Missy Higgins hated practising piano when she was a child – just hated it. When she was just six, her parents enrolled her in Suzuki piano lessons, the method by which you learn to play by ear. “It was definitely a chore.
My Dad sat me down every night to practise ...
I remember feeling resentful,” says Higgins, whose national tour begins in Melbourne on June 22. Still, Higgins appreciated her father’s enthusiasm. Bronte Ellis, mother of Yanai, 7, knows exactly what it’s like to be pressured to do music practice, after growing up with parents who met at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
Credit: Wolter Peeters “So I just accepted it until I was about 12. I was so bored of playing classical music and didn’t have any passion for it,” she says. Then she asked her parents if she could quit piano to take up the guitar.
They agreed. Parents are always the ones who make the arrangements for children to learn music. They pay the fees.
They get super-stressed when the children don’t practise. And they wonder whether the money they are forking out, term after term, will make music part of their children’s lives. Missy Higgins and her son, Sammy.
Credit: Instagram As James Humberstone, a specialist in music education at the University of Sydney, explains, provision for music in schools is limited these days. We can no longer be sure that our children will experience music education at the hands of trained music educators in the classroom. “The opportunity for musi.
