do you truly love music?

I guess there was never a time when I didn't know music. From even before I was born, I am told, that I was hearing my mom sing opera. My family, aside from my dad, are all very musical people. Most of, if not all of, the relatives on my mom's side are musicians. I grew up in a world full of music and sounds. I began my own journey in the children choir directed by my mom in Hong Kong. After moving to America, I had many more opportunities to know music. Like every Asian child, I had to learn how to play piano. I started in the 2nd grade which is considered to be very old to start. In LA, kids in 4th grade are required to attend music class and learn either a stringed instrument learn vocals. But the high school band director came and gave us the option of learning a wind instrument. That's when I started playing trumpet. When choosing instruments, I didn't even know what a trumpet was. I simply chose something out of a list of instruments. I don't remember how bad I sounded but now that I go and sit in beginners trumpet classes at the middle schools...it must have sounded horrendous... One of the first things the director told us was the philosophy behind learning an instrument. No one is good at anything at the beginning so we would have to put a lot of effort into learning how to use this piece of metal to express what we wanted to express. He said that it's like a stair case. There are times when you're going straight up and you're improving greatly, then there are the time when you're going horizontal and it seems like you'll never get better at all. But, he warns us, a room full of elementary school kids, if you decide to stop and give up at this horizontal point you will plummet straight down. It's not about talent, although that does help, it's about hard work. He is the greatest director I have ever had in my many years of trumpet playing.

Since I was surrounded with music from the start, it's a little different for me to figure out what, exactly, music is to me. This didn't occur to me until I was in high school. I had moved to Texas. It was a bad move and I was really hating it here. I had always been in the band so when high school came around I didn't see the difference. However, marching band was something completely different. It was the toughest thing I had ever encountered in the music world. My new director called said, "You guys are the hardest working people in the entire school because not everyone can do what you are doing". How right he was. Not only was it hard to tough out the weather outside for the countless hours but the world of marching band music and high school band was brutal. If anything was wrong everyone would stab you for it. It was for the good of the band, of course, since everyone got the same treatment. In this institution, I have formulated many of the principles that I apply to life today. Hard work, responsibility, time management, a good work ethic, fix your own problems..NOW!, and that drive to be perfect and be excellent because anything else was unacceptable. Most of all I learned what music meant to me. When you were in a place like that, you didn't stay there unless you had very good reason to do so.