Suggestion number nine for getting and keeping our kids interested in music: acquire a piano. The medium-to-long-term denizens of his site have heard this particular song before, though I will repeat it, because like any good tune, repetition breeds familiarity and perhaps even affection, and I need us all to like what I’m about to propose. Acquire a piano. Yes. Some personal background. When I walk into someone’s house, there are two things that are guaranteed to make me feel immediately at home: a piano and books. Admittedly (if painfully), books are an increasing rarity, so perhaps I should be satisfied with a Kindle in every corner. But a piano; well, that’s another story. The presence of a piano in a house tells a story: a story of striving forward through lessons; of house-hold music making; of sonic joys and alternative realities; of a pianistic repertoire endless and sublime. That’s what the presence of a piano says about a home, and it’s as sexy as Sophia Loren in latex. Speaking of the pianos: it doesn’t have to be a 10’2” Fazioli” F308 (list price around 200k); nor even my personal piano of choice, a New York Steinway “D” (at 8’ […]