Period of Adjustment,” on the conversion of baroque instruments
- Strings magazine, on Louis Spohr and the chin rest
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Our July Musician of the Month is Hiromi, a pianist whose concerts feel less like recitals and more like fireworks shows.
Nothing makes a young pianist’s eyes light up faster than thirty seconds of Hiromi playing live. She grins, she bounces off the bench, she attacks the keyboard like it owes her money. Underneath the showmanship is technique so complete that jazz, classical, funk, and progressive rock all come out of it whenever she wants. Nobody watches Hiromi and asks why anyone would practice piano. They ask how soon they can start.
Early Life and Inspirations
Hiromi Uehara was born in 1979 in Hamamatsu, Japan, the city where Yamaha builds its pianos. She started lessons at six, and at eight her teacher introduced her to something not on the syllabus: jazz. Both loves stuck. She trained classically while learning to improvise, and the combination showed early. At fourteen she performed with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra.
Then came the night that changed everything. At seventeen, through a chance meeting in Tokyo, she played for the great jazz pianist Chick Corea. He liked what he heard so much that he invited her to perform at his concert… the next day. She said yes. That pretty much tells you who Hiromi is.
From Jingles to the World Stage
Before the world knew her name, Hiromi paid her dues writing advertising jingles for Japanese companies. In 1999 she left for Berklee College of Music in Boston, where the legendary pianist Ahmad Jamal took her under his wing and co-produced her debut album, Another Mind, released in 2003 while the ink on her diploma was barely dry. In Japan it sold more than a hundred thousand copies, remarkable numbers for a jazz record.
The career since has been one long crescendo. She won a Grammy Award in 2011 with the Stanley Clarke Band. Her Trio Project, with bass legend Anthony Jackson and drum virtuoso Simon Phillips, sent the album Spark to number one on the U.S. Billboard jazz chart. In 2021 she performed at the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics, playing for a global audience of hundreds of millions. And in 2023 she composed and performed the piano for Blue Giant, the acclaimed anime film about a young jazz musician, introducing a whole new generation of kids to her sound. She tours today with her band Sonicwonder, and a Trio Project reunion tour is planned for this fall.
A Style With No Fences
Ask Hiromi what kind of music she plays and the honest answer is: hers. A single set might swing through a jazz standard, detonate into progressive-rock odd meters, quote Beethoven, and land on something tender and completely improvised. Critics have spent twenty years trying to file her under one genre. She keeps not fitting.
What makes it work is the foundation. All that borderless freedom rests on rigorous classical technique built from age six — the scales, the études, the discipline. That’s the part every music student should hear: the training isn’t the opposite of freedom. It’s what freedom is made of.
What Students Can Learn from Hiromi
Hiromi’s lesson for students is simple: joy belongs on stage. She is one of the most technically formidable pianists alive, and she plays with the open delight of a kid who just discovered the instrument yesterday. Somewhere between the metronome and the recital, students sometimes forget that music is supposed to feel like that. Hiromi never did.
Start Listening
- “Place to Be” — solo piano, tender and personal. Proof the fireworks come with a soul.
- “Spark” (The Trio Project) — the title track of her Billboard chart-topper. Buckle up.
- “The Tom and Jerry Show” — her cartoon-chase showpiece. Find a live video; kids replay it endlessly.
- Blue Giant soundtrack — her film score about a young musician chasing a dream. Perfect family listening.
If Hiromi’s videos leave your child eager to try the piano, our piano lessons at CCM are a great place to start.
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Our July Composer of the Month was born on July 7, 1860: Gustav Mahler — the most famous conductor of his age, who wrote some of the biggest music ever composed, entirely during his summer vacations.
Every beginning music student knows Frère Jacques. Mahler is the composer who dared to put it in a symphony: slowed down, shifted into a minor key, turned into a strange, haunting funeral march. Audiences in 1889 didn’t know what to make of it. Today it’s one of the most famous movements in orchestral music, and it tells you everything about him. Mahler took the simple tunes everyone knew and built cathedrals out of them: folk songs, marches, birdsong, children’s rounds.
Early Life and Inspirations
Mahler grew up in a Bohemian village, the son of an innkeeper, in a family that knew real hardship. Around age four he discovered a piano in his grandparents’ attic, and he essentially never came back down. By ten he was performing publicly; at fifteen he was admitted to the Vienna Conservatory. The sounds of his childhood — village bands, military bugle calls, folk dances, church bells — never left him. Decades later, they surface constantly in his symphonies, sometimes tenderly, sometimes twisted into something darker.
The Busiest Musician in Europe
Mahler’s day job would have consumed three ordinary careers. He climbed the ladder of European opera houses one podium at a time until, in 1897, he won the most powerful position in classical music: director of the Vienna Court Opera. He held it for ten years, conducting more than six hundred performances and driving singers, orchestras, and stage designers toward a standard of perfection that made him admired, feared, and imitated across Europe.
Which left exactly one season for composing: summer. Mahler built himself a series of tiny one-room composing huts: one in a lakeside meadow, one in the woods above another lake, one in the Dolomites. Every July and August he retreated there at dawn to write. Nine completed symphonies and some of the greatest songs in the repertoire came out of those sheds. The man conducted an empire ten months a year and still made time for the work that mattered most to him. There’s a practice-schedule lesson in there somewhere.
Triumph and Heartbreak
Mahler’s music asks enormous questions, about love, death, nature, and what comes after, because his life kept asking them of him. In a single devastating year, 1907, he lost his four-year-old daughter, was diagnosed with the heart condition that would eventually take him, and left Vienna. He crossed the Atlantic to conduct in New York, at the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic.
He got one unqualified triumph before the end. In September 1910, in Munich, he conducted the premiere of his colossal Eighth Symphony, nicknamed the “Symphony of a Thousand” for the sheer number of performers it requires, before an audience of three thousand. The ovation went on for half an hour. Eight months later he was gone, at just fifty.
“My time will yet come,” he had once insisted, when critics dismissed his music as excessive. He was right. Half a century after his death, a generation of conductors, Leonard Bernstein above all, put Mahler at the center of the orchestral repertoire, where he has remained ever since. Today, more than a century later, his symphonies sell out concert halls faster than almost anything else written for orchestra.
What Students Can Learn from Mahler
Two things. First: big feelings belong in music. Mahler put grief, joy, terror, and wonder into his work without apology, and that honesty is exactly what audiences love him for. Second: the busiest person you know still has summers. Mahler wrote nine symphonies on vacation, in a shed, before breakfast. Twenty minutes of practice a day suddenly sounds achievable.
Start Listening
- Symphony No. 1, third movement — the Frère Jacques funeral march. Play it for your kids; watch their faces when they recognize the tune.
- Adagietto from Symphony No. 5 — written as a love letter to his wife, Alma. Strings and harp alone, and one of the most beautiful things ever composed.
- Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection,” finale — the closest an orchestra gets to the sky opening up.
- Symphony No. 8, opening — the “Symphony of a Thousand” erupting into Veni creator spiritus. The 1910 premiere audience lost its mind; you might too.
Mahler wrote some of his most beautiful music for singers. If someone in your family loves to sing, our voice program is a great place to start.
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When the school year winds down, a collective sigh of relief echoes through households everywhere. Schedules loosen, alarm clocks are silenced, and the calendar opens up with the promise of unstructured sunny days. It is a well-deserved break. However, when it comes to developing a complex skill—particularly an artistic and cognitive pursuit like music—taking a two-month total hiatus can have unintended consequences.
In academic circles, educators frequently warn against the “summer slide,” the well-documented phenomenon where students lose significant academic ground over the vacation months. Music education operates on the exact same neurological and physical principles. Maintaining consistency throughout the summer isn’t about stripping away your child’s vacation; rather, it is about protecting the cognitive and physical investments they have worked so hard to make since September.
Summer Music: The Science of Music and Memory
To understand why a summer break can set a student back, we have to look under the hood at how the brain processes music. Learning to play an instrument is one of the few activities that activates virtually every area of the central nervous system simultaneously. It bridges the logical left hemisphere with the creative right hemisphere, strengthening the corpus callosum—the highway of nerve fibers connecting them.
When a student practices consistently, a substance called myelin wraps around the neural pathways involved in playing that instrument. Think of myelin as electrical insulation; the more a pathway is used, the thicker the insulation becomes, allowing signals to travel faster and more efficiently.
When practice stops entirely for eight to ten weeks, those neural pathways begin to undergo a process called synaptic pruning. The brain, trying to be efficient, assumes those unused musical pathways are no longer necessary. As a result, when students return in the fall, they aren’t just picking up where they left off—they are actively rebuilding the neural infrastructure required to read notes, process rhythm, and translate symbols on a page into physical movement.
The Physical Reality: Muscle Memory and Dexterity
Beyond the cognitive science, music is an athletic pursuit. Whether it is building the finger independence required for the piano, the breath support needed for voice or woodwinds, or the specific hand calluses required for string instruments, physical conditioning matters.
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Rapid Regression: Fine motor skills deteriorate much faster than gross motor skills. Even a two-week total break can lead to a noticeable drop in physical dexterity and technical stamina.
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The Relearning Tax: On average, a student who takes the entire summer off will spend the first four to six weeks of the fall term simply retracing their steps to regain their previous level of technical proficiency. This “relearning tax” can be incredibly discouraging for young learners who want to progress to exciting new repertoire but find themselves stuck reviewing last spring’s material.
The Psychological Benefit of a Baseline Routine
While a break from the rigid structures of the academic school year is healthy, a complete vacuum of routine can actually induce anxiety in children. Children thrive when they have predictable anchors in their week.
Weekly summer music lessons offer a gentle, low-stakes anchor point. It provides a sense of purpose and structure to long summer days without adding the pressure of grades, testing, or academic competition. It teaches children a profound life lesson: dedication and creative expression are year-round values, not just tasks to be checked off during the school year.
Why Summer Music Lessons Help
Statistically, some of the most profound musical breakthroughs happen between June and August. Why? Because the competing noise of everyday life drops to zero.
During the school year, a student’s mental bandwidth is divided among math homework, science projects, sports practices, and social dynamics. By the time they sit down to practice their instrument, they are often mentally fatigued.
In the summer, that cognitive overload disappears. Students can approach their instruments with a relaxed mind and genuine curiosity. With more free time, they can experiment, improvise, and dive deeper into their music without feeling rushed. It transforms practice from an obligation into a sanctuary.
Keeping the Momentum Alive
Consistency doesn’t mean your summer music lessons have to be rigid. It doesn’t mean sacrificing family vacations, camp trips, or lazy afternoons at the pool. It simply means keeping the thread connected. By maintaining a relationship with their instrument and their instructor through the summer months, students don’t just avoid the summer slide—they build a launchpad for the coming year.
Sign up for a FREE introductory music lesson at The California Conservatory of Music today!
Our June Musician of the Month was born on June 9, 1981: Anoushka Shankar — sitar virtuosa, composer, and one of the most adventurous musicians of her generation.
Her first sitar teacher was her father. Her father was Ravi Shankar — the maestro who carried Indian classical music to the West and taught George Harrison of the Beatles. Growing up as the daughter and student of a legend could have overwhelmed a young musician. Anoushka Shankar built one of the great musical careers of our time out of it.
Early Life and Inspirations
Anoushka was born in London and grew up between London, Delhi, and California, the daughter of Sukanya Rajan and Ravi Shankar, who was sixty-one when she was born. She began studying sitar at nine, in the centuries-old Indian tradition where music passes directly from master to student. Her father had a special sitar built small enough for a child’s hands.
The training was rigorous, daily, and entirely by ear; Indian classical music is learned from a teacher’s playing, not from sheet music. At thirteen, she gave her first public performance at a concert honoring her father’s seventy-fifth birthday in New Delhi. At sixteen she signed a record deal. At seventeen she released her first album. There were no shortcuts in any of it; just a decade of practice beside a master who happened to tuck her in at night.
A Career Without Borders
By twenty, Anoushka had become the youngest nominee ever in the Grammys’ world music category, and the first Indian woman nominated for a Grammy at all. Fourteen nominations have followed, along with a first that says everything about the doors she has opened: in 2006 she became the first musician of Indian origin to perform live at the Grammy Awards ceremony.
What she did with her platform is the interesting part. Rather than simply inherit her father’s repertoire, she carried the sitar into places it had never been. Her album Traveller wove Indian ragas together with Spanish flamenco, two traditions that share deeper roots than most listeners realize. Traces of You paired her with her half-sister, the singer Norah Jones, in a family collaboration of heartbreaking beauty. She composed a live orchestral score for Shiraz, a 1928 silent film, and co-scored the BBC’s A Suitable Boy. Her recent trilogy of mini-albums, Chapter I through Chapter III, is some of the most personal music she has ever made.
The honors keep arriving; in June 2024, Oxford University awarded her an honorary doctorate in music. Not bad for an instrument many concert halls once treated as a novelty.
Tradition as a Launchpad
Here is what makes Anoushka Shankar matter to music students: she is living proof that deep training in one tradition doesn’t fence you in. It sets you free. Her flamenco collaborations work because she spent a decade mastering ragas. Her film scores work because improvising within strict rules, the heart of Indian classical music, is the best compositional training there is. She honors a heritage that stretches back centuries, and she answers to nobody about where she takes it next.
If that idea sounds familiar, it should: it’s the same lesson our July Musician of the Month, the jazz pianist Hiromi, teaches from the other side of the world. Rigorous roots, boundless branches.
What Students Can Learn from Anoushka Shankar
Trust the slow work. Anoushka spent years learning by ear at her teacher’s feet before the world heard a note of it. In a culture of overnight everything, her career is a case for the long way around: master the tradition in front of you, and it will carry you anywhere you want to go.
Start Listening
- Live at Carnegie Hall — the Grammy-nominated recording; pure Indian classical mastery at age twenty.
- Traveller — ragas meet flamenco. Start here if you want to hear borders dissolve.
- Traces of You — with her sister Norah Jones. Gorgeous, tender, and a beautiful story of family across two musical worlds.
- Chapter I: Forever, For Now — the recent, intimate Anoushka. Music for quiet evenings.
Whatever instrument your child is drawn to, the lesson holds: great training opens every door. Our private music lessons are where that starts.
Sign up for a FREE introductory lesson at The California Conservatory of Music today!
Our June Composer of the Month was born on June 27, 1922: George Walker — pianist, teacher, and the first Black composer ever awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music.
If you’ve never heard his Lyric for Strings, stop reading and put it on. Ten minutes of slowly unfolding string lines, written when he was twenty-four, in memory of his grandmother. Audiences who love Barber’s Adagio for Strings tend to fall hard for it, and then wonder why nobody played it for them sooner. That question, in many ways, is the story of George Walker’s life.
Early Life and Inspirations
George Walker grew up in Washington, D.C., the son of a physician who had emigrated from Jamaica and a mother, Rosa, who sat beside him at the piano from his very first lesson at age five. Rosa had strong opinions about wasted practice time. Decades later, Walker still credited her ear and her insistence for everything that followed.
What followed came fast. He left for the Oberlin Conservatory at fourteen. From there he earned a place at the Curtis Institute of Music, one of the most selective schools on earth, where his piano teacher was the great Rudolf Serkin. In 1945 he graduated with diplomas in both piano and composition, becoming the first Black graduate in the school’s history.
The piece that outlived everything else from those years wasn’t written for a stage. While Walker was at Curtis, his grandmother died, a woman who had been born into slavery and lived to see her grandson at a world-famous conservatory. He poured his grief into a slow movement for string quartet. Renamed Lyric for Strings, it became the most performed music he ever wrote.
A Career of Firsts and Closed Doors
In November 1945, Walker gave his debut recital at New York’s Town Hall; the New York Times called it “notable.” Two weeks later he stood in front of the Philadelphia Orchestra and played Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto, one of the most difficult pieces in the repertoire, with Eugene Ormandy conducting. He was the first Black instrumentalist ever to appear with that orchestra, in the first year anyone had let him try.
By every musical measure, a major concert career should have followed. It didn’t. Concert managers in 1940s America would not represent a Black classical pianist, however brilliant. The doors that had opened at Curtis and Town Hall quietly closed.
Walker’s answer was to out-build the obstacle. He earned a doctorate. He won a Fulbright to Paris and spent two years with Nadia Boulanger, the most famous composition teacher of the century, who was reportedly so impressed that she waived her usual requirements for him. (Longtime readers may remember Boulanger as our July 2024 Composer of the Month. Walker was among the many great Americans she shaped.) And he taught for decades, most of them at Rutgers University, while writing more than ninety works that America’s greatest orchestras slowly, steadily began to commission.
The Pulitzer, Fifty Years Later
In 1996, the Boston Symphony premiered Lilacs, Walker’s setting of Walt Whitman’s elegy for Abraham Lincoln, for soprano and orchestra. The Pulitzer jury’s vote was unanimous. George Walker was seventy-three years old, more than half a century past that historic Curtis graduation, when he became the first Black composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music.
He treated the prize as a checkpoint, not a finish line. Walker kept composing into his mid-nineties and passed away in 2018 at ninety-six. Music stayed in the family: one son is a violinist and composer, the other a playwright.
What Students Can Learn from George Walker
Walker’s story carries a lesson we watch play out in our studios every week: mastery is built at the instrument, hour by hour, long before the world takes notice. Doors were closed to him that swung open freely for others. His response was to become undeniable — as a pianist, as a teacher, and finally as a composer whose music outlasted every barrier put in front of it.
Start Listening
New to Walker? Start here:
- Lyric for Strings — his most beloved work; ten minutes, and you’ll understand why.
- Lilacs — the Pulitzer winner. Whitman’s poetry and radiant soprano writing.
- Piano Sonata No. 1 — Walker the virtuoso pianist speaks.
- Address for Orchestra — the sound of American orchestras rediscovering him.
Whether your child is beginning piano lessons or preparing for an audition, George Walker’s music, and his example, belong in their ears.
Sign up for a FREE introductory lesson at The California Conservatory of Music today!
May brings a fresh sense of warmth and vibrant energy to the world. This month, we celebrate a musician who embodies that exact spirit through his art. We proudly name Jake Shimabukuro as our official Musician of the Month. He has completely redefined how people view the ukulele, a traditional Hawaiian instrument. He takes the humble instrument and turns it into a powerhouse of emotion. Most people once viewed this four-stringed instrument as a simple novelty. They thought of it as a prop for casual beach songs. Jake changed that narrow perception forever with his blazing speed and deep musicality. He blends rock, jazz, blues, bluegrass, and classical styles into something entirely new. Ultimately, his music transcends cultural boundaries and connects deeply with listeners across the globe. Today, he stands as a true master of his craft and an international icon.
Shimabukuro demonstrates that true art knows no limits or physical boundaries. You do not need a massive instrument to create a massive sound. A tiny piece of wood can hold an entire universe of passion. Jake coaxes complex symphonies out of just four simple nylon strings. He commands the stage with the presence of a legendary rock star. Yet, he maintains the humility of a lifelong student of music. His innovative spirit makes him the perfect feature for this beautiful month. May represents growth, renewal, and the blossoming of creative energy. Jake’s music matches this seasonal transformation in every possible way. We invite you to explore his incredible journey and unique artistry this May.
Early Life and Inspirations
Jake Shimabukuro was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, in November of 1976. Growing up, the gentle rhythms of the Pacific Ocean shaped his earliest memories. In fact, beautiful musical sounds surrounded him from the very beginning of his life. His mother, Carol, played the ukulele with great love and skill. She gave him his very first instrument when he was just a toddler. Consequently, he began learning the instrument at the tender age of four. He quickly grew to love the ukulele’s unique sound. Because of this passion, he practiced for hours every single day.
His early world revolved around the local melodies of his island home. He listened closely to traditional Hawaiian artists who played with pure heart. These local musicians taught him to respect the cultural roots of the instrument. Eventually, his musical ears opened to a much wider variety of sounds. He did not limit his attention to traditional island folk music. For instance, he discovered legendary rock guitarists like Jimi Hendrix and Eddie Van Halen. Their fierce energy and wild solos captivated his young mind completely.
He also fell in love with the complex melodies of jazz and classical music. He would listen to the intricate piano works of classical masters for hours. Soon, he realized he could mimic these diverse styles on his own tiny instrument. He spent countless afternoons experimenting with different finger positions on the fretboard. This intense realization shaped his creative vision and fueled his artistic drive. Therefore, he vowed to push the ukulele far beyond its traditional boundaries. Meanwhile, his supportive family encouraged his daily practice sessions and cheered his progress. This strong foundation allowed his natural talent to flourish into something extraordinary.
Shimabukuro’s Music Career
Jake began his professional music career in the late 1990s by forming a band. He co-founded the popular Hawaiian trio known to fans as Pure Heart. The group gained instant success and won several local music awards. They captured the hearts of listeners across the Hawaiian islands very quickly. Their fresh acoustic sound combined traditional Hawaiian themes with modern pop sensibilities. Eventually, Jake decided to pursue a path as a solo artist. He wanted more freedom to explore his personal musical ideas. Next, he signed a major record deal in Japan in the year 2002. This bold move launched his career onto the competitive international stage. He released his first solo albums and quickly built a loyal fanbase. Through it all, he worked incredibly hard to establish his own unique identity.
A massive turning point arrived unexpectedly in the year 2005. At the time, someone uploaded a video of Jake playing in New York’s Central Park. In the video, he performed a virtuosic cover of George Harrison’s While My Guitar Gently Weeps. He did not know that anyone was recording his performance that day. However, the clip went viral on the relatively new platform at the time: YouTube. Millions of internet users watched his fingers fly across the frets with amazement. This single video brought him sudden and widespread global fame almost overnight.
Concert promoters from every continent started calling his management team. Later, he began touring the world and selling out major concert halls. Over the years, he released numerous acclaimed studio and live albums. He also collaborated with iconic artists like Yo-Yo Ma, Jimmy Buffett, and Bette Midler. He even performed for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at a royal variety show. Additionally, he appeared on major television networks and late-night talk shows worldwide. Through all the fame, he maintained his rigorous touring schedule. He traveled constantly to share his love for music with diverse audiences. Ultimately, he became a global ambassador for Hawaiian culture and modern acoustic music.
A Unique Musical Style
Jake possesses a style that separates him from every other ukulele player. He uses innovative fingerpicking techniques to create an astonishingly full sound. Thus, he can play fast percussive rhythms and delicate melodies at the same time. He coaxes a massive range of dynamics out of just four nylon strings. Sometimes he makes his instrument sound like a roaring electric guitar. He attacks the strings with incredible speed and raw physical power. At other times, he makes it sound like a delicate classical harp. Then, he coaxes soft, whispering tones that hush entire concert halls into silence.
Furthermore, he uses effects pedals to alter his acoustic tone during live shows. He adds distortion, delay, and reverb to expand his sonic palette. This bold choice brings a modern, rock-and-roll edge to a traditional acoustic instrument. Traditionalists sometimes question these methods, but audiences absolutely love the results.
Moreover, he maintains an intense, joyful physical presence when he performs on stage. He moves his entire body and jumps around during fast songs. He smiles broadly as he connects with the rhythm of the music. His passion feels absolutely contagious to anyone sitting in the audience. In fact, he feels the music deeply and expresses it through every gesture. Additionally, he writes complex original compositions that challenge the limits of the instrument. His intricate pieces feature unusual time signatures and key changes. As shown, he refuses to restrict his creativity to standard chords or simple strumming patterns. Instead, he treats the ukulele as an extension of his own soul. He proves that a musician needs only four strings to express deep human emotions. Ultimately, he shows that limitations only exist within the mind of the artist.
Shimabukuro’s Impact and Philosophy
Jake believes that music possesses a unique power to heal and unite people. Therefore, he uses his global platform to spread positivity and educational opportunities. He visits schools regularly to speak with young children about music. He encourages students to find their own creative voices through artistic expression, dedication, and practice. Also, he often donates instruments to schools that lack proper arts funding. This philanthropic work forms a core part of his identity as an artist. He does not play music merely for fame or financial reward. Rather, he plays to connect with people on a fundamental human level.
Additionally, his work has altered the music industry’s view of acoustic instruments. Manufacturers now design high-end ukuleles to meet the demands of professional musicians. Consequently, more young people pick up the instrument today than ever before. They look at Jake and see a cool, modern musical hero. He successfully broke the old stereotype of the ukulele as a simple backyard toy. Now, music schools offer serious courses of study for the ukulele. Jazz and classical ensembles also welcome the instrument onto their stages. Jake paved the way for this widespread cultural shift through decades of hard work. He unlocked a portal of potential that benefits musicians everywhere. His legacy involves much more than just his own spectacular performances. He created a global community of passionate players and appreciative listeners.
Final Thoughts
Today, Jake Shimabukuro remains a shining light in the contemporary music landscape. He took a simple instrument from Hawaii and shared it with the whole world. His dedication and creativity continue to inspire a new generation of young musicians. He teaches us to look past limitations and pursue our wildest passions. This May, his bright melodies remind us of growth, renewal, and endless possibilities. His songs bring people together and spark pure joy in a chaotic world.
Indeed, his music provides a perfect soundtrack for the bright days of spring. We celebrate his past achievements and eagerly anticipate his future musical creations. He continues to tour, record, and experiment with new sounds every year. His artistic journey shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. Jake truly deserves the title of our Musician of the Month. We encourage you to listen to his records and experience his magic today. Open your ears to his beautiful sound and let it brighten your month.
Sign up for a FREE introductory lesson at The California Conservatory of Music today!
This May, we are excitedly featuring, Anya Solomatin, as our Student of the Month! Anya has been taking voice lessons at our Sunnyvale location for almost 3 years now with Teacher Dario!
Teacher Dario says, “Anya is a very hardworking singer whose musicianship has grown so much since she’s been taking lessons. Her sight reading and rhythm are improving so much. Aside from that she has strengthened her chest voice and belt, as well as her soaring head voice. She is always a delight in lessons and tries her best to bring every song to life! She is a joy to teach and is becoming a very fine musician.”
Read more about Anya’s experience at CCM below!
Student of the Month Questionnaire – Anya Solomatin
What is your name?
Anya Solomatin.
How old are you?
12 years old.
Who is your teacher?
Mr. Dario.
How long have you been taking voice lessons?
About 2 years.
What advice would you give to a voice student just starting at CCM?
Try your best at lessons, and even if something doesn’t work out for you, don’t give up. Your teachers care about you, and will try to help your achieve your goals. Also, remember, recitals aren’t scary. They are just a moment for you to show others your talent. Be brave, and don’t give up.
What song are you looking forward to learning someday?
I’m not sure. But if I had to choose, I would want to sing some song from a musical.
What is your favorite thing about singing?
Getting to use my high voice and chest voice, which I enjoy experimenting with.
What is your favorite food?
Sushi.
Do you have a pet?
Yes (two dogs).
Do you play any sports or do any other activities outside of music lessons?
I do rhythmic gymnastics, which is super fun and exciting.
What do you want to be when you grow up?
A lot of things: An actress, a marine biologist, or an architect.
What is your most memorable experience at CCM?
My first recital is a very memorable experience for me. I was really nervous at first, but when I started singing my song, Part of Your World, I relaxed and just sang.
Parent Spotlight – Asya Solomatin
Regarding voice instruction, what are you most proud of your child accomplishing?
We are happy to see Anya listen and apply her teacher’s feedback that helps her progress in her singing. We are grateful to Teacher Dario for always encouraging Anya and sharing his musical knowledge and skills with her.
What advice would you give a new parent starting in the program?
Help your child choose to do something they enjoy – it’s a pleasure to watch them work hard at something they love.
Why did you decide to give your child a musical upbringing?
My grandmother was the one who wanted the children to have a musical education – always taking them to classical music performances and encouraging them to do something musical. She loved music and shared her passion with the whole family.
Sign up for a FREE introductory music lesson at The California Conservatory of Music today!