Michael Root

I am new to Indaba. My brother told me about the Yo-Yo Ma challenge and i wanted to hear more about how he is bringing musicians together. I am now interested in learning more about what goes on here and how I can be a contributing member of the community.. For one thing, I always love hearing others describe their experience of music and how each individual opens to the creative process. So please feel free to share if the Spirit moves you! Or maybe I will read about that on some of your blogs!

I am a classically trained pianist and have been a performance soloist and collaborator for many years. I have had the good fortune of working in a variety of musical genres. I have collaborated with solo singers and instrumentalists, orchestras, choirs and chamber ensembles. I have been rehearsal pianist for opera companies and performed with jazz soloists and groups, big bands and dance companies. I did a lot of work with the public school outreach program at Cleveland Opera accompanying soprano Kay Raplenovich. One of my greatest learning experiences was playing at a restaurant with two violinists for a number of years. We got requests for everything from classical to rock and were able to play it all thanks to a big library of music we had stashed in the back! I absolutely love the huge variety of music that is available to be heard and learned and love to hear what new artists are bringing to the table. After many years of improvising, I started trying my hand at composing. I had the good fortune of performing my first compositions to the very receptive audiences at the Chesapeake restaurant's "First Wednesdays" in Cape Charles, Virginia, thanks to the gifted artist and organizer, Peg Volk.

I find that musical composition is a good spiritual practice for me because it requires me to stay in a balanced place within, which is not always my natural state! I also love sight-reading and interpreting the works of others from the score!

Another challenge for me in recent years has been teaching myself to record my music using the Logic Express program on my Macintosh computer. Oh man! The hours of manual-reading that takes! I'm just now getting to the point where I can get some dynamic range in my recordings without all kinds of distortion. What a relief that is!

My education is: Cleveland Institute of Music, BM in piano performance. Manhattan School of Music, MM in piano performance. I was unbelievably fortunate as a child to study with Bruce Simonds at the Yale School of Music, a student of Tobias Matthay. He continues to be my main influence in classical music. Another huge influence for me is Marian McPartland, the awesome jazz pianist. I have also been very influenced by any singers I've ever heard because they bring the art and meaning of melody to life for me.