Your wife is also a professional musician. How have you two approached incorporating music into your daughter’s life?
Well, we listen to music so much that our daughter Ella is always asking for us to put on Spotify, whether it's kids' music and Raffi, or some Mozart operas. She is also just naturally interested in both our instruments (me piano, and my wife violin) since she sees us playing all the time. Whenever Ella wants to jump on the piano, I let her do whatever she wants, and on the violin she's been learning parts of the instruments and using the bow a bit with her mom's assistance. At this age, it's more about exploration and not being afraid of the instruments!
How would you describe your playing style?
Well, I think an important part about my approach to learning pieces is not to just play them the way everyone else plays them or the way I've heard it done my whole life. I'm always digging into the score, asking questions about why things are written the way they are, and how I can bring new life into a piece that might be overplayed, without doing things differently just for the sake of doing things differently. Philosophically, I really try to think about musicians as magicians—we get to manipulate space and time of sound to evoke images or emotions, and I hope that comes through in at least some of my playing.
What is it about Ravel that you love?
I love many things about Ravel's music, probably most prominently his harmonies and the way he writes for the piano—it's always very challenging to play, but rewarding once you figure it out. There is also something very nostalgic about his music, like he's always looking back towards the antique, but through a (then) modern lens. And at the end, it's just great music to listen to.
When you’re not listening to classical music (or kids music!), what are you listening to?
Yea, it's mostly kids music these days (why, Baby Shark, why?!), but you know, the occasional Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, or Doja Cat will find its way in, and some music from our younger years (90s/00s pop). Sprinkle in some Taiwanese/Korean/Japanese pop here and there, music from Miyazaki movies by Jo Hisaishi, Disney soundtracks (the original ones, not the remakes), random 70's music, and video game music from my childhood (mainly Nobuo Uematsu and Yasunori Mitsuda) and I think that's a pretty good representation. ∎