Dear Lindsay and Lauren and the Classics Alive Board of Directors,

Thank you so much for letting me enter the Musician of the Year contest. I was excited when my mom told me that I had a message from you and I was ecstatic when I saw that I had won! It is a huge honor to be selected as the Student Musician of the Year! I can't wait to tell my teacher, Liz! 

I love your website and I think that music students all over must appreciate it. It is so inspiring to see young musicians like the two of you who play so beautifully, and are not that much older than we are! Lindsay, you are amazing in your video. I love how you are really intense and dramatic when you play. Sometimes when I really get into a piece it seems like the music is a piece of clay, and I have been given a set of instructions (which is the printed music) but other than those, I can work with it and make it my own.

I love learning new pieces and I hope that some day I will be half as good as you are! Thank you for everything that you are doing for young musicians. My family is not musical like yours is. When I was 3 I loved to listen to the Classical Kids tapes about Mozart,  Beethoven and Handel, and I told my mom and dad that I wanted to play the violin. My parents didn't have any idea about how to find a teacher, and they weren't sure that I was old enough, but I knew that I was old enough because on the tape it said that Mozart started playing the violin when he was 3. 

I think it's important for kids to start playing music when they are little because the brain isn't fully formed yet, and you can devote more of it to your music. In school they don't let you start music until 4th grade and I think that they should start much earlier. I think they don't want the kids to feel overburdened, but really, kids want to practice and they have a lot of fun!

Some of the kids at my school started playing the violin because I brought my violin to school and they saw me play and they thought "Wow, that's really cool!" Kids need to see other kids playing instruments. When they see an adult play an instrument they think "They're good, but they've probably been playing for half their life", but when it's somebody their own age they can relate to them. They think "Oh my goodness, this kid's the same age as me, I could do this!"

Thank you again for choosing me as your Student Musician of the Year!

From,

Graeme